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Sanford Magnetics P90's (PICS) Killer quality pickups!

buyusfear

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 3, 2006
Messages
2,951
I just got this test batch of P-90's in the mail and i'm pretty excited. I wanted to share some pic's and my thoughts here because these things are blowing me away, and I haven't really seen much talk about them, being that the company is pretty new. I've tried many many P90's, including vintage, and these are right up there.

I've been going back and forth with Nate Sanford of Sanford Magnetics for several months now, trying to put together a super dialled-in mid 50's esque P90, wound to my tastes, to capture that luscious blooming sound I get out of my vintage '56 Junior, and many other vintage P90 Les Paul's i've played.

I can't wait to try all of these sample winds out, to pick out what to go with.
So far, I've had time to swap one P90 in, which I will then swap with another, and so forth, not changing strings, or guitar, leaving all of my amp and pedal settings where they're at.

My initial impression is that it's an amazing sounding pickup! And not only that; but an amazing feeling P90. THIS to me is very important.
Extremely well balanced and reactive under your fingers.

Straight up, I'm like, "cool - done, that was easy, now lets get picky and dissect them all".

Blooming notes, articulate mids. Really smooth clean's and yet an ability to drive the amp with amazing volume roll off control.
Very similar harmonic response to my Vintage Junior's P90 as well, almost a tad more with this particular combination.
Actually this particular P90 i'm testing at the moment is a different magnet than vintage spec, it may be rough cast A5 but i'm not getting lost in the weeds so I don;t really know yet, I want my ears and fingers to pick, so they're not exact sounding (plus they are different guitars), but that's the point, I'm looking for a hybrid of what works for my playing and ears.

I asked my wife, I'm like, "hey, come here, listen, here's the '56 Jr... ok now here's the first Sanford Proto", she's like, "they sound like the same guitar". So take that for what it's worth.

I've thought about tossing the pickups into different guitars to a/b them against each other more quickly, which I may do towards the end, but at first I want to be as methodical about this as I can and use my replica TV Junior as the platform.

I'm running it through an OCD V3, Strymon El Cap, and into my 65 Amps 'lil Elvis.Additionally, I'm a/b'ing it against my '56 Junior as a level benchmark.

Sanford has been a really cool company to work with up to this point, AAA in my book.
Super personable and willing to hear me out on my neurotic requests and great email communication. That to me, as a small one-man show myself, is everything. We've got some really cool ideas in the works i''m excited to share, that is once I nail down which P90 blend i like best.

His work is so clean, you can really tell that he's passionate about what he does. I love it. A perfect compliment to the effort i put into my work.

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Its a tone taste test!
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This will be the test chassis.
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buyusfear

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 3, 2006
Messages
2,951
I've had some days now swapping them back and forth and can't say enough about how killer these things sound!
The 9077, is in the lead for me right now.
It's a combination of a linear wind ( which is how Gibson wound them) and scatter wound which adds clarity to the bottom end thump of the linear wind.

The 9022 model is probably the closest P90 I've played to my vintage '56 junior's P90.

I've been a/b'ing them constantly going back to the '56 junior and the 9022 is extremely similar. So much so that the two different guitars are coloring the tone probably more than the pickups at that point.

This is a quick Instagram clip of me noodling on the 9077 model. I'm sitting in a different room from the amp but it gives a good idea of how articulate the pickup is and how defined the notes can be amoungst the lower strings ringing out
<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-version="7" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:28.125% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BF43tnGut_q/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A video posted by Alex Sorokin (@buyusfear)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2016-05-26T23:17:31+00:00">May 26, 2016 at 4:17pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote>
<script async defer src="//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script>
 

buyusfear

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 3, 2006
Messages
2,951
It's been a few months of going back and forth on email and phone, making tweaks, and i've finally received the finished batch of P90's, custom wound to my tastes.

I haven't tried one out yet, as I just received them yesterday; however, the samples he sent me prior, we amazing enough alone, and realistically I could have lived perfectly fine with either model, I just got to mix it up a bit and make some slight tweaks cause Nathan Sanford is cool that way and equally as passionate about the details as I am.

My wind is largely based off of his 9077 model P90, with any changes made being borrowed directly from the 9022 model.

I worked separately with Donovan, of Luxe Capacitors, to create orange clothed braided hook-up wire, which i then supplied to Sanford to use in all of my pickups. I recently did some work on a '52 trapeze gold top and found it to have orange hookup-wire (look back at my post in the vintage section on the Mojoaxe tailpiece swap thread).
So naturally, seeing the orange cloth hookup wire in an untouched gold top, got my wheels turning.

He also sent me some of his PAF model pickups, the Model 22, an alnico 2 based PAF. I have yet to try them, but I do not doubt that if they're anything like the several P-90's of his i've played, they'll be amazing. The guys knows how to wind a pickups, IMO. And i've played many vintage P90's.

These have custom spec'd PAF vintage style nickel covers, which are super bad ass as well. You can see how they match up to the DMC aged covers in the photos on my R8.
For me, proper covers, well that's a must, and he offers that as an option; however, also uses raw nickel, and different gauge covers depending on the customers taste.

Butyrate bobbins, wood spacers, 5-40 fillister head machine screws, plain enamel wire, etc etc. Most importantly, he knows what good sounds like, at least to my ears, and fingers. his pickups feel so articulate.

As a thanks, and because i'm absolutely blown away by the quality in his work, I took the time to take some nice photos for him, and thought i'd share here.
I know that the pickup market is a saturated one, but for what its worth, I highly recommend that you give Sanford Magnetics a try.
I've owned, used, and sampled practically all of the big name winders out there, and they're all awesome, these are just awesome too, thats all.

And, as a bonus, with our Canadian dollar being so crappy exchange rate wise, they're practically free for the rest of the world, lol.

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stewit

New member
Joined
Oct 16, 2016
Messages
1
I'd like to second your opinion on the Sanford Magnetics pickups. I ordered a set of Alnico2 equipped 9022 P90s in January 2016 as an upgrade for my lovely Japanese Tokai 56 gold top after hearing samples from the Doug and Pat show:


What can I say - the bridge pickup was a huge step forward from the original Tokai pickup. Very sensitive and direct and no harshness in the highs. However, the neck pickup was a little to muddy for my taste. Hence I contacted Nathan from Sanford Magnetics and we exchanged a series of emails to find out which pickup might work better for my gold top (which exhibits a lot of bass by itself, suprisingly for only 3.7 kg). Finally, he custom-wound a neck pickup for me on the basis of the 9077 model (which I assume is Alnico 5 based) and was kind enough to provide me with some extra Alnico 4 magnets for tonal experiments. The pickup has a slightly lower DC resistance than my previous 9022 neck model and again was a huge step forward from the original Tokai which has a very nice, almost strat-like, attack but lacked good string separation particularly when played overdriven.

In summary, I can highly recommend Nathans pickups. The build quality is extraordinary and the customer support was absolutely stunning!!! So don't hesitate - go to his web-site and order your own set of pickups - you will not be disappointed!!!
 

Shoegazers A

New member
Joined
Feb 9, 2017
Messages
3
It´s sad that the guy Nathan scam people. I ordered a pup in February this year and have had nothing but bad excuses and no pup. And im not the only one. Look at the Facebook site and the rewievs there... Tragic. I really wanted that put cause I have only read good stuff about the product.
 
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