P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

S

socalscott

New member
For those Jazz/JB users finding themselves leaning towards SC tones. I suggest a split HB mod. You can still have the shredding leads, but in the P90 zone.

I took a HB git and a set of Jazz/JB pups to the P90 zone. There's jangle and howl in spades. I have 2 P90 gits to compare to. I use an low-watt Gilmore Jr. that I swear is made for testing pups.
All I did was remove 3 screws/slugs from each coil in a staggered format. Think Fender Tele Custom pups or Fralin P92.
I always grab this git over the 90's. The tones available are glorious. I use a treble bleeder cap on the vol pot. Really allows low gain setting(3) for spankin' SC tones and prolly counters the hum canceling tone suck.

Looks like this:

000XXX
XXX000

X=removed poles.

True they aren't as honky as 90's, but the 16k wind of the JB will push so hard that you can cover HB shred, yet roll off for bright, clear twang. The bass range and clarity is improved on both pups.
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

i just use coil swap and a tone knob to get 90-ish tones... it's a good idea though, it just limits what else you can do with your pickups imo.
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

yeah, I'm a switching option tinkering fool. I have been curious to add n pup plain string coil to b pup in series and each pup with series/parallel options.

I'm using a MegaSwitch for n, b, n+b series, n+b parallel(Donahue) and n+b parallel(Donahue). Donahue re: res and caps per Strat pos. 2 & 4 tones. I'm pretty much getting all the variety I like.

I see you changed mags in these pups. I was planning to do the same to get less output for the JB and to have a better balanced set per 1 vol. pot.. Looks like you wanted the same result.
Tell me, were A5's in both?
What changes occured in output and character?
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

yea i had a5 in both as i bought them new like that, the a3 sounds fuller with more mids and a bit of chime and more low end in the jazz, and in the jb the a2 got rid of that nasty high mid "honk" that they can sometimes have while lowering the output and smoothing it out overall. now the jb is a very fat and full sounding pickup overall. i like this setup better than the stock a5/a5 magnets, it's more versatile like this imo. btw i've also got coil swap, series, and oop wired to this in my epi sg special, which is my cheapest guitar but sounds better than my other two guitars!
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

Hmm, maybe the A5 works for the P90 target EQ. Both are much fuller per the wound strings and the plains are good to.

Still gonna have to experiment though. It's out of my hands. lol
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

I am still trying to wrap my head around the original idea. So you unscrew 3 screws and pop out 3 slugs? Is that easy to do? You described it as staggered but I am seeing the diagram as half on one side and half on the other. THis is in each pickup, correct?

I think the idea sounds cool. I wish you'd post a pic.
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

The Usual said:
I am still trying to wrap my head around the original idea. So you unscrew 3 screws and pop out 3 slugs? Is that easy to do? You described it as staggered but I am seeing the diagram as half on one side and half on the other. THis is in each pickup, correct?

I think the idea sounds cool. I wish you'd post a pic.
Click to expand...

Think of a Domino. So yeah, it's on one pickup. 1 coil only has for wounds and the other coil only for the plains.
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

socalscott said:
Think of a Domino. So yeah, it's on one pickup. 1 coil only has for wounds and the other coil only for the plains.
Click to expand...

Wha???

First sentence made sense. Second one lost me completely.

What I really want to know is how you get slugs out of a pickup, and can you get them back in? Have you tried this pattern

X0X0X0
0X0X0X
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

actually, i see alot of potential in this type of experimenting, in both bridge and neck pickups. say you have a c5/59 hybrid in the bridge with the slug coil as the '59 coil, you could do it like this for equal output along all 6 strings and tune each string to either be a coil or slug. you could do any combination of slug or coil removed with equal drops in output since you have the stronger coil bridge-ward. imagine the possibilities!!
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

How do you get the slugs out? Please. Just push? I thought if you did that you could mess up the winds. Or is that just a single coil thing?
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

The Usual said:
How do you get the slugs out? Please. Just push? I thought if you did that you could mess up the winds. Or is that just a single coil thing?
Click to expand...

Been out of town.

Push them out. I set the coil on top of spare coil that has larger post holes and start pushing out with one of those small screw drivers with the magnet sticking out of the handle.
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

I ended up playing around with this a little. I started by just taking out all of the screws to get the overall feel. You're right, it really does have a p-90 type voice. I went back to the original way, but way to go on the creative idea. I'm sure that you could really dial in some interesting sounds with this type of thing.
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

Removing the screw polepieces; we used to do this in the studio with HB's to get a faux single coil sound...it works pretty well.
 
Re: P90 tones from your Jazz/JB HB's!

Not that this is on the same line, but last night I was messing around with magnets, and among other things. I removed the bar that holds the screws under the coils, so I could jam 2 full sized magnets in my bridge 498T. Not side by side, but one on top of the other. It was a weird kind of sound. Full and out of phase almost. I was wondering what it would sound like if someone made a really big magnet. Could you use say a fat A2 to get the same output, and keep the voice.

I love hacking away at these things.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top