[Splattle101]

Mate, I noticed incremental changes and improvements but the H-90s never quite got there. The first re-wiring I had done, I got rid of the coil tap, and just had the H-90s wired as pure P-90s. This, combined with a linear taper tone pot and better caps, helped with the versatility of the tone, but it was still basically crap when I got it up to proper volume.

Last week I bit the bullet and pulled out the H-90s and put in some Tonerider P-90 clones. Tonerider calls theirs H-90 too, but the ‘H’ in their case stands for ‘hybrid’ because it uses hybrid AlNiCo II and V magnets. In the functional sense, though, it’s a pure, evil P-90.

While I was at it I replaced the volume pots with 500 k Alphas. Again, this didn’t change the tone because the pots I replaced were 500 k, but it made the sweep more useful.

The effect of changing the pick ups was immediate and dramatic. This guitar went from being merely nice with lots of promise, to being one of my two favourite axes. I knew I had the combination right when I arrived back in the kitchen at 10:00 P.M. and realised that for the first time I had trouble putting it down. That was a good sign.

cheers,
Splat