I have never NEVER had good luck with neck pickups. It’s so hard to find a good tone. And when you do finally find a pickup that should be right you have to decide if it will be good for your guitar’s body. And then you have to deal with the fact that there are a gazillion bridge pickups sitting around the local Guitarget but the neck version you want is on backorder and should arrive just in time for your next of kin to read about it in your will. All of this leads me to believe that people generally don’t pay attention to their neck tone as much as they do their bridge tone. Too bad. There's a lot of tone up there people!
This is one area where Fender has always had the advantage. Fender, in my opinion, is King of the neck tone – second only to my beloved Les Paul standard loaded with a PAF. But if you want a good crisp responsive single coil tone even my beloved Les Paul will not get you there; close but not quite there.
Then there is also the issue that even if you have a Strat the pickups could be cheap, like in a Mexi-Strat (which always makes me think of Mexi-Fries). But let’s face it. Even in a Mexi-Strat that neck tone is giving you a lot of bang for your minimal buck. Fender FTW.
The place that Fender can’t help you is if you want something in between: something that has that clear bell-like pounce like a fender but has the deep tone of a humbucker. For that you pay Uncle Seymour or Rio Grande for something hot. But you still never get over the fact that that thin winding of copper just never gets any wider in relationship to the sound field of the strings. And that, THAT my friend, is why Gibson invented the P-90.
The P-90 has a wider footprint and bar mags running across adjustable posts so you get the fat roll of a humbucker but it’s still a single coil so you get that attack of the single coil and the clarity of a Fender-type sound.
But they are noisy, and they are an odd size for a guitar that takes humbuckers. And just when your head starts to hurt from all the hurdles there are to getting a good tone, Uncle Seymour steps in with the Phat Cat SPH90-1. True, it’s not an exact p-90 replica but it’s pretty friggin’ close! And the Phat Cat solves all the noise issues. PLUS! They put the Phat Cat in a humbucker form factor so it can drop right into my superstrat! Happy happy joy joy!
That is … after it gets in … because it’s on back order … waiting for Uncle Seymour to make one … because no one keeps them in stock for the neck position … because no one pays attention to their neck tone.
Sigh.
This is one area where Fender has always had the advantage. Fender, in my opinion, is King of the neck tone – second only to my beloved Les Paul standard loaded with a PAF. But if you want a good crisp responsive single coil tone even my beloved Les Paul will not get you there; close but not quite there.
Then there is also the issue that even if you have a Strat the pickups could be cheap, like in a Mexi-Strat (which always makes me think of Mexi-Fries). But let’s face it. Even in a Mexi-Strat that neck tone is giving you a lot of bang for your minimal buck. Fender FTW.
The place that Fender can’t help you is if you want something in between: something that has that clear bell-like pounce like a fender but has the deep tone of a humbucker. For that you pay Uncle Seymour or Rio Grande for something hot. But you still never get over the fact that that thin winding of copper just never gets any wider in relationship to the sound field of the strings. And that, THAT my friend, is why Gibson invented the P-90.
The P-90 has a wider footprint and bar mags running across adjustable posts so you get the fat roll of a humbucker but it’s still a single coil so you get that attack of the single coil and the clarity of a Fender-type sound.
But they are noisy, and they are an odd size for a guitar that takes humbuckers. And just when your head starts to hurt from all the hurdles there are to getting a good tone, Uncle Seymour steps in with the Phat Cat SPH90-1. True, it’s not an exact p-90 replica but it’s pretty friggin’ close! And the Phat Cat solves all the noise issues. PLUS! They put the Phat Cat in a humbucker form factor so it can drop right into my superstrat! Happy happy joy joy!
That is … after it gets in … because it’s on back order … waiting for Uncle Seymour to make one … because no one keeps them in stock for the neck position … because no one pays attention to their neck tone.
Sigh.
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