Are P90 Pickups REALLY like a Tele on Steroids? 🤔 (Gibson P90 vs Telecaster)

this is my gibson les paul special in tv yellow it's loaded with two p90 pickups and this guitar totally rocks the reason i purchased this was this bridge pickup absolutely sings now a lot of people say p90s are kind of like a telecaster on steroids so we're going to make that test today and see if they do compare favorably and which one is best suited for that rock style electric guitar this is my fender american original telecaster this is all stock and as i mentioned last time minus the hole i put in it over here so this instrument is a total rock and roll machine and i'm really keen to see whether or not the telecaster can keep up in some rock and roll style tunes as well as the p90 so we're going to try that out today and see how they compare welcome back folks this is shane so today we're comparing two different electric guitars to see which one sounds best for a little bit of rock and roll which even though the channel is called in the blues i'm going to attempt my hand at some rock and roll today so in this hand i have my gibson les paul special loaded with two gibson p90 pickups this is all stock this is all stock as well being the fender american original 50s telecaster now if you want to find out about these i purchased both of these links will be in the description below you can check them out in your part of the world one of the things i always see come up in comments is that people say that the p90s are a little bit like a telecaster on steroids so that's what we're going to test today and see whether or not that's actually accurate i'm pretty interested to see just if the telecaster can hold its own for a little bit of higher gain rock tone first up on this test we're doing a backing track test with real drums real bass that i recorded myself here and we're going to see just how well this does in the context of a mix with some high gain tones here we go all right i hope you like that backing track if you did please give the video a thumbs up i always appreciate your support thank you so much up next we're going to get into the telecaster same exact tones nothing else has been changed i haven't dialed in anything differently the way that i did this was to simply use both of the guitars to get a tone that i liked between them both you're gonna hear some differences but let me know what you think here we go all right let's kick it off so i'm plugged into my marshall on the crunch channel and i have the amplifier mic'd up with a short sm57 and also a sennheiser e906 so no irs or anything we're just going to go bridge pickup with a bit of drive so here we go this is the volume all the way up whoo so it was going to take off the sustain on both of these is insane still on bridge pickup let's try it now with more gain and also more volume so i'm gonna get more sustain doing this this is neck pickup now here we go and now over to the telecaster let's try it now on the insane cha i mean the ultra gain channel of this amplifier it just has so much gain it's got a lot of white noise i'm speaking kind of loudly over it because it's quite loud behind me so single coil pickups we're gonna get a bit more buzz but i'll tell you what have a listen to this see what you think bridge and now back to the telecaster or i should probably say the squealing telly here we go ah yeah now let's talk a little bit about what i was hearing in the room and which one i preferred so just in regards to this last test plugging into the marshall and cranking it up both of these guitars sounded great for a few different reasons now bridge pickup it could go either way depending on my mood i think the p90 sound great i think the telecaster pickup sounded great the telecaster sounded like it had a little bit more clarity on the top end but it still had that big round sound but this just had it a little bit fatter with the compromise maybe a little bit less top end but overall man the bridge pickups on both of these are great what sold me on this was the bridge pickup and not the neck pickup which we're going to talk about now now in terms of the lower gain settings i actually preferred the telecaster even though it wasn't as audibly as loud as the p90s it just seemed to have a niceness about it but it kind of fell apart a little bit when i started cranking on the gain i really felt like the neck pickup on this started to shine even though this neck pickup has a little bit of a darker vibe to it in terms of its tonality it definitely works well with those higher gain or the ultra gain settings so let me know what you think of both of these i guess the overall question is does the les paul special with the p90 sound like a telecaster on steroids kind of yes i would go pretty close to saying that that is the case but it doesn't necessarily sound better it's just a different alternative got a darker thicker sound to it so if that's what you're looking for this would definitely be the choice if you're looking for classic telecaster tones these things can totally rock even with high gain but you got to watch it in close proximity to the amp you're going to get squealed through the pickups a lot sooner on a tally neck pickup than you will on either pickup combination on this guitar the bridge pickup did extremely well i was really loving the tones i was getting out of it so yeah look at them they're almost like twins from another mother or whatever they say so yeah it's uh that's kind of the other reason i wanted this is i'm a big fan of the butterscotch telecasters this just looks so cool i was like hey it's like my telly's only it's a les paul so uh yeah let me know what you think i hope this test has been useful and helpful if you want to hear these both clean i've done full reviews on both of these guitars in depth so you can hear those videos and go check them out i'll link them in the cards or you can watch those videos i should say or i'll link them in the description below so yeah if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up put a lot of work into this thank you catch you soon see ya

Channel: intheblues

Views: 259,393

Keywords: Tele vs P90 Gibson les Paul, gibson p90 vs telecaster, P90 pickups vs Tele Pickups, P90 pickups, intheblues, Gibson Les Paul vs Fender Telecaster, Gibson vs Fender, What are the best pickups for Rock?, What are the best single coil pickups?, gibson les paul special, fender Telecaster vs Gibson

Id: 2qSZ_Zr0l5k

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020