Hiya folks,
A long overdue review of my new Mississipi Queens ! I had originally ordered them to put i my '76 Gibson S.G. Standard - to commemorate removing it from comission sale, but when I heard what amazing things they could do - I just knew they belonged in my largely mahoghany based Semi-acoustic' (Tanglewood '335' copy ).
The reasoning was as follows:
They have this incredible ability to simultaniously fatten up the sound of the unwound strings, whilst adding great detail / clarity to the wound strings. In the S.G. this was a luxury - but in the 335 copy it was a necessity. With the 335 I had rather warm but very 'soft' ( both quiet and a liitle hazy ) bass response. The low 'E' in particular seemed to resonate at a frequency that got a bit lost in all the mahoghany. At first I had asked Tim to replace the Alnico II magnets in my Stormy Mondays with Alinico IV - and that did help. That pickup / magnet option however, leveled out the e.q to such a degree of purity that whilst I could now hear the bass reponse better in all my mahoghany guitars - I also lost a little thickness / sweetness at the top end.
Enter the Mississippi Queens ! Suddenly the 335 had this beautiful thick/ chewy but CLEAR top end ( as in Larry Carlton ) - and a defined , powerfull, yet sweet bottom end I never knew a pickup could bestow.
They are of course my first P90s of any brand, so they where bound to sound different, but the incredibly accurate balance between Alnico V bridge and Alnico IV neck ( with appropriate windings of course ) - means that both pickups can sit at the same gap from the strings, and change tonal qualities without changing volume. I know someone on here once said they did not like the way that a M.Q. bridge and neck sound similar - but I love it .
The best way to ( try ) and describe it is that with my B.K.P humbuckers, the bridge pickup was sounding constonants, and the neck pickup vowels. With the M.Qs, both where now making vowel sounds , but the "aahhh" came from the neck pickups - and the "oooohh" from the bridge.
This was the most remarkable manifestation of mellow but powerful I had ever heard. The pickups sounded great at any pickup / string gap from 1mm to 5mm - just a different character, any colour you want ...
Rest assured you Rock Gods out there, with the M.Qs set lower down, and / or the E.Q settings altered - I can imagine these have the power and tone to really 'Rock Out' - plenty of push and 'ooomph' hidden behind those polite chrome covers !
However, for my mellow ( but powerfully clear ) purposes, I found the sweet spot to be 1/16" ( 1.6mm ) between polepiece top and underside of strings as held down at the last fret. These really are responsive though, you get a different sound with even as little variation of height setting as 1mm, 1.6mm and 2mm ! . At 1/16" I had incredible thick / chewy / clear tones at the top and a clarity in the bass which even enabled me to put nickel strings on a mahoghany guitar and still get that 'zing' when I needed it.
If I could get 3 variations in tone ( all good ones ! ) between 1 and 2mm, then imagine how versatile they sounded when experimenting between 1 - 5mm !
My formerly mumbling low 'E' string now sounds like it has had elecution lessons - and I find it hard to put the guitar down ! In the context that I use them , I have never , ever heard such tonal flexibility, even form my beloved Stormy Mondays - and that really is saying something ...
Thanks again to Tim ( A.K.A ' mind reader' ) for recommending them to me - and the kind people on this forum that offered advice about their own M.Q.s - and Twinfan for guiding me past the ( very tempting ) 'Riff Raffs' - and onto my dream pickups .
( * Bliss * ) ...
8)
