P-90 Jazz tone

[JCat]

Hi, new member, first post.

I've been playing for many years, have lots of guitars and amps. I've mostly been playing Gibson guitars (335, LP / humbuckers, stop tailpiece, plain G) but I got a couple of Fenders with single coils too. String gauge 09-42, 10-46, 11-50 or 10-52 depending on guitar, plain G. My amps range from 15-50 w (tube amps) and a 100 w (solid state).

I'm a Jazz guy at heart but have played most things guitar related including classic nylon strings.
I've covered my Jazz repertoire with semis and solid bodies, but for a long time I've been lusting for a proper Jazz box with a floating bridge and Trapez TP, single neck pick up. I may go all in old school with a P-90...

There are many Jazz tones, and to me Jazz is what you play and how you play it, rather than tone itself. However there are pitfalls and mistakes (like a loud acoustic tone masking amp setting errors etc.) can be avoided by following best practices involving everything from guitar volume and tone controls to amp settings and miking etc.

The golden rule among you guys on this forum seems to be to boost amp mids and turn down amp treble, but keeping the guitar tone on full throttle. I can see some rationale, especially with a humbucker in the neck. -But how does this translate to a P-90, your best practice P-90 tone setting recipe?

Another thing with dog ear P-90s is that they can't be height adjusted. But I'm aware there are shims to get it closer to the strings for a fatter tone. -Your thoughts?

[blille]

On my 5e3 it’s hard to get a bad tone with P90s. With my Peerless Songbird with low output A2 Gibson P90s I generally have volume slightly before breakup (which is 4 on mine it will break up if I dig in) and tone between 5 and 7, depending on where I have my guitar tone pot.

On my Princeton I tried bass and treble at 1 and ended up with bass at 3 and treble 6 but rolling down the guitar tone a bit more.

My guess is that if the P90s had been A5, the treble would be lower.

I bought the shims from Lollar but never installed them.

P90s are very dynamic, a lot is where you pick, how you attack and the guitar controls imho.

[mad dog]

There really is no one way to dial in amps for P90s. It totally depends on the specific guitar, amp and pickup. On most amps, I never touch the mids or the bass. Doesn't matter what's plugged in. What can change is the treble knob setting (a little more), and the bright switch (on) for P90s. One amp that's a bit different is the Polytone MB II. With regular P90s, I turn add some mids (stacked on the treble), set bass flat or a little extra (bandaxall EQ, so noon = flat). Whereas for P13s (the precursor to P90s), I dial out some mids and bass.

Shims in my experience are the best way to ideally position dogear P90. Extending the poles does not have the same effect as getting the whole pickup and magnet closer to the strings. Neck P90s seem to sound best closer than you might think. So the neck P90, for example usually sounds best higher than I would adjust a neck HB, with the pole pieces nearly flat to the cover.

YMMV or course. Everyone has different tastes.
MD

[John A.]

Hi, new member, first post.

I've been playing for many years, have lots of guitars and amps. I've mostly been playing Gibson guitars (335, LP / humbuckers, stop tailpiece, plain G) but I got a couple of Fenders with single coils too. String gauge 09-42, 10-46, 11-50 or 10-52 depending on guitar, plain G. My amps range from 15-50 w (tube amps) and a 100 w (solid state).

I'm a Jazz guy at heart but have played most things guitar related including classic nylon strings.
I've covered my Jazz repertoire with semis and solid bodies, but for a long time I've been lusting for a proper Jazz box with a floating bridge and Trapez TP, single neck pick up. I may go all in old school with a P-90...

There are many Jazz tones, and to me Jazz is what you play and how you play it, rather than tone itself. However there are pitfalls and mistakes (like a loud acoustic tone masking amp setting errors etc.) can be avoided by following best practices involving everything from guitar volume and tone controls to amp settings and miking etc.

The golden rule among you guys on this forum seems to be to boost amp mids and turn down amp treble, but keeping the guitar tone on full throttle. I can see some rationale, especially with a humbucker in the neck. -But how does this translate to a P-90, your best practice P-90 tone setting recipe?

Another thing with dog ear P-90s is that they can't be height adjusted. But I'm aware there are shims to get it closer to the strings for a fatter tone. -Your thoughts?

I have a single P90-equipped archtop (Godin 5th Ave Kingpin). The pup is shimmed up pretty high, just about flush with the fingerboard). It came that way; this wasn't something I did to tweak its tone. Settings depend on the situation (room, number of pieces in the group, specific tune, phase of the moon ...), but I typically set the tone control somewhere around mid-way (wide open is too bright/thin for my tastes). I move the volume knob around a lot; for soloing between ~6 and 10; for comping between 0 and 6. My amps are a silverface Fender Princeton Reverb or the Deluxe Reverb model on a Fender Champion 20. I set both with both bass and treble set somewhere between 1 and 3 (i.e., to emphasize mids). If I'm using an amp other than my own, I fiddle around until I get something I like, but I generally go for mid-range-y settings when playing jazz (my blues/overdriven tones are brighter). I also have a semi-hollow with humbuckers, which has a more mid-range-y sound to begin with, so my settings tend to be a little brighter/closer to neutral.

John

[Boston Joe]

I've got a Tele with P-90s. For me, it doesn't seem to take much to get a good sound out of them. I usually take a good bit of the bass out to tame the boominess, then just use the mids and highs to tune the sound. Not rocket science.

[Jim Soloway]

I know my approach is often different than a lot of people here but I never have the tone control all the way up. My actual setting can vary a lot depending on the guitar and amp but at the very least I pretty much always have the top end of the control rolled back a bit.

[JCat]

On my 5e3 it’s hard to get a bad tone with P90s. With my Peerless Songbird with low output A2 Gibson P90s I generally have volume slightly before breakup (which is 4 on mine it will break up if I dig in) and tone between 5 and 7, depending on where I have my guitar tone pot.

On my Princeton I tried bass and treble at 1 and ended up with bass at 3 and treble 6 but rolling down the guitar tone a bit more.

My guess is that if the P90s had been A5, the treble would be lower.

I bought the shims from Lollar but never installed them.

P90s are very dynamic, a lot is where you pick, how you attack and the guitar controls imho.

Thanks, I adore the 5E3 myself. Lovely mid focused cleans. (I use the Instrument channel Input 2 most of the time). I tend to use the guitar controls more when using this amp with its single tone control. And your right, there will obviously be some variation depending on the P-90 build and the pots.

Also I'm with you on Pick attack. I play finger style (no nails), use a pick or use hybrid technique. When I switch from pick to fingers it's good to have some guitar treble on tap. The choice of pick, material and shape is important.

In general I like the tone and feel when picking at the end of the neck, somewhere between the last fret and the pole pieces (something to consider when addressing pickup location and height), but I also like to shape the tone by playing closer to the bridge for tonal variation.

[JCat]

There really is no one way to dial in amps for P90s. It totally depends on the specific guitar, amp and pickup. On most amps, I never touch the mids or the bass. Doesn't matter what's plugged in. What can change is the treble knob setting (a little more), and the bright switch (on) for P90s. One amp that's a bit different is the Polytone MB II. With regular P90s, I turn add some mids (stacked on the treble), set bass flat or a little extra (bandaxall EQ, so noon = flat). Whereas for P13s (the precursor to P90s), I dial out some mids and bass.

Shims in my experience are the best way to ideally position dogear P90. Extending the poles does not have the same effect as getting the whole pickup and magnet closer to the strings. Neck P90s seem to sound best closer than you might think. So the neck P90, for example usually sounds best higher than I would adjust a neck HB, with the pole pieces nearly flat to the cover.

YMMV or course. Everyone has different tastes.
MD

Thanks, yeah, so they say; "Get the P-90 closer to strings. For full tone, half the distance Gibson recommends"....-What about distortion? Also turning guitar tone control up will typically make the amp break up earlier...

[JCat]

I have a single P90-equipped archtop (Godin 5th Ave Kingpin). The pup is shimmed up pretty high, just about flush with the fingerboard). It came that way; this wasn't something I did to tweak its tone. Settings depend on the situation (room, number of pieces in the group, specific tune, phase of the moon ...), but I typically set the tone control somewhere around mid-way (wide open is too bright/thin for my tastes). I move the volume knob around a lot; for soloing between ~6 and 10; for comping between 0 and 6. My amps are a silverface Fender Princeton Reverb or the Deluxe Reverb model on a Fender Champion 20. I set both with both bass and treble set somewhere between 1 and 3 (i.e., to emphasize mids). If I'm using an amp other than my own, I fiddle around until I get something I like, but I generally go for mid-range-y settings when playing jazz (my blues/overdriven tones are brighter). I also have a semi-hollow with humbuckers, which has a more mid-range-y sound to begin with, so my settings tend to be a little brighter/closer to neutral.

John

Thanks! The Godin has no space between the pickup and the fingerboard, right? Do you pick near the neck pickup, is the pickup out of the way?

[JCat]

yes, for me that is true. my starting point to build a sound in any enviroment is: bass and treble 0, mid 10 (for fender circuits and similar). putting mids on 10 is actually not boosting, but the neutral setting. i then adjust for the room. the clips on my site are all recorded with an es-125 with P90s.

Thanks, I've listened to your clips. Good classy tone!

[rpjazzguitar]

I'm constantly trying to get a thick sounding high end without the low end being muddy or overly bassy.

So, I rarely have the tone control all the way up-- if I did, the high E string would have a sizzling sound I don't like -- on different guitars. Then, to avoid being too bassy, I roll lows down at the amp or use the coil splitter.

I do have the volume control all the way up, all the time. I always have my foot on a volume pedal.

[vinlander]

I usually keep the tone blanket knob fully opened on my humbucker equipped instruments, but I am slightly rolling off on my P90 equipped 125.
I have no spacer or played with the adjustment screws and can get quite a fat tone with JS112 flats.
I play close to the fretboard which might help keeping it fat.
One of the guys who sold me on the virtue of P90 jazz tone is Martijn Van Iterson and he is using 11-49 flats and even pick farther from the fretboard than I do; his tone is gorgeous and plenty fat.
I can't see no spacer or much screws adjustment neither on his instrument, just that he tend to dig in when soloing.

[mad dog]

Forgot to mention the guitar tone knob. Which gets set in different ways for different guitars, even different P90s.

As in: no tone knob role off ever for the P13s in my Silvertone archtop. The sound is already murky enough at lower volumes, due in part I think to the stock cap value (or so I've been told). For the P90s in my tele, tone knob is never full up, usually more at halfway even for the neck only spot. On the old Guild X-50, with the "Franz" pickup that looks like, but isn't exactly the same as, a regular P90, the tone knob sweet spot is almost fully rolled off. Not quite.

MD

[John A.]

Thanks! The Godin has no space between the pickup and the fingerboard, right? Do you pick near the neck pickup, is the pickup out of the way?

Some of the time I pick close to the neck. Sometimes the pick touches the pup. The clicks are not audible through the amp because the pup is not at all microphonic. I play unplugged a lot, and if I notice the click (which I mostly don't), I shift back toward the bridge. Same as my semi, and another archtop I had that had the neck flush with the top. I'm not particularly conscious of any of this, though.

John

[rabbit]

I know my approach is often different than a lot of people here but I never have the tone control all the way up. My actual setting can vary a lot depending on the guitar and amp but at the very least I pretty much always have the top end of the control rolled back a bit.

Single-coils are my favorite.

I judge amps & fiddles very much by the beauty of their trebles.

Perhaps I am deaf.

Never lacking for treble beauty, I often roll back a bit. Am not a pro.

Good luck, nice to meet you!

[JCat]

I usually keep the tone blanket knob fully opened on my humbucker equipped instruments, but I am slightly rolling off on my P90 equipped 125.
I have no spacer or played with the adjustment screws and can get quite a fat tone with JS112 flats.
I play close to the fretboard which might help keeping it fat.
One of the guys who sold me on the virtue of P90 jazz tone is Martijn Van Iterson and he is using 11-49 flats and even pick farther from the fretboard than I do; his tone is gorgeous and plenty fat.
I can't see no spacer or much screws adjustment neither on his instrument, just that he tend to dig in when soloing.

Good input and thanks for posting the MVI vids! Great playing, solos are focused and electric. I've never had flats, not even a wound G...that would cure my string bending habits..

[maggles55]

I judge amps & fiddles very much by the beauty of their trebles.

Perhaps I am deaf.

Never lacking for treble beauty, I often roll back a bit.

Nice Haiku!!!

[rabbit]

maggles55,

Thanks for the compliment.

Also for pointing it out, entirely unconscious on my part!

Yeah, all of those jokes apply.

[Boston Joe]

Roll back the treble
Boost the midrange on the amp
Use the neck pickup

[Greentone]

+1 Blille...hard to get a bad sound with a P90-equipped guitar and a 5e3 Fender Deluxe. Great combination. I played this for a long time.

+1 Vinlander. Your trio sounds great, and your tone on the ES-125 is just super. Really makes me miss mine.

[vinlander]

+1 Vinlander. Your trio sounds great, and your tone on the ES-125 is just super. Really makes me miss mine.

While I also get a pretty great tone out of my '59, I wish I was playing at that level...
Unfortunately, the only thing I share with MVI beside playing a 125 is the haircut

[whiskey02]

I've wondered about a custom designed guitar with a P90 right up against the neck and a Seth Lover humbucker right next to that. Am I crazy?

[JCat]

The ES-125 is a nice guitar. I've played a thin line with regular nickel wounds. There was a bluesy touch to it. Maybe the strings or just the way it spoke to me...

Comparing an ES-125T thin line to a full depth body with a P-90; -Do you think there's a difference in the amplified tone?

[rabbit]

I've got both a full body ES-125 and an ES-125T but the "T" was robbed of it's original P90
before I got her and has an unidentified 'bucker so I can't honestly offer a direct comparison.

Yeah, it will sound different with the thin body, but will it matter?
Something about the age or design of these old guitars makes them all swell.

I had an ES-120T and handed it to a famous, world-class finger stylist (who shall go un-named.)
He played an acoustic blues on it and ruled. Later, at home, I cried quietly into my pillow.

Here's one you should look at:

1954 Gibson ES 125 - Great Condition. Refret. $1500 + Shipping & Processing

Our for sale section has some juicy morsels available right now.

[JCat]

I've got both a full body ES-125 and an ES-125T but the "T" was robbed of it's original P90
before I got her and has an unidentified 'bucker so I can't honestly offer a direct comparison.

Yeah, it will sound different with the thin body, but will it matter?
Something about the age or design of these old guitars makes them all swell.

I had an ES-120T and handed it to a famous, world-class finger stylist (who shall go un-named.)
He played an acoustic blues on it and ruled. Later, at home, I cried quietly into my pillow.

Here's one you should look at:

1954 Gibson ES 125 - Great Condition. Refret. $1500 + Shipping & Processing

Our for sale section has some juicy morsels available right now.

Lovely

-Will it matter? Maybe, maybe not. "Tone is in the fingers", "They are all different" etc. are somewhat valid points. I never know what inspiration may come from a guitar new to me, (or set up endeavors for that matter).

-Do you use flats? Maybe a full depth body is required to drive the bass, or maybe the pickup doesn't care?