Until this year, I had never played a guitar loaded with P90 pickups. Also I had never been very interested in trying anything outside of the Fender guitar family. So trying to find a Fender guitar with P90 pickups can be a challenge. After some quick searches, this Player Series Mustang looked like a good option.

There’s some debate out there whether or not a P90 style pickup made outside of the Gibson realm is actually a true P90. For the sake of this article, let’s say it’s a P90 and leave it at that.

After deciding on trying the Player Mustang 90, I purchased the guitar through Sweetwater. This was the first guitar that I bought from them. I’m in Canada, but this model wasn’t available anywhere locally. Check out my unboxing and initial impressions video here:

SPEC’D OUT

Here are some of the specs you will find with the Mustang 90:

• Alder body with gloss polyester finish

• Mustang MP-90 pickups (Alnico 5 magnets)

• C-shaped neck profile

• 9.5"-radius fingerboard with Medium Jumbo Frets

• 6-Saddle Strings-Through-Body Strat® Hardtail with Bent Steel Saddles

I’m more familiar with playing Telecasters and Stratocaster, so the Mustang was a unique experience. The shorter scale length and slim body made the guitar feel a bit smaller than I’m used to playing. I can’t say for sure, but some people have described this model as feeling similar to a Gibson SG. I may have played an SG in the past, but I don’t recall the similarity. An SG has a very thin profile as well, so I can understand the comparison.

With the shorter length and slimmer body, the guitar also felt super light. The model I bought weighed in just around 7 lbs. This would be ideal for someone looking for a smaller, lighter guitar. I’m cool with anything between 7 and 8.5 lbs. Any beyond that starts to feel too heavy for my liking.

What’s the Deal P90 Pickups Anyways?

So what is the big appeal with P90 pickups? There are definitely pros and cons to these pickups. First of all they have the appearance of a humbucker, but they are in fact a single coil pickup. The best way to describe them is raw and loud. They maintain the clarity of a single-coil, but provide a boost is tone, especially when driven with distortion or overdrive pedals. Now that may sound great, however the drawback is that they can also attract a log of unwanted noise. I don’t tend to play with really high gain, so this was not an issue for me, but it definitely could be for someone that likes to play with a lot of dirt in their amp. So keep that in mind, they are great sounding pickups, but they can be too noisy for some people.

I spent a good amount of time playing the guitar and checking out all the features. Check out my full deep dive video review for more details on all the specs and measurements. You’ll also get to hear the guitar played with clean and dirty tones through a Fender Princeton Reverb.

So to sum things up, my first P90 experience was very positive. They are a unique sound that is definitely worth checking out. If you are huge Fender fan, your options are pretty limited to which models are loaded with these pickups. I still feel like these pickups are the underdog in a world full of humbucker and traditional single coil pickups.