Dig it! Gibson LP Special p90 review

gtrjunior

Wannabe
I got the same case that Punk Kitty did (no surprise there). It's actually a really nice case despite the fact that it's gold...
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It's got a no frills layout with no binding on the body but it does have one on the neck. One vol, one tone and a 3-way. The wood grain is nice and the paint job is also nice. There are no glaring issues in that department.
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The bridge is different than I've seen. It doesn't seem to have adjustable saddles, rather a "preset" string length. It doesn't seem to be a problem as the intonation is good all the way up the neck. I haven't checked it with a tuner but it sounds good by ear.
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It has the G-Force tuning system.
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I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. In theory, the concept is awesome. In practice, so far I'm not 100% sold on it yet.
I know the strings are probably not fully stretched and of course it needed to adjust to the humidity changes. However, sometimes it goes right into tune perfectly and other times I don't know wtf it's doing! I watched some YouTube vids and apparently you can manually tune like a regular guitar say, you're on stage and your G string needs a tweak....but the robot tuners are pretty stiff to try to turn by hand and I'm not convinced it's doing much when I turn them. It doesn't work like a regular tuner when you do it by hand....that said, I need to spend more time figuring out its idiosyncrasies.

The neck is in fact wider and slightly flatter than my Standard 60's slim taper. The Standard is more comfy to me but I'm very used to it. The Special was pretty easy to adjust to as well, it just took a bit of playing time and before you know it you're not thinking about it anymore.
The neck p90 sounds fantastic both under gain and clean. It has a really nice "chub" when playing single notes with gain and on the clean channel has a great low end with plenty of power and no farting out.
The bridge pup is good, not great. It gets the typical p90 snarl but for my tastes is just a bit high end-y. I'd like something just a little warmer. Easy fix if I decide to swap pickups eventually.
All in all it's a really good guitar! It's not going to replace my Standard as my #1 but it's definitely going to have a place in the arsenal!
 
Last edited:
HnGD

When I had a SG Classic, I liked rolling a little bit of the top end off the bridge w/ the vol knob.
I do use the volume knob to decrease gain and to "lighten" the tone etc, but I like to get my desired tone with it full open and then roll off when needed.
 
I do use the volume knob to decrease gain and to "lighten" the tone etc, but I like to get my desired tone with it full open and then roll off when needed.
Derp, that should have been tone knob...just to take a little high end off the bridge pickup.
 
Congrats. Looks like a real rock 'n roll machine and nothing wrong with a gold case. Chub tone for the win. Like "Popa Chubby" like "GtrJunior Chubby."
 
Your thread just inspired me to take out my LP Special P90 last night (I've mostly been playing my teles lately). One thing I love about the P90s -- it's almost impossible to find an amp setting that DOESN'T sound good with them!
 
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