Fitting a humbucker/minihum under a P90 cover

ekwatts · Post by **ekwatts** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 8:33 am

Is this doable? I haven't had a chance to grab all the parts to see if this is viable but it seems like a fun idea if I can pull it off.

I basically want a nice, low output PAF tone on my new Epiphone. Love the P90s but I was wondering if I could get a humbucker pickup to fit under the dogear P90 cover. I've found blank ones I can drill for the double row of polepieces but what else might get in my way? Are the depth and pickup mounting legs a problem?

Gabriel · Post by **Gabriel** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:37 am

http://www.catswhiskerpickups.co.uk/humbucker.html

They make ones that fit with a dog ear cover too.

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:54 am

I've seen people cut away enough of a dogear cover to mount a PAF in there, but it's pushing it.
Minihums should present less of a problem in this regard as their "rings" are (or were originally on LP Deluxes) repurposed soapbar covers, so as to bucker late 60s LP reissues which had all been tooled for P90s with a lack of foresight.
Either way would take some piddling with on the body (dogears have a shallower route than buckers and soapbar p90s and minihums mount differently) and I agree with Gabe's advice as the neatest/simplest solution.

GFS also have some soapbar-sized buckers as well as adapter kits for putting a minihum in a soapbar guitar without routing (using ones with mounting tabs flush to the baseplate rather than "long-leg" vintage style ones), but this restricts you to one of their units obviously.

ekwatts · Post by **ekwatts** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:20 am

The existing pickups are dogears, not soapbars, though.

Those Catswhisker ones look good.

I was considering an Entwistle Nashville. They're mini-hums made to look like filtertrons, I had some in my Alden and loved them, so I was thinking of buying one for Â£20 and trying to fit it into a blank dogear cover. One slight advantage on the Epiphone is that the bridge pickup is mounted on a wooden riser, giving some scope for modification. I was thinking if it came down to having to do any modification it would involve just the riser, and I could just cut out a new one a spray it black.

As seen in this pic here:

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9 ... qRNPDx1-AP

timhulio · Post by **timhulio** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 1:09 pm

Why would you buy a generic mass-produced pickup over the hand made Catswhisker one?

Somewhat unrelated, but I noticed this on the Catswhisker 'specials' page:
http://www.catswhiskerpickups.co.uk/specials.html

P90 Special Pickup

A variation of the P90 formula. Here the magnets are turned edge on and placed either side of the coil, a thin steel shim underneath completes the magnetic circuit. This turned out to be a very nice sounding pickup, the profile is too large for a P90 cover so a Jazzmaster style cover was used instead.

This is exactly how the magnets are arranged in the Simeto pickups on my Elgita... coincidently one of which I had rewound by Catswhisker a few years ago.

The bottom ones:

Fran · Post by **Fran** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 6:36 pm

Same as Paul said, its doable but you dont have much room and the route will have to be deepened.
Probably better off looking for a replacement. Lots of affordable options these days.

ekwatts · Post by **ekwatts** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:07 pm

Fair enough, I'll probably go for the Catswhisker next month.