P-90 Pickups - Minimum Pole Distance from Strings?

[Milnoque]

Sounds like a quite a fine company to do business with-I might need to check them out on my next pickup quest.

Oh yeah-Zaphod-does that bridge/tailpiece give you a pretty accurate intonation?

You do NOT want to use super slinky strings with one of these. If you run 10s or 11s the intonation is not as bad as you would think but don't get anal with yor luthier. Its hard to describe the difference in tone but you can hear it.

This is what a Les Paul was like '54 - '56. They were all goldtops then but thats the only difference. They all had P-90s and an uncompensated bridge/tailpiece. Alot of great recordings were made using these.

 

[Anfontan]

You do NOT want to use super slinky strings with one of these. If you run 10s or 11s the intonation is not as bad as you would think but don't get anal with yor luthier. Its hard to describe the difference in tone but you can hear it.

This is what a Les Paul was like '54 - '56. They were all goldtops then but thats the only difference. They all had P-90s and an uncompensated bridge/tailpiece. Alot of great recordings were made using these.

Thanks for the info-my les Paul has a tuneamatic bridge and I've played very few of the bridge/tailpiece types. 10s are as light as I can handle, anything lighter are like rubberbands.
I recall hearing a story in a Doc Watson interview, I think on PBS-he had a Les Paul in the 1950s when he played rockabilly and it originally had the strings wrapped over & under the tailpiece. He remarked that he hated that setup and it's tuning problems but once he reversed it to going over the bridge it was fine.

 

[Zaphod B]

Did I ever mention that I f***ing hate you? I'll bet your wife is hot, too.

(My experience has been, that if you know what's good for you, you won't respond to that last comment. Any way it goes, somehow you lose, depending on who reads it. )

Haha, yeah, I know you hate me. Somehow I deal with it.

Sounds like a quite a fine company to do business with-I might need to check them out on my next pickup quest.

Oh yeah-Zaphod-does that bridge/tailpiece give you a pretty accurate intonation?

The bridge/tailpiece intonates pretty well. Given that tuning a guitar is a compromise in the best circumstances, the error induced by the lack of adjustable intonation is minor in my opinion.

Out of the four Gibsons that I own, only one has a Tune-O-Matic - the rest have the one-piece bridge/tailpiece, and it works fine.

You do NOT want to use super slinky strings with one of these. If you run 10s or 11s the intonation is not as bad as you would think but don't get anal with yor luthier. Its hard to describe the difference in tone but you can hear it.

I'm not sure what you mean by super-slinky. I use standard 10 - 46 sets on all mine with no issue.

 

[BrentDomann]

I'm not sure what you mean by super-slinky. I use standard 10 - 46 sets on all mine with no issue.

I just had a LP set up by a good luthier, and asked him how the TOM's range for adjustment was. He said that since I was using 10s, I was within the range available on the TOM; but if I went to 11s, they'd probably have to reverse the saddle so that it gave me more room.

The reason I tell you this is that I think it answers your question - string gauge affects intonation, and Milnoque means to say that the set relative intonation on those wraptails works better with heavier strings than light ones.

 

[Zaphod B]

I just had a LP set up by a good luthier, and asked him how the TOM's range for adjustment was. He said that since I was using 10s, I was within the range available on the TOM; but if I went to 11s, they'd probably have to reverse the saddle so that it gave me more room.

The reason I tell you this is that I think it answers your question - string gauge affects intonation, and Milnoque means to say that the set relative intonation on those wraptails works better with heavier strings than light ones.

OK. I think there is some misunderstanding about these single-piece bridge / tailpieces. They cannot be adjusted for individual string intonation, but they have grub screws in the back to adjust overall intonation. I don't know what the overall range would be but I'm guessing that +/- one string gauge from the standard set supplied (10 - 46) would be possible.

 

[muttley600]

OK. I think there is some misunderstanding about these single-piece bridge / tailpieces. They cannot be adjusted for individual string intonation, but they have grub screws in the back to adjust overall intonation. I don't know what the overall range would be but I'm guessing that +/- one string gauge from the standard set supplied (10 - 46) would be possible.

Easily....Your more likely to have problems on those going to a wound g than changing gauge, even then you'd be ok with some tinkering. You can normally get a set of 9's intonated correctly on a Tune-o-matic as well. Mainly because the action can go a tad lower and the extra tension from fretting is dealt with that way. Action height plays a big part in intonation as well as string length. It's all a balancing act.

 

[Milnoque]

Easily....Your more likely to have problems on those going to a wound g than changing gauge, even then you'd be ok with some tinkering. You can normally get a set of 9's intonated correctly on a Tune-o-matic as well. Mainly because the action can go a tad lower and the extra tension from fretting is dealt with that way. Action height plays a big part in intonation as well as string length. It's all a balancing act.

This particular LP does not have a tune-a-matic. The strings simply wrap over a standard Gibson stop tailpiece. The tailpiece has set screws to allow some distance adjustment but that's it. There is no individual compensation for the strings. That was what Gibson did prior to the developement of the tune-a-matic. Perhaps you've had better success with 9's than I have.

+1 on the wound G. I didn't think to mention that.

 

[Zaphod B]

This particular LP does not have a tune-a-matic. The strings simply wrap over a standard Gibson stop tailpiece. The tailpiece has set screws to allow some distance adjustment but that's it. There is no individual compensation for the strings. That was what Gibson did prior to the developement of the tune-a-matic. Perhaps you've had better success with 9's than I have.

Right. I think we all understand that.

 

[muttley600]

This particular LP does not have a tune-a-matic. The strings simply wrap over a standard Gibson stop tailpiece. The tailpiece has set screws to allow some distance adjustment but that's it. There is no individual compensation for the strings. That was what Gibson did prior to the developement of the tune-a-matic. Perhaps you've had better success with 9's than I have.

+1 on the wound G. I didn't think to mention that.

I know I have worked on hundreds of them over the years. It's entirely possible to get them to intonate correctly with 9, 10, or 11's. Just the same as the modern PRS wraparounds.

 

[muttley600]

Before we get to far OT here is an old thread where we did this one to death before. Most of you lot posted in that one too.

intonation on a les paul goddess