Melody Maker

Product Details

This is a P-90 replacement pickup designed to fit the original rout of vintage Melody Makers®—it is not intended for Melody Maker® reissues. You’ll get the same warm, full tone as our standard P-90 with the clarity and articulation associated with large single-coils from the late ‘50s. It is meant for use with our replacement pickguard (details below) and is made of buffed Forbon with no pickup cover.

Avg. DC: Neck 8.2K, Bridge 8.8K (Read about DC resistance)
Recommended Potentiometers: 500k
Recommended Capacitor: 0.022μF

Selecting The Correct Melody Maker Pickguard

For years, we’ve offered a Lollar P-90 for retrofitting vintage Gibson Melody Maker guitars. Because it’s larger than the original Melody Maker single-coil, this pickup comes with a few important caveats.

Firstly, this P-90 is not a suitable fit for newer Melody Maker reissues, unless you plan to enlarge the pickup cavity. Vintage Melody Makers were built with an oversize, oval-shaped pickup cavity that’s sometimes referred to as a “racetrack” rout. Our P-90 takes advantage of this extra space as a drop-in replacement, but the cutout in the stock pickguard is not large enough for our replacement pickup. To make installation as easy as possible, we offer replacement Melody Maker pickguards.

There are several different versions we make, as the Melody Maker varied quite a bit in terms of body style, single vs. dual pickup, and control spacing. It’s important to take a few steps to make sure you’re ordering the right version to ensure a correct fit.

If you have the SG-style body, there are only two versions: single or dual pickup.

If you have the Les Paul-style body:

1. Is your guitar single or dual pickup?
2. Verify if you need version A or B for the control spacing. There is an A and B version for both single and dual pickup guitars.

PLEASE NOTE: Though the A and B versions look similar, the control spacing is slightly different—they are not interchangeable.

To determine if you need version A or B, we recommend printing the templates we provide and laying them over your guitar to verify the correct fit. When printing, make sure that you print actual size and do not use any sort of print scaling, which will change the printed dimensions. The templates have measurements included, so it’s a good idea to measure with a ruler to be sure the dimensions are correct and that your printer did not scale the template by mistake.

LP Style Single Pickup Version A

LP Style Single Pickup Version B

LP Style Double Pickup Version A

LP Style Double Pickup Version B

SG Style Single Pickup Version

SG Style Double Pickup Version

Please note that the pickguards can be ordered along with the pickups, but they are not available as a loaded/prewired assembly. Our Melody Maker pickguards are only available in single-ply black, and we are not able to accommodate custom requests or modifications to the versions we have.

It’s very important to order the correct version; we cut these one at a time and as such, they are not eligible for return or exchange. So as always, if you have any questions about fit, please feel free to contact our Customer Service team at info@lollarguitars.com or (206) 463 9838, and we’ll be happy to help.

Pickup Dimensions

Melody Maker P-90 Bridge Pickup