Seymour Duncan P-Rail

humbucker with a single coil rail & p90 pickup for the coils
can combine in series, parallel or each coil individually.

Installed the neck & bridge set in a PRS CE24. They replaced the Seymour Duncan Jazz Neck & Custom Custom Bridge.

I changed the pickups because I found myself using single coil sounds more than humbucker sounds.

I am primarily playing thru a Vox AC30.

Keep in mind, the guitar I'm using has a maple neck, rosewood fretboard, & mahogany body w/ carved maple top.

Neck pickup:

Rail Coil:
I love this setting, I get beautiful shimmering cleans from this setting. It reminds me of the neck pickup on a Strat.

P90 Coil:
Very meaty neck sound. Great for a bluesy light to moderate breakup sound. I prefer the rail coil over this one though, just my preference.

Parallel Humbucker:
Another great sound. This gets you into PAF territory.

Series Humbucker:
Very high output, distorts my clean channel sound. Quite frankly I hate high output pickups and never use this setting unless I'm joking around and feel like playing cowboys from hell. I can't give a good review of this setting as it just isn't my thing.


Bridge Humbucker:

Rail Coil:
Again, the rail coils provide a very strat-ish sound. This gives that classic thin strat tone. This doesn't do the beefy tele sound. Good for coping that raw & open hendrixy sound.

P90 Coil:
A really meaty tone here. This is a fair amount hotter and chunkier than a tele bridge pickup. This is great for those open/raw/raunchy dirty channel rhythm/lead playing.

Parallel Humbucker:
Again, this is a take on the PAF sound. This is my main setting for power chords & leads.

Series Humbucker:
Again, very high output, not my thing.

General:
This pickup is a crowd pleaser. It really runs the whole gamut of tones, vintage to modern. I use the 3 settings with the lowest output. In general, the bridge pickup feels a little lighter on the output side & needs to get a little closer to the strings when you install them.

I'm very pleased with this setup. To sum up the way I use it, I get strat tones from the rails, PAF sounds from the parallel humbucker mode, & occasional P90 sounds when needed.

If stolen I would get another set of these for sure.

I've been playing for 8 years, I own a PRS CE24, Vox AC30, & Orange Rocker 30.

I'm satisfied with this pickup overall.

P-90 and sigle coil rail combined on one pickup.

I put this on an Ibanez SCA-220 that is a beautifully designed and built (and not appreciated, buy one cheap and be happy) but was not being played a lot. Got the pair of pickups for $110, but installation with new switches, and push pulls and a set up cost me an additional $150. I was not very happy...until I pluged it in. My set up guy took his time and did a marvelous job.

My only comment is wow, these sound great in every setting, bridge, neck or combined. P90's growl, single coils have nice high but smooth oputput and the humbuckers are warm and pleasant but with a beautiful punch and growl. Not a bad tone in the bunch.
I don't know technically what you call this, but I would simply say these have made my guitar the most "musical" in the bunch. I can't playing it because I am so happy with tone I get with this combo.

As much as I love to play this setup, I have taken more joy passing this to other friends who are far superior players.
Each one has been genuinely impressed with this combo, it can do anything

very hot pup,p90 / single blade somebody was smoking something at duncan when this was created!

It on wd strat alder body(2 prail) w/a floyd rose i can hear all you strat guys yelling write now..wait theres more! i got a 76 super reverb a jcm800 circuit in the 2 channell.w/ a alesis quadraverb soon to be a lexicon.

hell ya!!!the p90 sound just sings on tube setup.screw solid state.Distortion is awesome to cant go wrong.

The other reviews cover this quite well.
The features made me buy this PU.
Take a look on youtube and search for p-rails.
Watch the original demo from SD.

Parker Fly Mahagony.
Neck Position only.
I wanted to get the versatile Strat + P90 + Humbucker sound options.

All comments are only for the neck pickup here.
The output levels fit exactly to the pickup type you use.
Strat is mid level and sounds bright, thin but very nice.
P90 is the real winner. Better than Duesenberg and Gibson P94.
Powerful single coil with a real nice P90 sound.
Humbucker is fat, consistent and powerful, but not muddy.
I dont use the parallel option because it is too close to the P90 sound for me.
The p-rails is a very good choice for the neck PU.
I am really satisfied with the combinations I get from the p-rails in combination with the original bridge PU (split and Humbucker) of the Fly.
I did not like the p-rails bridge PU sound in the demo.
So I did not order it.
I have 9 good, some would say very fine guitars.
I played a lot with pickups on different guitars and besides my beloved Joe Bardens I can highly recommend this one.
Best versatile neck pickup ever.

I like this pickup very much and will definately keep this one for ever. (You know what I mean - some others come and go.)
I have been playing for nearly 30 years and more important played around a lot with pickups.
I like every single position of this PU.
Some say that the single sound is weak, but compare a single with a P90 and you find exactly this volume difference.
The good thing - this is the built in volume boost. Use it.
I am thinking about checking out the bridge PU too.
Value / prize ratio is really good.

More features than most pickups!

Hamer Newport Pro: spruce top on hollow mahogany body & neck, rosewood fingerboard, TOM/stoptail. Both positions installed with 4 mini switches (I was trying to get all possible combinations on each pickup individually -one switch is wired wrong, so I only get the rail and the P-90 on my neck pickup. The bridge one gives all 4 sounds).

Humbucker (series): Sound is a wee bit dark but has lots of output, more thana PAf but less than your usual distortion pickup Invader, Screamin' Dimebag, etc. Nice rock tones! A little more complex than most humbuckers but not as airy as a Seth.

Humbucker (Parallel): Parallel has less output and sounds vaguely PAF-ish. Brighter, lacks bass.

Rails: Not 100% real-sounding single coil tone but almost. A usable sound for sure. My axe is not a very good gauge for stratty tones because of the woods/construction. Very low output!

P-90's: Terrific tone here, pretty much makes the rails obsolete in my opinion because turning the volume down gives nearly the same tone. Obviously not as scooped, but I find the least difference is between the rails and the P-90's. The big difference is in the output.

Overall, the pickups sound great in every position. I really want to emphasize how they succeed in giving you an arsenal to work with without having to drag multiple guitars around. I bought these pre-ordered, so they're probably from the very first run that was released to the public. Yes, I was excited to try them, but I'm not such a newb that I was going to love them even if they didn't sound good. They delivered on the basic premise of offering multiple sounds. You may not find a use for all of them, and I am certain it depends alot on what instrument you put them in, but from what I hear it's all good. My guitar is very warm, but incredibly well-made. The Seth Lovers that came on the guitar were replaced with TV Jones Filtertrons because I often wanted less output (even though the Seths sound truly beautiful clean). I wanted to have the lively, open yet powerful tones this guitar deserves. Anyway, the search is over, largely because of the P-90 settings. Having the hum-canceling options helps alot too, and the power of the humbucker is just necessary at times. I find that the in-between settings with both pickups on is not something I would mess with, as the differences are subtle. I am going to rewire them for the 2-mini toggle switches. This way I will lose the independence of the neck & bridge pickups, but still get 4 sounds out of each pickup. I think this is a winner of a pickup design and recommend it. It doesn't do everything perfectly (except the P-90) but the versatility is a serious bonus that I don't think any pickup has really been able to deliver until now. I'm tempted to give them a 10 but I can see alot of people not liking some of the tones, especially if you have a guitar with peculiar hidden overtones (like all Floyd guitars sound weird to me in the high register).

One thing I should point out is that the neck pickup has loads of output and balancing it with the bridge was not so easy: bridge high, neck LOW.

Real smart design which easily could have not worked. I do feel that they pulled it off and deliver 4 serious musical tones out of one pickup. I have played a slew of pickups: Fralin, TV Jones, Harmonic Design, Van Zandt, Duncan, Fender, GFS, Lace, etc. I can honestly say that I know what I'm talking about whether you believe that or not. I'm not a professional musician, but a hopeless gearhead and an engineer by trade, so I am deep into the science of electric guitar. These pickups are not a gimmick and the price is super reasonable! A worthwhile investment in your axe if you ask me. My Hamer doesn't sound like a strat all of a sudden, but instead I get to choose the output/tonal contour to match what my guitar does acoustically to get a spectrum of sounds, all of them good quality tones and some of them exceptional.

P90 and rail pup side-by-side in a standard humbucker size. Passive, w/ 4-conductor wiring. They are kind of the opposite idea of a typical humbucker - two different single coil pickups that sound good alone, and you can combine them for humbucking.... whereas a humbucker seems to be designed to use as a series humbucker, and you get what you get otherwise. I lean more toward single coil tones, but I don't like hum when playing dirty, so these looked like a great option.

I put a matched pair in a '92 Peavey Impact (24 fret setneck, floating whammy, solid mahogany body. It had high output humbuckers previously. I changed because the others were too hot and it was hard to get a good clean sound. I used a Duncan schematic where 2 push-pulls control the pickup mode. The four combination let me get series humbucker, parallel humbucker, P90 coil, rail coil. Along with the 3-way selector, that yields 12 tones, 8 of which cancel hum.

The output level is similar to a PAF when in series humbucker mode, and more like a slightly hot single coil in the other modes.

The P90 mode sounds real nice and smooth. Not the best P90 tone ever, but right up there. Since it's not as long as a P90, I'd assume it sounds the same as a Duncan Phat Cat (which is a P90 in a humbucker size). The P90 coils are on the outside, so using them together gets a nice cross between a Tele and LP Special middle position sound (no hum, since they are RWRP).

The rail coils sound like decent strat pickups, and using them together (inside coils) gets a respectable no-hum quack tone. On this 24-fretter, they're probably a little closer together than they'd be on some guitars, which probably helps get more strattish.

The parallel mode sounds like a cross between the two single modes, maybe 75% P90 and 25% rail. It's a great choice for when you want a lower output, single coil type tone with no hum.

The series mode is loud and full like you expect a humbucker to be. The tone was smooth and pleasing on the neck. The bridge had a bit of midrange honk when using distortion ... but this is a new install and I might need some height adjustment. It worked well for distorted rock stuff. Good chunky power chords, and quiet.

I've been playing for almost 30 years, mostly rock, pop, blues, etc. Various amps from Peavey, Fender, Dean Markley. These pups get very high marks for versatility, especially for the single coil tones that it was made for. If the series humbucking tone was just a little better, it may have been a 10. I would buy again ... and I may for another guitar at some point.