NINETIES INFLUENCE
Seeing the new Fender Noventa series made me smile, because of something I did to a couple of my guitars a few years back. After years of using humbuckerequipped guitars, in 2016 I changed musical direction and moved to 50s rhythm and blues and country, where single coils seemed more appropriate.
I’ve always treated my guitars as tools of the trade, so I had a look at what I owned. My Honey Blonde Highway One Telecaster seemed the best bet and it wasn’t doing much at that time. While the body of the Highway One matched the vintage vibe, its sounds didn’t. Luckily another Tele had a bridge pickup that sounded just right. And that’s when I became a fan of Alnico II pickups, because it was a Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro. That was the bridge sorted.
None of my selection of neck pickups were doing it for me. Some research indicated that P-90 pickups were big back in the 50s and, after much deliberation, I chose the Seymour Duncan Antiquity P90 soapbar mainly because the description of it met what I was looking for, and it has Alnico II magnets.
Once that was done, and sounding good, I wanted a backup guitar to give me the same sounds, so this time I attacked a Blacktop Strat that wasn’t going to get much use with its two humbuckers.
My ‘Noventa’ Tele has two pickups but the P-90 is in the wrong position. At least my Strat has one P-90 in the correct position at the neck, but then fails miserably on the bridge pickup. The thing is I’m getting exactly the sounds I want with the unexpected side effect of me being completely converted to a singlecoil sound. Peter Cooper, via email Thanks Peter, the guitars look great. There’s some truth in the saying there’s nothing new under the sun – most things have been tried at one time or another – but P-90s seem to be enjoying a real resurgence. They’re ballsy enough to really drive amps but that single-coil clarity is still there in good examples. Interviewing Mark Knopfler for this magazine a few years ago, he told us he’s always felt “P-90s just have more tone in them, don’t they?” and who are we to disagree?