Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to review a legendary pickup, the Seymour Duncan P90 Stack!
Let's start off with some history: P90s were pickups created originally by Gibson for their guitars in the second half of the '40s, and they are single coil pickups built in a slightly different way from the Fender single coil ones;
the P90 has the wires wider and shorter than the typical Fender pickups, and this made the sound warmer and less bright, a bit closer to the tone that later Gibson developed into the humbucking pickups.
The main difference with the humbuckers was, in facts, the hum, a background noise typical of single coil pickups that also the P90 had, until many aftermarket producers (and Gibson itself) started producing noise canceling versions of this pickup, which retain the tonal characteristics of the original one but without the noise.
The one we are reviewing today is the Seymour Duncan P90 Stack, but the brand actually produces a wide range of P90 pickups, some more vintage sounding, some more hot, and out of them all, this is the one that is the closest to the original Gibson S90 tone.
Look-wise this pickup is quite similar to the original one: a soapbar that fits a humbucking slot, but with only one line of poles, and sound wise it's a very good sounding pickup, the type of pickup that you could hear at home in any classic rock, punk, blues, jazz, alternative or country record, and it's been used by countless musicians, from Green Day to John Lennon, from The Who to Muse, from Black Sabbath to Bon Jovi.
This Seymour Duncan version of the P90 sounds every bit as good as the original Gibson one: tone-wise it's the perfect halfway between a single coil and a humbucker, giving clarity, note separation and definition when needed, but also being warm and extremely pleasant with distortions too, because it smoothes the edges of the distortions making the tone always pleasant, and because it doesn't have the typical razorblade tone of the distorted single coils.
To be noted that also some metal musician likes to use it, especially in the neck position, because it allows to obtain beautiful, saturated clean tones which can sometimes be too muddy with a neck humbucker.
All I can say is that this is a great rock pickup, and one of the best to be put in the neck position in general. Thumbs up!
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