Question About The Supermassive P90

[rambleon]

Hi guys, I've been lurking for a bit and this is my first post here.
So I'm putting together a Les Paul Jr. double cutaway, and based on clips I've heard I feel that the Supermassive would work well for me. This is will be my first single pickup guitar and I like that the SM is a little heavy on the mids, which should help me cut through well.
My only concern is noise. I know being a single coil pickup, there's bound to be some hum, especially with gain/ OD pedals engaged. However, anyone here found the SM to be excessively noisy, especially in live situations? The most gain-heavy pedal I have on my board is a Catalinbread Katzenkonig, which is kind of an amalgamation of a Rat and a Tonebender fuzz. I don't have the gain set too high on that pedal but enough to make it sound gnarly.
Any opinions would be most helpful!

[Kiichi]

I generally find single coil type pickups from BKP to produce less noise than other firms. That includes the supermassive. To me, it is very manageable if no other part of your chain also adds noise.

Agent Orange always notes and strongly recommends shielding. He had a bit too much noise for his taste until he improved the shielding of the guitar. So that helps a lot.

[Telerocker]

You're putting a LP Jr. together and you worry about the P90's hum? A genuine Junior has P90's and yes, they do hum a bit, although BKP's are relatively quiet. But never so quiet as a humbucker.

[johnny_rock_it]

I think with any single coils and P90 you have to just expect the hum to be there. Just an inherent quality to the pickup.

You can always put a noise gate if you want to get rid of it while you're not playing.

[rambleon]

I generally find single coil type pickups from BKP to produce less noise than other firms. That includes the supermassive. To me, it is very manageable if no other part of your chain also adds noise.

Agent Orange always notes and strongly recommends shielding. He had a bit too much noise for his taste until he improved the shielding of the guitar. So that helps a lot.

That sounds promising. This will be my first P90 guitar...most of my other guitars have HBs so I wanted to make sure I wouldn't need a noise gate on my pedalboard :). The regular 60 cycle hum doesn't bother me, but some P90s can be quite noisy, specially in places with fluorescent lighting.

[rambleon]

I think with any single coils and P90 you have to just expect the hum to be there. Just an inherent quality to the pickup.

You can always put a noise gate if you want to get rid of it while you're not playing.

Like I just posted, I'm ok with the usual single coil hum...just wanted to make sure these weren't excessively noisy because of the higher winds.

[Kiichi]

All a bit eye of the beholder, but I feel that my SM is less noisy than a standard gibson type. Havenīt gotten to do a proper comparison though. Main thing might be that a SM is often used under more gain, which means more compression, which in turn also makes hum seem more. But even then....again BKPs are clean. To be fair, most botique makers are fairly clean. Still, I just feel pretty great about these.

Again though, shielding, good power supply, isolated cables, etc. all play more into it with a P90 and such than a HB. Just simple addition in the end.

Bottomline: I am fairly sure you will be fine and get a great dirty rock sound with proper character.

[Dave Sloven]

I generally find single coil type pickups from BKP to produce less noise than other firms. That includes the supermassive. To me, it is very manageable if no other part of your chain also adds noise.

Agent Orange always notes and strongly recommends shielding. He had a bit too much noise for his taste until he improved the shielding of the guitar. So that helps a lot.

I think there is a difference between HSP-90 and P-90 pickups.  The metal cover of the HSP-90 provides some shielding.  Mine is a Stockholm in P-90 soapbar format

And yeah it is noisy with flourescent lighting like in one of our practice rooms.  Thankfully gigs are generally dark with no flouros

[rambleon]

Thanks guys....hopefully this guitar will be ready in a week or 2. I have a Supermassive dogear waiting 
And while I'm at it, here are a couple of pictures of the build in progress. I'm using wudtone for the finish and have a few more coats of clear left before I glue the neck on.

[Dave Sloven]

Have you glued in a neck before?  If not, I would strongly recommend taking it to a good luthier for that part of the process.

I have a friend who put together an Explorer from a kit and while everything else was easy he stuffed it all up when he glued in the neck

[rambleon]

Have you glued in a neck before?  If not, I would strongly recommend taking it to a good luthier for that part of the process.

I have a friend who put together an Explorer from a kit and while everything else was easy he stuffed it all up when he glued in the neck

This is my first set neck build, I've built a couple of teles with bolt on necks before this. I did a dry fit of everything when I first got the kit, and I'll do another before the actual glueing. Everything came together well in the first dry fit. Since it's a well cut kit I should be able to manage. And I do have a friend on hand who's done a few LPs with glued necks with good results.

[_tom_]

I had a humbucker size pig 90 and didn't find it any noisier than my humbuckers tbh, even at gig volume. My amp I'd quite noisy though so that could have been masking it.

[Kiichi]

Also as Agent Orange noted, the HB sized P90s are a bit quieter because of the metal adding shielding. Not a huge difference though.

[johnny_rock_it]

HSP SM90s are the next pick ups I plan on getting....... Once I find a decent guitar to put it in.

Damn the BKPs are so addictive because they're so good.

[rambleon]

And this sucker's done! It was a little late by the time I finished wiring the SM P90 so I haven't had a chance to really put the pickup through its paces yet. Really looking forward to doing that this weekend!