My Les Paul Forums - View Single Post - Review of Tonerider H-90 single coils (P-90 copy)

Splattle101 · 09-22-2008, 12:05 AM

As requested in this thread:

The capacitor thread.

this is a review of the Tonerider H-90 pick ups I’ve stuck in my Les Paul Classic Antique.

What they are
They’re a P-90 knock off. The ‘H’ stands for hybrid, and refers to the AlNiCo II / AlNiCo V magnets they use. So they’re not ceramic. The conductors are braided. The bobbins are textured; I don’t know how else to describe it. Just normal soap bar P-90s. I dunno if they come with dog ears as an option. They cost me AU $115 for the pair.

Context, gear, style
I play blues and hard rock. I like to drive non-master-volume amps to a subtle, crunching overdrive, and then kick them into full saturation with a TS808. I use an MI Audio Crunch box into the TS808 for boosts and stupid amounts of gain. Most of the time the amp is a black face Fender Super Reverb. I use the volume and tone controls on my Les Pauls a lot. Noise is rarely an issue for me, given that I’m usually only using really high gain settings for soloing in a noisy, three-piece context. Noise? What noise?

What I put them in
* Epiphone Les Paul Special, made-in-Korea, double cutaway, early 1990s, set neck (not the bolt-on that seems to be normal now).
* Gibson Les Paul Classic Antique, April 2007.

What they’re like
I’ve had these pick ups about four or five months. I originally bought them to put in my Epiphone Les Paul Special. I made no other changes to the electronics.

I was very impressed. They bite like P-90s should, particularly the bridge. However, there’s a lot of meaty mid range in the tone, so they don’t sound thin. They maintained their detail as I turned the volume down, too.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got to compare my Epi to a 1995 Gibson Les Paul Special. The voicing of the pick ups was very similar and, if anything, the Toneriders maintained their character better than the Gibsons when the volume control was turned down.

A few weeks ago now, I took these pick ups out of my Epiphone and put them in my Les Paul Classic Antique. This was a GOW instrument from April 2007, and it came stock with Gibson H-90 pick ups. The Gibson H-90 is their attempt at a low-noise P-90. I tried to like them, but I just couldn’t get that guitar to come to life somehow. I finally gave up and decided to put the TRs in.

The electronic complement of that instrument now is: Tonerider H-90 pick ups, Alpha 500 k pots, stock switch, VitQ 0.015 uF cap for the neck and a Spraque / Hyrel 0.022 uF cap for the bridge (thanks Jonesy). I changed all the electronics before changing the pick ups, in an attempt to get the stock pick ups to sound good. In vain, as it turned out.

The effect of the pick up change was immediately pleasing. Looking at the bridge pick up first, the bite is present and it produces a nice ringing sort of crunch from the Super Reverb with the volume at about 4. A nice useable rhythm sound that warms up considerably as the tone control is rolled down to 7 or 8. It also cleans up with the volume down at 7 or 8. Very rich sounding with an almost Fender Telecaster twang when played close to the bridge. But fuller than my Tele. With the TS808 in, it fattens up nicely and gives the tubescreamer plenty of high mids to work with. With the volume at 10, the 808 switched on (OD: 11 o’clock, Tone: 9 o’clock, Level: 3 o’clock), and the amp at 4, the sound is quite saturated. There’s plenty of harmonic complexity there to produce full-sounding rock chords for AC/DC sounds, while maintaining that very sharp attack. Rolling off the volume reduces the gain without losing complexity or feel. In fact, backed off to 8 or nine but with the tone at 10, it produces really tight Malcolm Young tones (he plays cleaner than he sounds on first listen). One interesting thing about these pick ups is that they don’t get into that ‘dead’ feel until you get the volume below 2. Again, use of the tone control warms it up nicely.

Shoving the Crunch Box down the front end works very well (guitar --> Crunch Box --> TS808 --> amp). The gain goes through the roof, but is still coloured by the Tubescreamer. Nothing nasty happens (i.e., no horrible microphonic feedback and squealing), which is a good start. The tones are immediately useable, and vary usefully with the tone and volume controls. On my LP Standard I sometimes use this setting with the volume down on 5 at the guitar to get a really compressed medium gain sound. I’m not sure I’d do that with these pick ups. The noise could be an issue, but for a thumping rhythm it’d be ok. For soloing, it’s beautiful. It maintains the attack (to the extent you can with that much distortion!), and produces lots of low-order harmonics to produce nice, consonant feedback when I let a note go. I found this a really inspiring set up to play with. The guitar seemed to want to play itself, and tone was suggestive of anything from Pink Floyd through to Sex Pistols. For me, this is where P-90 guitars are pure rock’n’roll monsters.

Switching off the pedals and driving the amp harder (about 6 or 7) provides a bright overdrive with lots of bite but a tightly defined bottom end. The bridge pick up does not get muddy and waffly. Sensitivity to right hand dynamics is excellent, and again the volume and tone controls provide plenty of variation in the tonal palette. With a modicum of twiddling I got tones like the intro to It Ain’t Me, Whole Lotta Love and Rock n’ Roll, Highway to Hell, Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings and La Grange. More of the rock’n’roll monster. Love it.

With the TS808 on, it went out into the area of Robben Ford and the more modern ZZ Top tones very easily. I find the top end of the Super Reverb can be bit ‘hissy’ when it’s driven hard, and this was no exception. But the tone control tamed that easily and it delivered a really tight, punchy high-gain sound with the broad texture of the power section overdrive blending nicely with the finer grain of the pedal. The guitar was resonating nicely and the feedback was harmonic and eminently controllable. At that point I was really just playing and getting into it, not bothering about the niceties anymore. That was a first with this particular guitar.

When I got back to Earth and started tweaking again, I was particularly impressed by the way that – even with these amp and pedal settings – the tone cleaned up so nicely with the volume control. Now, this is largely a function of a good pedal and a good amp, but if the signal going in the front end is shit…As they say, you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it glitter. No glitter required, here.

All in all, I was very impressed with the bridge pick up. The bridge of the Epi with its stock pick up was just about un-playable. The bridge of the Gibson with its stock Gibson H-90 was playable but flatter than a steam rolled cane toad. The Tonerider is simply in a different class. Best of all, it maintains its tone in both the low-gain (0-4) and high-gain (6 and up) operating regimes for my amp. In light of my experience with the Epi and this Gibson Classic, I would like to hear one of these Tonerider bridge pick ups in a Junior.

I’ll come back to the neck pick up later.

cheers,
Splat

09-22-2008, 12:05 AM	#1 (permalink)
Splattle101 V.I.P. Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: Australia Posts: 2,907 Thanks: 19 Thanked 85 Times in 14 Posts	Review of Tonerider H-90 single coils (P-90 copy) As requested in this thread: The capacitor thread. this is a review of the Tonerider H-90 pick ups I’ve stuck in my Les Paul Classic Antique. What they are They’re a P-90 knock off. The ‘H’ stands for hybrid, and refers to the AlNiCo II / AlNiCo V magnets they use. So they’re not ceramic. The conductors are braided. The bobbins are textured; I don’t know how else to describe it. Just normal soap bar P-90s. I dunno if they come with dog ears as an option. They cost me AU $115 for the pair. Context, gear, style I play blues and hard rock. I like to drive non-master-volume amps to a subtle, crunching overdrive, and then kick them into full saturation with a TS808. I use an MI Audio Crunch box into the TS808 for boosts and stupid amounts of gain. Most of the time the amp is a black face Fender Super Reverb. I use the volume and tone controls on my Les Pauls a lot. Noise is rarely an issue for me, given that I’m usually only using really high gain settings for soloing in a noisy, three-piece context. Noise? What noise? What I put them in * Epiphone Les Paul Special, made-in-Korea, double cutaway, early 1990s, set neck (not the bolt-on that seems to be normal now). * Gibson Les Paul Classic Antique, April 2007. What they’re like I’ve had these pick ups about four or five months. I originally bought them to put in my Epiphone Les Paul Special. I made no other changes to the electronics. I was very impressed. They bite like P-90s should, particularly the bridge. However, there’s a lot of meaty mid range in the tone, so they don’t sound thin. They maintained their detail as I turned the volume down, too. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to compare my Epi to a 1995 Gibson Les Paul Special. The voicing of the pick ups was very similar and, if anything, the Toneriders maintained their character better than the Gibsons when the volume control was turned down. A few weeks ago now, I took these pick ups out of my Epiphone and put them in my Les Paul Classic Antique. This was a GOW instrument from April 2007, and it came stock with Gibson H-90 pick ups. The Gibson H-90 is their attempt at a low-noise P-90. I tried to like them, but I just couldn’t get that guitar to come to life somehow. I finally gave up and decided to put the TRs in. The electronic complement of that instrument now is: Tonerider H-90 pick ups, Alpha 500 k pots, stock switch, VitQ 0.015 uF cap for the neck and a Spraque / Hyrel 0.022 uF cap for the bridge (thanks Jonesy). I changed all the electronics before changing the pick ups, in an attempt to get the stock pick ups to sound good. In vain, as it turned out. The effect of the pick up change was immediately pleasing. Looking at the bridge pick up first, the bite is present and it produces a nice ringing sort of crunch from the Super Reverb with the volume at about 4. A nice useable rhythm sound that warms up considerably as the tone control is rolled down to 7 or 8. It also cleans up with the volume down at 7 or 8. Very rich sounding with an almost Fender Telecaster twang when played close to the bridge. But fuller than my Tele. With the TS808 in, it fattens up nicely and gives the tubescreamer plenty of high mids to work with. With the volume at 10, the 808 switched on (OD: 11 o’clock, Tone: 9 o’clock, Level: 3 o’clock), and the amp at 4, the sound is quite saturated. There’s plenty of harmonic complexity there to produce full-sounding rock chords for AC/DC sounds, while maintaining that very sharp attack. Rolling off the volume reduces the gain without losing complexity or feel. In fact, backed off to 8 or nine but with the tone at 10, it produces really tight Malcolm Young tones (he plays cleaner than he sounds on first listen). One interesting thing about these pick ups is that they don’t get into that ‘dead’ feel until you get the volume below 2. Again, use of the tone control warms it up nicely. Shoving the Crunch Box down the front end works very well (guitar --> Crunch Box --> TS808 --> amp). The gain goes through the roof, but is still coloured by the Tubescreamer. Nothing nasty happens (i.e., no horrible microphonic feedback and squealing), which is a good start. The tones are immediately useable, and vary usefully with the tone and volume controls. On my LP Standard I sometimes use this setting with the volume down on 5 at the guitar to get a really compressed medium gain sound. I’m not sure I’d do that with these pick ups. The noise could be an issue, but for a thumping rhythm it’d be ok. For soloing, it’s beautiful. It maintains the attack (to the extent you can with that much distortion!), and produces lots of low-order harmonics to produce nice, consonant feedback when I let a note go. I found this a really inspiring set up to play with. The guitar seemed to want to play itself, and tone was suggestive of anything from Pink Floyd through to Sex Pistols. For me, this is where P-90 guitars are pure rock’n’roll monsters. Switching off the pedals and driving the amp harder (about 6 or 7) provides a bright overdrive with lots of bite but a tightly defined bottom end. The bridge pick up does not get muddy and waffly. Sensitivity to right hand dynamics is excellent, and again the volume and tone controls provide plenty of variation in the tonal palette. With a modicum of twiddling I got tones like the intro to It Ain’t Me, Whole Lotta Love and Rock n’ Roll, Highway to Hell, Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings and La Grange. More of the rock’n’roll monster. Love it. With the TS808 on, it went out into the area of Robben Ford and the more modern ZZ Top tones very easily. I find the top end of the Super Reverb can be bit ‘hissy’ when it’s driven hard, and this was no exception. But the tone control tamed that easily and it delivered a really tight, punchy high-gain sound with the broad texture of the power section overdrive blending nicely with the finer grain of the pedal. The guitar was resonating nicely and the feedback was harmonic and eminently controllable. At that point I was really just playing and getting into it, not bothering about the niceties anymore. That was a first with this particular guitar. When I got back to Earth and started tweaking again, I was particularly impressed by the way that – even with these amp and pedal settings – the tone cleaned up so nicely with the volume control. Now, this is largely a function of a good pedal and a good amp, but if the signal going in the front end is shit…As they say, you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it glitter. No glitter required, here. All in all, I was very impressed with the bridge pick up. The bridge of the Epi with its stock pick up was just about un-playable. The bridge of the Gibson with its stock Gibson H-90 was playable but flatter than a steam rolled cane toad. The Tonerider is simply in a different class. Best of all, it maintains its tone in both the low-gain (0-4) and high-gain (6 and up) operating regimes for my amp. In light of my experience with the Epi and this Gibson Classic, I would like to hear one of these Tonerider bridge pick ups in a Junior. I’ll come back to the neck pick up later. cheers, Splat __________________ *...A tasty world...a very* tasty world...**