Vintage Vibe Guitars Soapbar P-90

single coil p90 type, bridge postion, 10.8K, AINiCo V

I bought this pick up for use in a Custom Schecter special it came with Seymour Duncan stacked p90s. The neck pick up sounded quite good for a stacked p 90 but the Bridge pick up was too bright and strident and it did not compliment the neck pick up in any useful way.

output level is moderate. I play heavy rock/blues through Fender vibrolux and Princeton Amps with a tube screamer, wah and a bit of delay from time to time.
Pick up sounds much like its name implies. Great balance and very good clarity meaning no muddiness on the bass end, clean and not too bight on the treble end, very good articulation and dynamics.

I would buy this again in a heartbeat; I have been playing 30+ years. My main guitars are Parkers & Strat types with some modifications here and there. The Schecter is a recent back up so it was very nice to be able to get the exact tone I was after using this pickup. The service from Pete Biltoft was extraordinary as well. I sent him a detailed e-mail of what I was after and sent back recommendations that applied to my needs. The pick up came with an extra set of magnets as well (I bought a 2nd extra set as well, AII and AIII were my choices as spares) so you can fine tune your sound, Great idea by the way. The only downside is that I will now have to get the matching neck pick up from Pete!

Vintage Vibe stock bridge P90 ( Alnico V )
single coil, passive, wound at about 10.3k

I put the pickup in a Godin LG in the bridge position, replacing a SD Custom 3 soapbar P90. The SD was much too over wound, lifeless, ceramic, etc.

Pete's bridge P90 is pretty hot, which gives me a lot of gain staging options: I can go from clean melodic finger picking, to "Day Tripper," to "Mississippi Queen" all with the volume knob. I think it could cover punk and other rock styles too-- everything but nu-metal (duh). Despite being hot, the clean tone is still balanced and defined, thick with top end sparkle, and does arpeggios well. Blues and heavy rhythm players should probably look into the neck pup (don't have; can't comment).

Pairs perfectly with a tube amp that is voiced like a Vox; and no cheap crap, I'm talking all hand wired here with a boutique speaker-- if you don't top gear...uh...then the pickup probably isn't going to make much of a difference.

Pete was great to work with; I would definitely buy again.
My SD's are the same price and are factory machine made crap-- that makes these hand wound pickups a steal. AND WITH PETE'S PICKUP I CAN SWAP OUT AND TRY DIFFERENT MAGNETS. He even threw in extra magnets-- Alnico 3 and Ceramic to try. Been playing 13 years.
Great product; great service, More than satisfied. Blah Blah-- go listen to the sound clips on his website. Peace.