Hmmmmm, What To Do - Updated

rparker,

I would have to go for the P90's. I recently got a chance to play with some for the first time. I really liked their sound. The ones I looked at had a very hot and dirty sound to them.

J

Morpheus, thanks for the reply. I've never played them myself. I always hear positive things about them, so "why not add a pair to the stable" has been one thought pestering me.

Affordable, too. I can get a tone POT and capacitor, and get a pair of humbucker-sized P-90s for about $80 plus shipping.

+1 on a P90. But install only one, because if you ever play in an electrically noisy environment, and/or with high gain, the P90's hum will be a problem, and you will want at least one humbucker. Plus you will have more tonal diversity with both types available. And you could save some $$. (If you install two P90s, you will get hum rejection in center position assuming a matched pair [one RWRM], but lose the tonal diversity.) I like my P90s best in the neck position. With the Squier '51s, I've found that even a cheapo humbucker does pretty well at the bridge.

Get a 500k audio taper pot for your tone. If the volume is not a 500k audio taper -- replace that too.

I like the P90 option, too. Change the neck pickup first as Greg said. You can change the bridge pickup later if you want to experiment.

I'm with everyone else, I like the idea of adding the P90's. If I had an extra guitar I'd consider putting those in myself.

I love P-90s! A pair of reverse ones that can be paired together works as well on the middle position as a humbucker for hum reduction, and sounds good that way to boot.

How bad is the hum? Is it like cheap Telecasters, or much worse?

Much, much worse. P-90s are the mothers of all hummers. Gotta love 'em, though!

OK then, so I need to either get a matched pair of reversed wound P90s, or put on a single P90 then? I think that will limit me to the one P90 by default as I don't see any reverse wound models on the Guitar Fetish site. (will look elsewhere before totally giving up on the idea of 2)

So, if I go with gnease's original set-up suggestion and do the P90 in the neck and leave a humbucker in the bridge, the hum will be reduced somehow? (I guess just because it's wired into the same tone and volume circuits?)

if you buy the a neck and bridge version of P90s from GF, one will be RWRM. but I still recommend only doing the neck first. I have one guitar with two P90s (properly canceling in center position), and two with one P90 and one, splittable 'bucker. the splittable 'bucker in single coil model also will cancel hum with the P90 in center position. I also have a Tele with a generic P90 in neck position, and a GF Fat Tele Bridge pup. Another great combo. Neck and bridge on that cancel hum in center position. Even though my Reverend Slingshot with two P90s is a great guitar (for many reasons), I much prefer having the second pup a non-P90.

So gnease, does that men nomatter which way I go on the cridge, If I play the neck pickup only, it will hum? Am I interpretting that right? Sounds like you leave things in the center position all the time to cancel the hum?

Hum of course depends on the electromagnetic environment in which you're playing. Play within 10 meters or so of a CRT in a computer monitor or TV, and you'll pick up hum from the deflection coils. Play in a room with fluorescent lighting, and you'll pick up hum from the ballasts. Get too close to the power transformer of your amp, and you'll get hum from it. Big power lines and transformers nearby? More hum. A good many places are fairly quiet, but some hum's the rule. You can cancel it with an EQUAL reverse wound/wired, reverse magnetic polarity pair of pickups (an unmatched pair will only partially cancel it), you can orient the guitar to the position of minimum hum and often make it go away completely as long as you stay in that position, and usually you can just ignore it while you're playing. Turn the guitar volume knob all the way off when you're not playing, and you won't hear it. Same as for any single coil pickups, P-90s are just a lot more efficient at picking up the hum (and musical signals from the guitar strings) than any other common single coil types. People who just couldn't adapt to the hum sensitivity of P-90s were the reason humbuckers were invented.

most of the time, I play on a single pup at a time on my guitars as a tonal pref. I will combine pups occasionally for 1} changing the tone -- scooping on a Strat, out-of-phase funkiness (no hum rejection then!) or changing the harmonic/fundamental balance. 2) killing hum in single coils. I do not often have to resort to killing the hum, but the capability is there if I need it. Even when hum pops up, I often choose to live with it unless the tune is very sparse with lots of quiet space or I'm recording. So I really don't have to do it often.

warning someone about P90 hum is akin to warning someone of a possible side effect of aspirin or an allergy medication. gotta tell you about it. can tell you how to mitigate it (in the P90 case), but you probably won't have too much trouble.

and consider that humbuckers serve to cancel magnetic interference, but do NOT eliminate all interference. electric field interference from plasma/spark discharge/electron beam sources (welders, motor brushes, flipping switches, AM radio stations (actually E&M), CRTs, florescent tubes) are mitigated by shielding, filtering, low impedance circuits and balanced signal wiring. don't forget to shield your guitar for these. even Les Paul couldn't convince Gibson and the industry to go to low impedance pups and balanced wiring (LP Recording model). however, most guitars with active pups use low impedance pups and outputs (metal guys win!)

FWIW, I keep on thinking about doing a hum-canceling dummy coil (no magnet, and not nec near strings) as a switchable option for my P90 guitars. that would suppress magnetic hum without adding the second pup sampling point on the guitar strings. it's been done on a number of guitars: a version of the Axis Sport (P90s), Gibby Blues Hawk (P90-like pups) and in some Alembic guitars and basses. but the problem has never been so bad that I've felt compelled to design one for my guitars. (for those interested, I would couple the dummy coil in via low pass -- probably active -- to reduce the high freq roll off effect, and include a switch to take it in/out of circuit)

OK, so I've given this some thought and tried to figure out what this all means. If I replace the neck PU with a P90 and leave the bottom humbucker alone, I will be able to reduce some of the hum. I''ve got the one volume POT and the one tone POT (which I will install) and the 3 way switch. The top position will be the neck P-90, middle will be voth and bottom will be the bridge humbucker.

If understand correctly, just being on the same circuit will help. So on ht e top position, I will get a little hum. Mid, less and the bottom, almost none at all.

If I do both the top and bottom in P-90s, I will have hum all over the place, but how much matters if I can get the matched. If I can get them matched, then there won't be so much.

Is this all correct?