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

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

I placed my order today 2 P-rails and 2 triple shot mounts.
I have to admit that after reading all the posts I have no idea what to expect.
I hope the work good on my IBANEZ ART CORE AF-103-NT
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Inkvizitor said:
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.
Click to expand...



I use the .022 or even .010 caps by choice. Never use the .047 anymore, too dark.
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Thanks Sandford and GuitarDoc, appreciate it :)

I finally received my two triple shots , and I gave it a try.
I didn't have any problem at all about wiring on those, and I admit it is much way easier than with some push/pull. I decided to try to wire something more in there that I didn't have, having the two Prail at the same time with a push/push, now that I don't need them anymore because of the triple shots. Finding a way to wire two Prail and a middle single coil on a 5 way switch with having the two Prail at the same time wasn't easy. I tried to combine the wring with Prail , and the one for strat called switch for Bridge pickup. After one test with using a screw driver on the poles, I heard the both of them and was so happy. So I just had to put the pickguard back, but but, wasn't very easy.
I finally did it. First the problem was that the pickups were to higher. So I decided to put them down. The thing is that the screws were shorter, and the spring went out.
It was 2 in the morning, I didn't have the courage to put everything out again.
I just tested it like this, even if now the pickups were very lower.
First was a big waoww. I don't know if I did something wrong before with the push/push, but it was obvious that now the sound was more clear, I heard much more the differences in between the four modes. So I tried the push/push for having the two Prail, and I had a big smile on my face. It is very very good. My favorite was the Rail Neck, with the P90 on bridge. It is almost like a tele sound. But there is something more I can't explain. It is nothing I heard before, I really liked it.

The next day, I decided to try to fix that screw problem, but I just couldn't put the pickguard right how it was. I get really frustrated, and after a while, it happened, some wires were broken. ARghh. So I did the soldering again, and I couldn't beleive it.
I just couldn't find the way to hear the Prail all together. After trying and trying I finally stopped. I just left my guitar today to a professional to finish the job because I am very confused now, and I might getting this worse. So now I'm waiting .

But using thee triple shots, is very very cool. I like those. It is easy to switch while playing, and you can put whatever mode you want on the two different pickups, wich is better than with the push/pull set.

I'll tell you later when I'll have my guitar back, it's gonna be long :(, too long....
 
Last edited:
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Hello, I'm new in this forum, and today, all I want to say is : thank you.

It's a great chance for me to read your experience on the P-rails. I'm a beginner with pichups and you give me a really good lesson.
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

The clip sounds great, Eddy, thanks! Good luck getting your wiring sorted out!
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

My P-Rails equipped guitar sounds awesome. I get wonderful P90 bite and thick heavy but not too dark humbucker sounds as well. The P90 positions sound like classic P90 tone and the thick hot humbucker sounds are awesome as well. I have some switch issues (nothing wrong with the pickup), but I'll get that sorted out eventually. It's a truly awesome pickup IMHO and has lots of versatility. If I could get a slanted trembucker version made for my Kramer, I'd be all over that with the switching mounting ring.
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Thank you stratman :)

OK I finally did it, I have my stratocaster with 2 Prails, a middle single coil, 5 way switch wtih a push/pull that does a way to have the 2 Prails together.
It was easy actually( when you know how to do it :)). I am really really happy with this option.
The rail with the P90 is absolutely fantastic. I LOVE IT. It is something like a telecaster but with something else I can't describe.
The series neck with P90 is very nice too, louder and warmer, especially with a little overdrive.
One thing is sure, i couldn't have done it without the triple shots.

I finally left the Prail hot on the bridge with the rail inward. Why? I don't know, I think I prefer the P90 like this, it's more agressive, and the series is much darker wich actually is better for me. I liked it outward for the rail, but I couldn't find a way to find that sharp sound with P90, and the series always sound almost like my P90, but I think it is like this because of the wood.

I am really happy that I finally have all the options with the triple shots, and the two prail together is really something good.
I have the volume with a 500k and my two tones are 250k. I don't know if I will change them to a 500k. I'm still wondering if it will worth it...
 
Last edited:
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

GuitarDoc said:
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.
Click to expand...


I think I'm starting the same journey as you... A hot P-Rails with a non-hot one in the neck... When I play some Tool or At The Drive-In, the bridge pup sounds too harsh, like a wall of muddy, distorted noise.

I am still trying to figure this out, but it's my main axe I'm talking about, and no one messes with my fav. A few more days of mud and they're out for good. :28:
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

I think we all need to realize that the selling point of the P-Rail is like others have said the P90 sound and having the option to use a P90 in a humbucker spacing but unlike a fat cat still be able to get some other useful tones. Say you occasionally need a thicker sound that's kinda scooped (aka a humbucker) or a thinner sound (aka a single coil). Now you can have all those things in one guitar without needing to switch em.

I love Phat Cats but lets face it they aren't always the most authentic sounding P90 because of the nickel covers and all that.

I went with P-Rails because I preferred the ability to get a cream cover (which I think looks sexier on my dark green guitar) and because I primarily wanted a good P90 tone. I like the cream and black covers on P90's I think they look good not raggin on nickel covers but I've just always been more drawn to cream and black on guitars.

I think if I really wanted a better humbucker tone I'd really have to get an AlNiCo II or 59 for the neck and a Pearly Gates or Screamin Demon (got to try one after someone on here turned me onto them) for the bridge on my guitar.

And realistically no rail pickup is going to sound exactly like a standard strat or tele pickup it's just a more usable "strat/tele" type of split coil sound.

Basically I'd rank the tones in order of best to worst this is my mileage:
1. Great P90
2. Good Modern Voiced Humbucker
3. Good Parallel Humbucker with vintage and modern characteristics co-existing
4. Good Rail Coil tone (it doesn't sound exactly like a strat or tele pickup because it isn't one, if you split a hot rails this is what it sounds like)

I use the good-great verbage intentionally because the tones are all good but none of them touch the great tones of the P90 setting.

Now the thing I want to mention is say I switch my p'ups out for that Duncan HB set I mentioned. Well now I get great PAF-style humbucker tones but when I split the coils I'm not going to get a great P90 or even a P90-ish tone. When I run them in Parallel I'm primarily just dropping my output and perceiving a slightly thinner tone.

So no matter what pickups you choose not one set of pickup I've used is the perfect set for everything nor is it like I only need one guitar.

But I will say this as my opinion the P-Rails are the closest thing I've found to that workhorse option I've found in my tone quest. Sure they aren't perfect but they really do give my one guitar the versatility of having at least 2-3 different guitars.

I mean if you really think about it in the same hands with the same settings and the same equipment most guitars will sound pretty similar.

If you hand Jeff Beck a tele, a strat, or a LP he is still going to sound like Jeff Beck playing a guitar. The timbre differences will become less distinguishable and really only noticeable to people with exceptionally well trained ears like us. I guess I'm just saying although it's all fun and games careful not to get so swept up in the search for tone that you forget that the majority of the world around you won't notice the differences. I used Jeff Beck in that example because he has famous tones using all three of those guitars.

At the end of the day I'm still wanting to get at least two more guitars to have pickups aside from more P-Rails in.

I want a semi hollow with a set of traditional PAF voiced humbuckers and I want something with a set of stratty single coils. Which is why I'm shopping around for deals on used PRS SE EG and PRS SE Semi Hollow Custom guitars. These instruments with the pickups I will use in them will have different tones from the P-Rails in my Santana SE.

Even if it were possible to design a pickup that could perfectly split into a great P90, a great strat or tele single coil, and a great PAF voiced humbucker (perhaps the sound in parallel) and a great modern humbucker (series sound perhaps). Would you really distinguish that difference in every guitar you installed them in.

At the end of the day a lot of what makes a strat a strat or a les paul a les paul is more than simply the pickup it's the player, the piece of wood, the bridge, the nut, the fingerboard, the strings, the pick, etc. So even if the perfect incarnation of a P-Rail pickup existed you'd never get all 4 tones perfect in any instrument.

And frankly you can't really complain because the P-Rails aren't like twice or thrice as expensive as other replacement pickup options.
 
Last edited:
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

I finnally flipped my Prail-Hot again with the rail outward, and now I prefer it like this. Maybe it's because of the triple shots, seems that something was wrong with my Push/pull wiring.
I'm really happy with those. With a clean sound with the two of them there is really something special and different. I like it with rail and rail, rail and P90. I'll record something it's very interessting.
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

I have two sets and love them both.

However, I did something completely different on one set - I set-up the pots as 500K ganged pots (Volume / tone) and then ran separate set of wires to each of the four ganged pots, thereby creating four possible combinations from two P-Rails (e.g., P-90 to one ganged pot, rails to another ganged pot and repeated this for the other P-Rail pup), and without any toggle switch (bridge/neck) which is now converted to an off/on switch.

Now I can mix the pups for the sound I want. Yep, crazy!
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

matizadomrb said:
...
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:
...
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...
Click to expand...
Ok, so this question was asked aaages ago, but no-one responded directly to it, so as a bit of an Ed-head I thought I'd say a few words.

The Frankenstrat came about long long ago, at the time Gibsons had humbuckers and Fenders had single coils and that was that. Ed wanted the Gibson sound in a Strat type body with a trem, so came up with the Franky. Due to the fact that Gibsons all tended to have a tune-o-matic bridge, the string spacing was a little narrower than the Strat bridge, so when a humbucker was put in, the pole pieces wouldn't go under the strings properly. This means that either the top or bottom E will not be picked up as strongly as the other strings, making it very quiet (a fact I can personally attest to from my first experiments into pickup swapping). By tilting the pickup it became possible to get a better coverage accross the strings. As people started paying attention to what he was doing, trem spaced humbuckers started to arrive, so 5150, the EVH EBMM, and the Wolfgangs all have the more typical straight orientation.

As I understand it, Billy Joe is a bit of an EVH fan and can do a pretty mean Eruption, so maybe his angled pickup is a homage to one of his heroes (even if you can't hear it in Green Day's music)
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Yep, you are a bit crazy, but I think we all (as musicians) have to be a little crazy. That's called...CREATIVITY.
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

This could help:

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

I have been using the original P-rails since they first came out. I installed them in a 2001 Epi LP and thay have been excellent. I really like the series humbucker mode fro most of the music I play, but not so much for clean stuff. I also like the P90 and parallel sounds as well. But......

I just purchased a Epi LP Pro/fx with a Floyd Rose bridge. I am not a fan of the stock Epi pickups and have been considering my options including the JB/Jazz, JB/59, and Custom/59. I love Seymour duncan pickups. I have Alnico II's in a Gibson LP and the JB/Jazz in a Jackson. So I thought why not try the P-rails in this guitar?

The result was a dark series humbuckers in the bridge. It seemed that the rail became better and the P90 sounded about the same, maybe a little darker. The neck pickup was about the same. Ssearching I found this thread. So I decided to flip the bridge around so that the rail was closer to the Floyd. Definately decreased the darkness. It is the tyipical distortion sound I was looking for but still a little dark and the bass note aren't quite what I prefer, but some very usable tones. The P90 is about the same and the rail became even better.

I will probably put these back in the other guitar, but the results were good flipping the pickup. I have thought about replacing the .47 cap with a .22 or .20 but I just don't think this is the pickup I want for this guitar. Close, but not quite.

I think the problem with this guitar compared to my other fixed bridge is the distance from the bridge intonation point to the pole pieces. On the Floyd the pole pieces are a bit further away which tends to make it sound closer to the bridge pickup and darker. In fact, when playing with both prails active in series the sound is very close to of the neck position only. Overall in all modes, before turning the pu around there just wasn't enough distinction between the neck and bridge (I am not saying none, just not the usual). With I switched it is better, but still not quite what I want.

So, what do you think, JB or Custom? I want a fairly tight (not like the spongier alinico II) bridge pickup with increased output over say a 59 (not death metal output). I typically like lower output alnico II pickups like 57 classics. This guitar needs the qualities I like in the prails, higher output, great sustain, and excellent harmonics, but not dark. I kind of think this guitar is a little dark already.
 
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

Howdy GuitarDoc,

I wanted check in to see if you have any post-Final updates on your experiments with the P-Rails Hot?

Are the pickups still a favorite? Still using one polished A5 and on unoriented roughcast?
Any guesses where A4s might have taken this adventure?

Can one run two unoriented roughcast A5s or will they fight each other?:cool2:

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

Hi, new here. I'm trying break free of active pickups and the looking through the high output pickups the SHPR-2 seems worth a try but, my main guitar has a trem and I noticed that there is TBSH-1b but no TB version of the SHPR-2; Do I even need a TB version since the pickup is DC 23K Ohms, Rail side is 2.270'' and the P side is 1.925'', From FAQ's
(TB) Trembuckers string spacing of 2.070", (SH) Humbuckers spacing of 1.930".
Click to expand...
Am I going to run into problem with the SH version or should I contact the custom shop for a TB version?

Any one's response will be great.


Also this video is what brought my attention to the SHRP-2.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oDjOAU9YjHE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
My preview had a white box, here's the link if doesn't show http://youtu.be/oDjOAU9YjHE?hd=1&t=34s
 
Last edited:
Re: P-Rails...is it supposed to sound like this??

MetalMouth13 said:
Hi, new here. I'm trying break free of active pickups and the looking through the high output pickups the SHPR-2 seems worth a try but, my main guitar has a trem and I noticed that there is TBSH-1b but no TB version of the SHPR-2; Do I even need a TB version since the pickup is DC 23K Ohms, Rail side is 2.270'' and the P side is 1.925'', From FAQ's
Am I going to run into problem with the SH version or should I contact the custom shop for a TB version?

Any one's response will be great.


Also this video is what brought my attention to the SHRP-2.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oDjOAU9YjHE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
My preview had a white box, here's the link if doesn't show http://youtu.be/oDjOAU9YjHE?hd=1&t=34s
Click to expand...

I don't think you will have any problem with the spacing, especially if you mount the bridge P-Rails with the rail next to the bridge.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

D
Middle Humbucker for an HHH
2 3
Replies
43
Views
1K
Teleplayer
T
B
P-Rails and Tonewoods
Replies
12
Views
834
Mincer
Mincer
P
P-Rails Wiring Help
Replies
9
Views
544
Philtastic
P
alex1fly
P-Rails... diving in
2
Replies
24
Views
1K
Mincer
Mincer
P
I'd like to hear your opinion on the EMG81TW mounting orientation.
Replies
7
Views
450
freefrog
freefrog
Back
Top