Stephens Design Vintage Lab P90 pickups

My Vintage Lab P90 set is based on the science and lab analysis I did with PAFs (see my Vintage Lab PAF set videos). Vintage P90's are bright, clear, chirpy, and not wound very hot, in general. I used a set from 1952 as a model. These use the short covers and nickel silver base plates, my own machined correct alloy spacer, correct alloy pole screws, and vintage correct bobbins. These sound great in my gold top copy, and would be a beautiful addition to any ES5 or ES295 type guitar, for that real rootsy, blues and rockabilily type tones, jazz too. These are available now, see my website for pricing, send me a message or email. Thanks and enjoy.....Dave Stephens

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Junior
• Watson
• p90
• p-90
• blues
• swing
• PAF
• rockabilly
• pickups
• humbucker
• strat
• tele
• jazzblues
• jazz
• scotty moore
• Led Zeppelin
• Jimmy Page
• Throbak

[geordie54]

Very good sound !!.. do you sell pickups like this ?

[SDPickups]

@geordie54 The website is listed at the end of the video, go there ;-) and check the price list....

[SDPickups]

Noiseless pickups never sound as good as the clunky old designs. As soon as you cancel 60 cycle hum, many other frequencies are notched out of the frequency response and you get a rather lifeless sounding tone, sad but true. I never found any noiseless single coil type pickups to really have that luscious kick real single coils have, or I'd be making and using them....

[SDPickups]

Unfortunately no, you can't nail perfectly a vintage set of pickups of any kind. 2 reasons being, vintage magnet wire is very different now than what was made back in those days, and magnets aren't quite the same either. One can get pretty darn close, especially if you have the pickups to compare side by side with while trying to duplicate them, but if you like yours, KEEP 'em ;-)

[llamawizard]

amazing tone

[CDNBOBify]

amazing playing and tone but unfortunately-60 cycle hum.

[KnuckleWhisperer]

Sounds great. Can you really reproduce the sound of a specific set of old pickups? I have a set of 65 Strat P/Us that I would love to sell if they could ever be accurately copied. The repros done by a well known winder sound very, very nice but also sound completely different from the '65's . I wonder if the effect of the passing of time on the components is the most important factor no matter how closely the materials and construction techniques match up....

[SDPickups]

@vibroluxor Thanks for the comment. I also will accept partial trades if musicians have gear I'm interested in. If the pickups don't nail it for you, you also get a free one time adjustment or exchange, you only pay for postage. So, you don't get stuck if its not working for you.

[vibroluxor]

@SDPickups For the followers of this thread - I have decided to take Dave up on his offer to "layway", I'll use gig money to pay for 'em as it comes in. I do feel that from the various sound demos out there, and my experience with Gibson and Fralin P-90s, SDs have more "Vibe". I'll always have a problem with spending this much money on something so seemly simple, but I find tone to be hugely inspirational, and these pups have tone.

[SDPickups]

@vibroluxor There really isn't anyone I know who has ACCURATELY reproduced these pickups, this is my passion and specialty. The pickups were simple but no one gets the details right, nor has done a TRUE reverse engineering effort to the extremes that I have full time. If I could sell cheaper I would, but to recreate every detail and material correctly takes tremendous time. I empathize with gigging musicians, and I will do layaway for them. But yes, TALENT is more important than gear.