Grateful Dead Music Forum

I play a Gibson LP Studio with the stock humbuckers that came on it Through Fender Blues jr. amp. I normally play either clean or else slightly distored through an Ibanez Tube Screamer with a silver mod. Which provides a very transparent sound, but still providing overdrive. I love Jerry's sound and I know when he played lp's he many times played them with P90's. I'd say my biggest guitar influences are Jerry, Jon Gutwillig of the Disco Biscuits, Trey Anastasio of Phish, and Dickie Betts. Theres some history...
My question is... in yalls opinion, would P90's help my tone or should I stick with the Humbuckers? I read everywhere that p90's are great when playing jazz and blues. Most of the music I play is some sort of jazz/blues fusion, all jam type music. Should i get the p90's or would it be a mistake?
If so, what type of p90's, i hear the seymore duncans are the best. Thanks...

Big fan of P-90's. If you can get past the hum, they have the cleanest bell tone out there IMO. Drive them a bit and the perform really well. I actually replaced the stock pu's with the DiMarzio DLX's which are humbucking P-90's. Then I tapped them so I could have the best of both worlds.

I think P-90's do a really good job of capturing the Jerry on the single coil Travis Bean. For some reason they have that full bouncy shimmer.

How bad is the hum? I feel like that may be something that could really annoy me. Are the p94's or p100's still made? or anything similar that provides you with a p90 esq sound minus some of the hum?

The DLX is a slightly warmer sounding P-90 basically with higher output and less hum.

For some reason I tend to produce more hum than others, so they may not be as noisy for you. I am also the guy who used to get shocked a lot, and am now the guy who makes our baby monitors get all staticy when I walk by them so it could very well just be me.

My shit is magnetic.

What is the specific name of the DLX's when i search for them it comes up with a few different DLX pickups

what do you think about the "Virtual P90s" from DiMarzio

First time I've seen P-90's mentioned here - but I definately see what Crazy 9.5 says, they'll get you close to the mid 70's Bean tone. I'm working on a fretless rebuild/modification, planning on using the GFS P-90's. Well see how that goes....

Crazy 9.5 Fingers wrote:DiMarzio DLX's which are humbucking P-90's.

I'm confused. Sadly, most people refer to dual coils as humbuckers I'm assuming you are not? Are these noiseless P90s?

P90s are single coils which is why they get buzzy from time to time depending on room.


I'm a big fan of mini-humbuckers for that not so fat humbucker but not so thin single coil.

S. Duncan has a new pup called rail 90s . a cross between a bucker and a p90. I have'nt heard them but it sounds interesting

Six,

I guess I mean to say that they are humbuckers designed to sound like the P-90 and have the same profile.

In the end, a humbucker is a humbucker.

Fralin now has a set of noiseless P90s. I have not yet tried them. Lollar low winds are very nice, every guitar I have hums so that is nothing to me really. They have that tone like no other.