A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

If you're swapping out P90s and it had a piece of foam rubber to supply the vertical push then you might want to consider replacing that with springs instead. The foam system loses its resiliency after a while and also doesn't always provide uniform resistance on both sides.

The only problem is maintaining your sanity as you try to keep the springs on the mounting screws while you feel around for the holes in the bottom of the rout when reattaching the pickup. It used to take a lot of cursing and a herculean effort to not throw whatever was in reaching distance against the walls to finally get things back together. This hit or miss technique also does not work well if you tend to have anger management issues.

How I now avoid all the frustration is to glue the springs over the screw holes in the bottom of the rout with contact or rubber cement and then after the couple of minutes it takes for that to dry, just drop the mounting screws right in and adjust to the proper height. You should also have enough room to maneuver by just loosening the strings. Pic below:

Thats a good idea. thanks.

I feel like I now need to buy a P90 guitar to verify this.

I had a gibson LP special for a while that came from the factory with spring loaded P90's like that. The one funky side effect is that if you get aggressive with your strumming, you can depress the pickup far enough down into the cavity that it will change the sound audibly. Palm muting takes a little practice too.

Having tried both, I prefer using an old mouse pad under soapbar style pickups.

mickey wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:42 pm Having tried both, I prefer using an old mouse pad under soapbar style pickups.

Shims cut to fit out of old mousepads work great for adjusting the height on dog ear P90s or other surface mount pickups...

I like this stuff: https://www.stewmac.com/electronics/pic ... AzEALw_wcB

dabbler wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 8:28 pm I like this stuff: https://www.stewmac.com/electronics/pic ... AzEALw_wcB

I've used that with Strat single coils but never thought to try it with the longer P90 mounting screws

uwmcscott wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:32 pm I had a gibson LP special for a while that came from the factory with spring loaded P90's like that. The one funky side effect is that if you get aggressive with your strumming, you can depress the pickup far enough down into the cavity that it will change the sound audibly. Palm muting takes a little practice too.

As long as it reliably springs back, this could be a cool method to add a tremolo effect.