Review: Lollar Pickups P-90 Staple

I’ve been a huge fan of Lollar Pickups and in fact, I have Lollar Special T Series pickups in both my custom Telecaster and Esquire guitars because these pickups breathe depth and transparency into my tone. I also own a Les Paul Junior that could use an upgrade to better pickups.

So, when I heard Lollar introduced the P-90 Staple pickup, a neck pickup specifically, I just had to try it out.

The Lollar P-90 Staple is a direct replacement neck pickup only that fits almost any soapbar P-90 routed guitar. Based on the original “staple” neck pickup found in mid-Fifties Gibson Les Paul Customs and their high-end archtop guitars, its design employed six rectangular pole piece Alnico V magnets (similar to single coils) instead of dual bar magnets beneath the coil like a P-90 pickup.

Here, Lollar hand-bevels the rectangular Alnico V pole piece magnets, which are non-adjustable, for the P-90 Staple pickup. It has an output of 8.9K, and also features 42 gauge coil wire, braided shield wire and is available in black, white or cream soapbar style covers.

Using a Collings 290 guitar with the Lollar Staple in the neck and a Lollar P-90 in the bridge, I plugged into a Supro Black Magick amplifier and fired away. The Lollar bridge has all the desirable snarl, rounded bass and biting treble, and sounded ferocious. But there’s no comparison, the Lollar Staple just sounds glorious in the neck position. The Staple is louder, woody to the point of sounding flute-like, and so incredibly articulate and full that I found myself using it more than the bridge because the note-definition is spot-on. It’s such a stunner of a pickup that I’m hoping Lollar will create a Staple for the bridge position.

STREET PRICE: $145
MANUFACTURER: Lollar Pickups, lollarguitars.com