Tesla: P-90 humbucker

If you think I'm trying to pull a fast one on you by saying those pickups in my Yamaha RGX-A2 are Tesla humbuckers but they actually aren't- here's a closer look at the Tesla label on the pickup cover. These are actually prototypes, not in standard production yet but Mike (SV Guitars) were given a complementary set so I have to (strongly) convince him to sell them to me because I need them. He he... This is the reason why you can't see them at the official Tesla homepage.

DiMarzio has the DLX series pickups for the job but I'm not too keen on them (I've heard them in action in one of my LPs before like more than a decade ago, that was before my cat died) because I know they won't appeal to me in terms of tone; I prefer Tesla's crunch in drive settings. I just wanna give these Tesla a try & they get my thumbs up.

Yummy Tesla

My new Tesla pickups went into my Yamaha RGX-A2. First impressions:

• Much brighter responses from both units. The default Yamaha pickups were acceptable but they lack that extra edge at the top end & the neck definition suffered the most. This neck model manifested a more appealing clarity which complements my playing.
• Distortion! My main gripe with the default Yammy pickups was the fact that they sounded fantastic clean but were under-performing with drive/distortion dialed up & I do lots of distortion. There was indeed a need to replace those default pickups & this Tesla pair did the job real well in this application. I've yet to try them with pedal distortion, this will happen soon. Hopefully.

Thanks, Beez for the fantastic job once again!