At the start of the summer, I was contacted by Alex Sorokin of Sorokin Guitars about doing a P90 for his Junior builds.
The thing that really got me into this project was the near psychotic attention to detail of these guitars, hand made in Canada too. I was pretty excited to collaborate with another Canadian that soaks-in the history and the details of what they were doing in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the 1950's.
After some back and forth, I sent some test winds of what I thought he was looking for, some tweaks here and there and another round of winding and testing and I think we nailed it. Alex explained that he's tried nearly every modern pickup available and this was the one.
The target tone was a 56 LP junior. Open, clear, gritty, fat when it needs to be, articulate, everything you want in a P90. I think this pickup landed right on the edge of just enough. A nice slab of mahogany and a Dog Ear pickup is such a great combination.
We split the difference between Alex's own '56 Junior and a '56 owned by a friend of mine....and each of us might explain they're the best sounding guitars they know of.
The SS90 uses 1018 carbon steel 5-40 Fillister head pole screws, A5 magnets, 42 Plain Enamel wire, a component combination I find works so well for my P90's.
We took the 9022 and 9077 models as the starting points for where we wanted to go with this pickup. Alex tested both in his guitars, decided the A5 9077 model was what the guitars called for and we went from there.
Similar to my 9077 model, the SS90 is wound for a bit more push and just a touch more low mids. Just a few more turns than the traditional 10,000. Hand tensioned into the traverse for my take on a linear, machine wound P90.
Alex explained that while doing repairs on a '52 Gold Top, he found orange cloth on the hookup wire of the factory P90, an interesting anomaly, so he had Luxe Radio & Musical Instrument Co create that wire and that's what we use on the SS90.
The orange wire is a detail reserved for Sorokin Guitars only, we'll be using standard issue braided shield with black cloth on non-Sorokin builds.
The SS90 wind is available as on option on the order page.