P90 bridge pickup too harsh Help Needed

funkilius · Jun 19, 2014

I have a Tokai Lss90 (les paul special) equipped with 2 LP Old P90's......Its a fantastic guitar ,however i find the bridge pickup a little too harsh.
The pots are rated 500k.........will switching out the volume and tone pots on the bridge side to 250k help to tame the harshness or should i purchase a different pickup? By the way....I have tried all sorts of settings using my amp and pedals but still not to my liking..........
any help appreciated.....................

Paladin2019 · Jun 20, 2014

I've never had a p90 guitar - can the height be adjusted? If so I'd say the first thing to do is lower it a little.

marcusnieman · Jun 20, 2014

Paladin2019 said:
I've never had a p90 guitar - can the height be adjusted? If so I'd say the first thing to do is lower it a little.

Not really.... there is usually a little foam spacer piece between the pickup and the body cavity - might be able to remove it. You can also adjust the pole pieces up and down.

funkilius · Jun 20, 2014

I've done all those adjustments....up,down,in,out, to the moon and back!!!!

It seems I will have to order and install 250k pots and see what the outcome is.
:wink: :wink: :wink: :wink:

marcusnieman · Jun 20, 2014

Now that I think about it, I wasn't happy with the stock P90's in my Tokai USGP90 (SG Special) and swapped them out for a set of Fralin P90's with the neck underwound by 10% (it was real boomy)

funkilius · Jun 21, 2014

ok...thanks for input......i also found neck pickup a little boomy....but once it was sufficiently lowered it now sounds very good......

Paladin2019 · Jun 21, 2014

marcusnieman said:
Not really.... there is usually a little foam spacer piece between the pickup and the body cavity - might be able to remove it.j

I had the same setup on the neck pickup of my fender tele. It was fine for a good 10 years but I needed to adjust the balance after a recent bridge pickup swap and after so much time the foam had no give or lift left in it at all. I ended up peeling it off and mounting on springs instead - much more adjustment range and should last much longer.

gordon · Jun 23, 2014

The Seymour Duncan SD-1 sound pretty good, but are quite tall, so they might not fit.
I also played the Bare Knuckle Blue Notes as a set in one P-90 guitar. Very smooth and transparent, very vintage sounding.

funkilius · Jun 23, 2014

thanks gordon.....will check out specs. on those in the near future......

P90 bridge pickup too harsh Help Needed

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