The GREATEST Pickup Ever Made? | Friday Fretworks

hey guys i'm chris buck and a very warm welcome to friday frat works and this week we're taking a look at the humble p90 and asking the question is it the greatest pickup ever made [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] now for someone who is primarily known as a stratocaster player with a signature set of strap pickups it's worth mentioning you may be surprised to hear me making a case for the p90 maybe being the best pickup ever made but if you've seen either my custom shop yamaha revstar or a video i posted very recently taking a look at a 1955 all gold les paul you'll know that i'm a very big fan of the p90 as well in fact it was the pickups in that les paul which were a very large part in me proclaiming that it may just be the best guitar that i've ever played now before we delve too deeply into why i love p90s so with a quick recap on their history what p90 actually is and how i came to love them so much gibson introduced the p90 in 1946 it was designed by an employee of those by the name of walter fuller and for nearly 10 years or so it was gibson's pickup of choice until roughly 1955 when seth lover first prototyped the paf humbucker now you can see various prototypes what was to become the p90 including the fabled p13 on various gibson guitars throughout the early 1940s however america's involvement in world war ii saw guitar manufacture and development pretty much cease grind to a halt between 1943 and 1945 which meant that it wasn't until 1946 that the p90 was officially introduced on both the es150 and es 300 arch top models near enough with the concept of a humbucking guitar pickup being a decade or so away at this point a p90 is indeed a single coil pickup and it consists of six adjustable screw pieces ten thousand turns of 42 gauge copper wire around a plastic bobbin two alnico bar magnets at the very bottom a metal base plate now due to their appearance and size they are often mistaken for humbuckers but as i said being a single coil they do have a lot more in common with your archetypal strap pickup but due to the increased output they are often characterized as being a bit of a halfway house between a humbucker and a single coil they've got that raspy kind of bitey top end clarity that you expect from maybe a strap pickup but with the increased low end kind of girth and grunt of a humbucker you know i'm a fan of p90s i really like p90s even though i use mostly humbuckers live but every time i plug into a p90 i just go why aren't these worth more than the pas needless to say even after they were effectively superseded by the paf hambucket in 1957 p90s remained incredibly popular it's interesting to see that when gibson brought back or revived the les paul in 1968 it was the p90 that they used as the pickup of choice funnily enough given my love of the p90 my first experience with them wasn't exactly what you could call a positive one and for anyone who's ever used an entirely hollow body guitar live this experience would probably resonate with you 15 16 year old me really couldn't figure out where i was going wrong with an epiphone casino stood about a foot away from a blaring martial half stack in a local pub it's about 90 percent ham and feedback to about 10 guitar however it was this guitar behind me which is a yamaha 502t revstar that really ignited my love for the p90s got it in october 2016. i was on a photo shoot with yamaha at the time in london with my 720 revstar i was using at the time someone with the bixby and this guitar was lurking around in the background obviously the tailpiece is a fairly prominent part of the guitar it's obviously a throwback to yamaha's calf racer history immediately was intrigued by it convinced the yamaha to let me take it home and overnight pretty much fell head over heels in love with it and gigged it to death now you can see it on this next clip take it from us kale rocks festival in spain in 2017 used to use this guitar at parts in the set where typically used a little bit more gain but didn't want the kind of mush i guess that you associate with more modern humbuckers still wanted that bite and clarity and top end that you associate with a great set of p90s as are in this guitar [Music] [Music] [Applause] now that guitar started a bit of a love affair to be honest with the rev star and the 502 model in particular and in 2018 i got this model in shop black obviously the principal difference being the wrap over tailpiece which again if you're familiar with my custom shop model you'll see the nucleus or the kind of genesis of the idea in this guitar used it incredibly extensively you might recognize it from my cover of red bone by childish gambino which i'll link above but it was used incredibly extensively on the buck and evans record in particular on the rhythm tracks now don't get me wrong i love p90s for lead work as you'll see in this next clip but there really is something about these pickups which work incredibly well within the context of a mix if you're looking for a part which plays nicely with the other parts and doesn't really kind of leap out too much but still has its own definable character and sound p90 really are a great candidate [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so all of that said what was it about that 55 les paul gold top i played recently which made me call it the best guitar i've ever played regards the guitar itself it was very playable played beautifully and was incredibly resonant but to be honest those are characteristics i can pinpoint in near enough all of my favorite guitars that i own none more so than my goal top yamaha revstar however it was the pickups in that les paul which really blew my mind flat out they were ragged and raunchy dial them back very slightly and you get almost a kind of faux acoustic guitar tone don't get me wrong i love strap pickups and i love pafs in particular but every time i play a great set of p90s they do leave me with the impression that they are the truest most uncolored direct conduit between the guitar's natural resonance and character and its electric sound [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now i'm going to follow this video up hopefully pretty soon actually with a bit of a p90 shootout now more recently i've been using my goal top rev star as a bit of a testing ground switching and out pickups trying to get closest to that sound of those 50s p90s as i said every set of 1950s p90s i've played have been absolutely magical so i'm trying to switch in and out sets to get closest to that sound now the pickups you heard at the start of this video me jamming out at norm's rear guitars in los angeles uh a set of lolla soap bar p90s since switched those out for a set of tyson tone low 50s ymp90s that the good friend was kind enough to loan me and to my year at least i'm getting closer to the characteristics that i was hearing in those 50s p90s um [Music] hey [Music] now don't get me wrong as much as i love p90s they aren't without their flaws on certain live stages they can be hellishly noisy if you've ever been in such a situation you can probably appreciate why there was such a race and a determination to develop a humbucking guitar picker however it is interesting to me at least that for every set of 50s p90s i've played and every set of 50s pafs i've played there are a lot more commonalities and similarities in sound between both of those sets of pickups then there are differences it does make you wonder whether gibson's objective with the paf was essentially to design a p90 or the tonal characteristics of a p90 without the extraneous noise now this can make quite honestly for quite a frustrating experience if you're not bringing your a-game but honestly i've never had such a rewarding experience as when i get it right on a great guitar fitted with a great set of p90s as i said i do feel that they're the most true kind of direct conduit between every little subtle natural resonance and character in the guitar they're in and what you're hearing coming out of your amp it's amazing to think that this is near enough 75 year old technology at this point and they're arguably more prevalent or more popular today than they were when they were first introduced honestly quite incredible as ever i'm chris buck you're watching friday frat works thank you very much for watching i hope you enjoyed this please subscribe hit the bell icon if you haven't already and i shall see you next week for another episode cheers guys take care i'll see you soon [Music] you

Channel: Chris Buck

Views: 212,583

Keywords: P90, P90s, P90 Pickups, Les Paul, Guitar Tone, Best Pickups, LOllar P90s, Lollar Pickups, Tyson Tone P90s, Greatest Pickups, That Pedal Show, Andertons, Rhett Shull, Mary Spender, Rabea Afro, Pete Thorn, Paul Davids, Underrated Pickups, 50s Les Paul, Les Paul P90s, Yamaha Revstar, Chris Buck

Id: EaCWDsTlXcQ

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020