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Home : Electronics, pickups : Pickups: Kits : P-90 Pickup Kits

Build your own pickups!

P-90 Pickup Kits


Read 16 Reviews   |   Write a Review

Build faithful reproductions of the classic Gibson® single-coil pickups: go for the vintage sound, or wind them your own way for custom tone. Our kits take the guesswork out of pickup-making, with authentic-specification parts and assembly instructions to make the job easy and fun.

Your choice of a 1950s-style plastic bobbin or a modern 3-piece black fiber bobbin with brass eyelets.

Choose Alnico 5 or Alnico 2 magnets:
Alnico 2 magnets give a warmer tone and low end response with smooth, singing highs. Many builders use them in the bridge pickups of solidbodies.
Alnico 5 produces a brighter tone with a tighter low end and stinging highs. They're great for neck position pickups, to help keep the tone clear without getting muddy.

See details below

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P-90 Pickup Kits
 
Item# Description In stock Price Quantity
5980 With plastic bobbin and Alnico 5 magnets 2-3 weeks
$23.19
6 or more $18.55  

5981 With fiber bobbin and Alnico 5 magnets Yes
$27.98
6 or more $22.38  

2980 With plastic bobbin and Alnico 2 magnets Yes
$23.19
6 or more $18.55  

2981 With fiber bobbin and Alnico 2 magnets Yes
$27.98
6 or more $22.38  


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Details
 Pictures
Articles
Instructions
Two P-90 kits give you a choice of '50s-style black plastic bobbin or a modern black fiber/maple/fiber bobbin with brass solder-point eyelets. 1.97" (50mm) polepiece spacing.

Each kit contains:
  • Nickel-silver baseplate
  • Nickel-plated polepiece screws
  • Magnets with threaded steel spacer
  • Mounting screws and springs
  • Coil lead wires
  • Single-conductor braided-shield hookup wire

Matching P-90 Soap-bar Cover is available in cream or black.

About P-90 pickups: The Gibson® team designed the P-90 in 1946. It was their most commonly used pickup until the appearance of the PAF humbucker in the late 1950s. The P-90 is a punchy single-coil with a fat, warm sound and a raw high end response. It's still used by Gibson® on several models. Recently, "boutique" pickup builders have begun making custom versions of the P-90 using black fiber flatwork similar to Fender pickups. This gives a unique but traditional look when the pickups are installed without covers.

We have lots of pickup winding supplies like wire, tape, and tools for winding pickups.

See even more pickup kits and pickup parts.

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 Ratings and reviews
P-90 Pickup Kits
P-90 Pickup Kits
 
4.5 out of 5 stars
Based on 16 ratings Write a Review
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Displaying 1 – 10 1  2 >
4 5-13-2013
P-90 Pickup Kits

great sounding, easy to work with kit. Loved the result but i think it could be cheaper considering that the cover it's not included

Martín  Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina Read my reviews (44)
Customer supplied image for review
5 4-18-2013
Plastic bobbin and Alnico 5 magnets

Great kit, easy to follow instructions. Made my $300 Japanese hollow body sound like a ES-125. The one improvement that can be made is an option for the base plate. the plate can't mount to the dogear covers. depending on your build/repair, you may need to get another plate with the mounting tabs

D. Harvey  Georgia
5 10-05-2012
Excellent product!

I am very pleased with the kit I bought, really fantastic!

Herberth  Bahia, Brazil Read my reviews (3)
5 7-11-2012
Fiber bobbin P90

This Kit is great! Every thing fits..You can pot the bobbin without warping like the plastic...Also the magnets are magnetized...I tap the pole piece holes with a 5/40 tap...

amour guitars  mt. shasta
5 6-12-2012
Alnico 5 P90 Pickups

A friend bought me one of these kits for a present after I helped him with a guitar build. It was easy and straight forward to put together and I wound it with about a 10k coil. I would always now go for the Alnico 5 magnets rather than the Alnico 2 magnets ....... those three extra Alnico's REALLY make a difference!

Mal MacRae  Sydney - Australia Read my reviews (4)
4 5-12-2012
P90 with alnico 2 mags and plastic bobbin

First time buying from stewmac AND first time building a pickup. At my first go, my (40 gauge, instead of traditional 42) copper wire broke at 5500 rotations with 2.8 ohm resistance. Decided to try it out and the sound was very brittle. Wasnt happy with it so i took it off and added another 3000 rotations totalling 8500. Ive played alot of p90s and i can say this is now one of my favorites. Sounds in between a humbucker and a hot single coil. I just wish the copper wire came with the kit. Oh yea and did i mention that shipping was very fast? Thanks stewmac!

NasD  Alberta
5 3-05-2012
P90 pickup kits

these kits are great, but i wish they came with wire to wind them with, great for a first timer though!

Thomas Dembinski  New york, New york
5 2-23-2012
A very complete kit

I have purchased several of these kits and find them to be an economical and faster way to gather all the parts at once. Best of all, quality is very good.

Highline Guitars  Denver, Colorado Read my reviews (5)
Customer supplied image for review
4 1-21-2012
Great Kit, but more info needed

Overall great kit, but the description indicates that dogear covers are available leading you to beleive they would actually work with this kit. Unfortunately the baseplate provided does not work with the dogear covers and there doesn't seem to be an option for the dogear baseplate from stewmac. Also, the screw heads of the adjustment screws strip out very easily and the brass screws heads snapped off leaving the body of the screw embedded in the bobbin. Both are probably my fault so take extra care when dealing with the screws.

JWertz  Red Lion, PA
5 12-15-2011
P90 Maple Fiberboard kit

These kits are great. I wanted the plastic bobbins but they were out of stock so I went with the maple and fiberboard kits. The instructions are perfect. I know some earlier reviewers had a hard time with fitting all the screws etc. Always test fit everything before gluing and assembling. The parts are tight fitting but they work really great. Run your polepieces through first to thread the holes in the maple to make things easier to assemble later.

I wound the neck pickup to around 10,000 winds and it read 8.35k. The bridge I did 10,600 winds and it read 8.6k. The bridge was not hot enough for my liking so I overwound it another 1000 winds (just solder a new piece of pickup wire to the end). Now it reads 9.75k and is smoking hot. It sounds really great. My guitar is mostly maple with black walnut so I didn't notice any real problems with treble loss on the overwound pickup.

These are great pickups. I think I'm more of a humbucker guy but for $17 each this was a really fun project to try P90s.

I also did the reverse wind reverse polarity on the neck pickup. Even though my bridge is a lot hotter than the neck it has a great hum cancelling middle position. Very useable. I'm using 500k pots with a 0.022uF paper in oil tone capacitor.

ForcedFire  Canada Read my reviews (3)
Customer supplied image for review
Displaying 1 – 10 1  2 > /\ Top of Reviews


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