Gearhead
Took a leap of faith, floss wire, bent pliers, half inch spanner and so forth and started disassembling my ES135. Why?
Firstly, being stubborn by nature, I have made it into one of my mottos to not pretend for too long that all the others are crazy. In this case, all the others are forums across the globe and the being crazy is about leaving the stock P100 pups in the guitar - they are not very lively to say the least and they must be replaced by proper P90s.
Secondly, more peer pressure. Several forumites can change their semi hollow harnesses, so I can do that, too. Only yesterday I was explaining to Psyx that it is an awful job and that I wouldn't. I heard myself say it out loud and thought what a wuss I was.
Thirdly, I tend to consider guitars as stuff that comes and goes and I wouldn't get my money back for the pupgrade on this ES135. The new thought is to keep her for long time, enabling me to overcapitalise on her.
Anyway, as Hamlet would argue, when it is done it's done. Most of the harness is inside the body now, with a promise-to-self that it would come back out. I reckon it will not come out through the F-holes, rather through the pickup holes. The neck block is way further to the treble side and the mount plate of the P90s seems to be designed to be removed to expose a big opening on the bass side. Out it will come.
Now the wonderful P90s that I bought a while ago both come out of solidbody guitars and I notice that the wire on them is never going to be long enough. Will have to be replaced. Hence the question, where in Joburg does one get Gibbo harness wire? Someone with some leftovers from an earlier harness swap maybe? Please? Alternatively, I guess I will have to put nonstandard coaxial wire, which will be looking unprofessional ☹
Gearhead
Ag I'm stupid. Never mind the wire folks, I will just solder the new pups to the old wire. Could have thought of that earlier, but my brain seems to be aware it's long weekend.
Gearhead
So.. From the looks of it these pups are all designed to have the wire soldered to them at a later stage. Convenient, maybe I should have known that...
THESE P90s HAVE BALLS! The guys at MyLesPaul are right, Gibson are a lot better at making nonstacked pups, wow what a diference. P100s anyone? They should work nicely in high gain setups I guess...
AlanRatcliffe
+1. It's hard to beat the standard Gibson P90s for the raunchy classic rock P90 sound. The sweeter, brighter sound of the '50s pups The Lollar and Fralin do a better job though.
Shout if you still want some proper cloth/braided screen wire, I have aabout 1.5m lurking...
Gearhead
I still plan to finish an LP Special build I was working on, now considering putting stacked P90s of some fancy aftermarket brand. For rock you need gain and for gain you need a silent guitar. This ES135 is for the clean/ lo gain tones as far as I am concerned, with the P90s it's not humming too badly atm. One happy chappy...
