P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

[matizadomrb]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Hey eddiesideways!

I've been considering the P-Rails Hot for the bridge of my Strat as well. Now that you've done it yourself let me ask you this:

I suppose you have the P-Rail installed in a "no angle" position (straight manner as in stock HSS Strats)... When in rail mode, do you think the fact that there's "no angle" on the position of the pickup has some noticeable effect on the tone?

Thing is, my Strat has a stock single coil pup in the bridge which I wanna change for a P-Rail Hot so I've been debating with myself if I should install it straight (as in a HSS American Deluxe) or angled (in the manner in which Eddie Van Halen places the humbucker in his Frankenstrat or Billie Joe Armstrong places the humbucker in his Blue Fernandes Strat). Check these pics to see what I mean:

HSS position (no angle)

http://www.fender.com/products/search.php?partno=0119102700

BJA position (with angle)

http://www.gibson.com/Files/aaFeaturesImages2009/bja-blue.jpg

EVH position (with angle)

http://stevebowden.net/media/frankenstrat_template.jpg

Any option is the same to me since I have to carve a hole in the guitar and the pickguard anyway to place the P-Rail Hot, so I wanna know what would be the best option tonewise to retain as much as possible the original sound of the stock singlecoil bridge pickup when in rail mode on the P-Rail.

My first impulse is to place it with no angle (HSS style) because this way the strings are right over the top of the pup pole (in the BJA or EVH position with an angle, the pup will be slightly off in this regard).... But considering that someone like EVH who's a tone freak decided to angle the humbucker makes me wonder if there's a real difference...

Unfortunately this is a decision I have to make in advance without experimenting first because once I carve the wood and pickguard in one manner there's no turning back, so if anyone has any experience on this regard any input will be greatly appreciated!

Hmmm did I just stole the thread a lil' bit?.... Sorry about that!... If I did I'll just start a new one with my question.

Cheers!

[Inkvizitor]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Hi, I decided to put my rail outward on the bridge and keep the neck the way it's meant to be with the P90 outward. Do you think this make any difference to the sound of the two pickups combined?

[GuitarDoc]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Probably not.

[Conker09]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

P-Rails = beter than Jazz.

Yeah..my first change of pickups was to the JB/Jazz set, and now I think i'm leaning towards the prails set. Though I definitely am considering a 59 or pearly gates as well. It's just hard to decide between so many great pickups.

I'm not really going for any particular tone per se...i just want a great sounding neck pickup lol. Is the Prails neck too dark in series for the neck position?

[Stratman]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

I've just ordered the following pickups from Wymore...

- P-Rails hot
- Vintage Rails Neck/Middle (for the middle)
- Lil' 59 Neck (for the neck)

Going into an alder bodied, maple necked, rosewood board'd superstrat with Floyd Rose Speedloader trem.

And it's got a kill-switch, mid-cut, and tone knob. A 5-way switch with standard strat wiring, but with 2 mini-switches to switch the Vintage Rails and Lil'59 from parallel to series. And also a triple shot ring for the P-Rails Hot.

It is gonna be versatile.

Hey Mattt...

Is this from John Wymore who closed shop and sold most of his stock?

Someone else posted that he purchased the last one from John...

[GuitarDoc]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

UPDATE:

OK so this is the FINAL update. After I put two A5's in the Hot P-Rails, it sounded really great.

I just couldn't help myself (I really did try to resist the urge, but I had to try it anyway).

I took out one of the polished A5's and put in an Unoriented roughcast A5 next to the rail. OMG!!! Blueman was right. Even though it was just one of the A5's that I replaced, it sounds much fuller, stronger, boosted up the rail and parallel settings, and made all of the settings match much better. But it's not like the A8...not as overbearing in tone and output, more subtle. It didn't seam to make the series setting any darker, that I can tell, so everything just seams to work together more harmoniously: Rail-Parallel-P-90-Series.

The P-90 is like a sledgehammer and sounds better than any other pup I've played. It's strong/powerful, full-bodied with GREAT mids, and still has that super P-90 bite. The Rail is still bright like it should be (next to the bridge), but with some great overtones to make it sound more organic, more alive. The parallel setting is airy, clear, bright, kind of acoustic sounding, a bit stronger/louder than the Rail by itself. The series setting is very strong, definitely humbuckerish, but not dark and muddy like it was with the stock A8's, very powerful but not overbearing when compared to the P-90, It is a very good bridge humbucker and goes very well with my Classic '57 neck pup.

The P-Rails Hot is very....well.....as you would expect,.........HOT!! It does tend to sound a bit overdriven (especially when it was stock with the A8's, but not as much with the A5's in it). But it cleans up fine with a bit of the volume rolled off.

This is the way it should have been made by SD in the first place, or at least with two polished A5's. The Unoriented roughcast A5 just added the perfection that it needed.

So now I've got great tone, great versatility, and great fun.

I'm so glad I learned about mag swapping on this forum. It transformed a very disappointing initial experience with the Hot P-Rails into perfection. All I can say now is..."WOW".

(Now I'm really having a hard time deciding which is my favorite guitar...this LP Classic with P-Rails Hot A5/UoA5 (b)/Classic'57(n), my Epi LP Ultra with Mean 90 A5/A8 (b)/Pearly Gates(n), or my '66 Wilshire with NY Minihumbuckers).

I also still love my Am. Deluxe Strat HSS, too.

Oh, woe is me.

[matizadomrb]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Hey GuitarDoc!

Wow man you really got me excited with your experiment on the P-Rails Hot! I think I'm gonna try that mod myself (polished A5 and Un-oriented roughcast A5) since I'm working on a project that had me debating about how to tame this pickup a lil' bit. This might just be the perfect solution.

I've been to Dennis' ebay store (addiction-fx) where I've read a lot of people around here get their magnets, but I was kinda overwhelmed by his A5s inventory:

Alnico 5 bars rough cast
Alnico 5 un-oriented bars
Alnico 5 Short bars 2.36 X .123 X .500 rough cast
Alnico 5 long bars. 2.75 X .125 X .500 rough cast
Alnico 5 short bars 2.29 X .118 X .500 charged
Alnico 5 rods .187 dia X .630, .656, .688 (straight set), .719
Alnico 5 rods .197 X .688

Can you advice on what I should get? I'm new to this kind of mods so a lil' help will be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

[eddysideways]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

hi guys,

Sorry I didn't answered before.
Chase about some clips with rail outward I'll try to record some tomorrow, but you can here some of it a bit on a track I recorded. You can hear it there : http://www.reverbnation.com/eddysidewaysvalili, the song is called MyCLeanPrailHot.
On the left there is a guitar with a PrailNeck on rail mode , with rail outward, combined with my middle pickup.
And at the begining at the song the solo part is with the Rail with the neck position.
Someone told me on another post that it was confusing because there is 3 guitars( one left on right and one stereo).
So I'll try to record something simpler.

matizdomrb, about your question about the angle I really don't know.
I guess there is a difference because of it but I didn't really notice something bad for it.
But maybe I'm not the right guy to answer for it beacause I used to have a hot rail before and I didn't really used the hot rail with the single mode, and neither combined with the middle. I wasn't very happy with the Prail hot on those position with the rail inward, so when I flipped it, I had a very pleasant surprise 'cos finally I could use those modes.

Today I got one of my guitars back, a gibson nighthawk with wich I was always happy with, and I played the start with the Prail and the gibson to compare.
I had lots and lots of surprises in my ears.
The Prail Hot is really more agresive with distortion, and the neck is really more warm in P90 or Humbucker mode. Amazing. The quack sound was better with the strat(well not that a surprise), and the thing is that there is so much options to play with.
What I like is to put a sound that sounds clear with the rail (bluesy clean), but when you go the parallel, it is just a bit louder and warmer and you can feel a bit the overdrive. When you go to the P90 it is again a bit louder warmer, and you can really hear the overdrive, and then the humbucker still louder warmer and more overdrive.
And you switch to the rail back, and it's clean and softer, without any modification on the amp, just by changing the mode. It is really cool that you can be able to do that.
And it is only with the neck, there is more with the others positions

I love it

[Inkvizitor]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

I like mine, I can't say I LOVE the bridge series, I play Metal mainly and that's the bread and butter, and the Prails Hot in series in my configuration is kinda scooped. I do use a 0.022uF cap instead of the recommended 0.047uF, and it does have plenty of both highs and lows, but it could have more mids for Metal. It sure isn't gonna give the SH-6 or the X2n a run for the money in that department. A good metal pickup is lotsa mids IMO, to slam the front of the amp.

With that said the parallel mode is real airy and the P90 is fine but it's so similar to the series mode (tad bit brighter) that I rarely see a use for it.

However, there's one spot where these pickups shine, and that's in set bridge to parallel, set neck to rail, and off we go to jangle town. Even on my cheapie mahogany V. It cuts like a tele. Precisely why I went with this set-up in the first place so no complaints here.

And yeah, just thought I'dd add, the bridge rail is outward, and neck rail is inward on my guitar. It looks a little stupid but it sounds about right to me.

The neck P90 is also very good and inspiring to mess around with.

I don't play any medium gain stuff really, but when I do I like a fair amount of cut and I don't see these two (SHPR-2 and SHPR-1n) falling short, but I do use a different tone cap (not on purpose, just don't have the option to get the 0.047s without a hassle). Clean they're great, for tight high gain the bridge series could use more mids as I mentioned IMHO.

[matizadomrb]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

matizdomrb, about your question about the angle I really don't know.
I guess there is a difference because of it but I didn't really notice something bad for it.
But maybe I'm not the right guy to answer for it beacause I used to have a hot rail before and I didn't really used the hot rail with the single mode, and neither combined with the middle. I wasn't very happy with the Prail hot on those position with the rail inward, so when I flipped it, I had a very pleasant surprise 'cos finally I could use those modes.

Thanks brother! I appreciate your help! This has raised a lot of questions for me. I think I'm gonna start a new thread so I don't hijack this one any further!

Cheers!

[Conker09]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Thanks brother! I appreciate your help! This has raised a lot of questions for me. I think I'm gonna start a new thread so I don't hijack this one any further!

Cheers!

Feel free to hijack it...i believe the OP has pretty much finished, now people are just putting other queries and random thoughts about the Prails here.

[sosomething]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Interesting thread.

I've always been intrigued by the P-rails, but have held off on them because I prefer lower-output pickups around 8 - 10 k. It never even occurred to me to drop A5s in them (I guess because I never realized they ship with A8s) and I've done a bunch of mag swaps already.

cool.

[matizadomrb]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Feel free to hijack it...i believe the OP has pretty much finished, now people are just putting other queries and random thoughts about the Prails here.

Yeah I guess that's true!... Well the one question I still have is about the specs of the magnets I need to buy for this the great mod that GuitarDoc has come up with!

I got a reply from Dennis over at Addiction FX and he's not really sure what I'll need for the P-Rails (A5 polished and A5 UO roughcast sure... but apparently there are other specs that need to be considered)... He told me he'll try to do some research a get back to me... Great guy that Dennis!

So if anyone has any ideas, the input will be very welcomed! Here's his inventory of A5s:

Alnico 5 bars rough cast
Alnico 5 un-oriented bars
Alnico 5 Short bars 2.36 X .123 X .500 rough cast
Alnico 5 long bars. 2.75 X .125 X .500 rough cast
Alnico 5 short bars 2.29 X .118 X .500 charged
Alnico 5 rods .187 dia X .630, .656, .688 (straight set), .719
Alnico 5 rods .197 X .688

Cheers!

[eddysideways]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Hi all,

I have recorded something with only the rail of a Prail set, it's a Prail on the neck with the rail outward, and the PrailHot with the rail outward.
You can hear it at : http://www.reverbnation.com/eddysidewaysvalili, it's called RailPrail.

It's on a stratocaster with wich I'm playing all the postions with a Lindy in the middle.
So you'll hear, the neck rail, rail neck + middle, middle + rail bridge, and rail bridge.

It's with a clean sound , and a little crunch for the solo but only with the rail.

I have to say that it's with a push/push set, and I've read that the rail wiring isn't that correct, so I'm gonna try the triple shots later. By the way my tone pots on the bridge is a 250k, still don't know if it will make a big difference for a 500k.

[Sanford]

Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Dig your tunes, Eddy.