Single – Cool 90 P90 NZ$199 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$173.04
Pair – Cool 90 P90 NZ$379 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas they’re GST free; NZ$329.57
Neck- 6.4 KOhms, 5.45H, Alnico II. Bridge 7.25 KOhms, 6.42H, Alnico II
The Cool 90 is a P90 pickup available in both Dogear and Soapbar. Designed with Jazz and Blues players in mind it produces a clear, full, well balanced tone. Never harsh, always full and musical.
The bridge pickup has an organic sound with a lower mid push ideally suited to dynamic lead lines and tight rhythm playing.
The neck pickup is clear and chiming with enough clarity to always be heard in the mix. It has that lovely woody tone especially in an archtop.
Table of Contents
For ‘full fat’ P90 tones have a look at our “Sassy” P90 pickup set.
Demos
Thanks to Brett Kingman over in Melbourne for this great demo.
Brett has played a few of my pickups and in May ’25 got in touch looking for a dogear P90 for his Tokai Les Paul Junior.
Here is what he said about it:
“I love my little Tokai Junior. It was relic’d by my friends Joel and Colin at Nepean Music and they fitted a Dimarzio Phantom in it.
That’s not a bad pickup but I really wanted a lower output affair – more of what a traditional P90 offers.
I had this conversation with another friend, Glyn Evans of Mr Glyn’s Pickups, who are located in the smaller paddock across the creek (New Zealand) and he said I should give his Cool 90 a shot. I did and I’m really impressed!
He even shipped it with a selection of 3D-printed height spacers so I could nail the nominal pickup height. Nice touch, Glyn! So, here it is – This one’s a keeper.”
Here’s a demo of the Cool 90 sent to me by one of my customers. Go check out his band – The Bull Kelp Surfers
Why Alnico II?
I use rough cast alnico II magnets in my Cool 90 set for its smooth, well balanced tone. My other P 90 pickups use the more conventional alnico V giving them greater attack and power but I didn’t want that with this pickup. Alnico II has a very balanced tonal range, the lows aren’t to boomy, mids are present but not too far forward and the highs are smooth. It is a magnet with less power than the alnico V so suited for less aggressive playing.
The Cool 90 Story
Like many of my pickups the this one started with a repair job. A customer sent be a faulty Gibson P90 out of a 1955 Les Paul Junior. Naturally, I took measurements and completely analyzed every detail of it. Unlike the information in the books (and internet) it had less windings and Alnico II magnets instead of Alnico V.
And what a great sounding pickup it was.
I decided to make my own version of it to compliment the ‘Sassy” P90 pickup I was already making. The Sassy has the classic “full fat” P90 tone, plenty of growl and cut through.
The idea was to make a lower powered version for the cleaner player. Still keeping the classic P90 character but with less grunt.
I experimented and tested and eventually came up with this design.
updated 13 October 2025
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I also make a humbucker size P90 set – the “Black Sand” if you need some P90 goodness in your humbucker guitar, here’s a link to them: https://mrglynspickups.com/2020/03/29/black-sand-humbucker-sized-p90-neck/
For a full range of demo videos of Mr Glyn’s pickups go to my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/MrGlynsPickups/featured