Mojo p90’s in my Epiphone Casino

This guitar was a wedding gift from Emily.

She got an Epiphone Casino and modded it before giving it to me — Bigsby, bone nut, upgraded tuners. It wasn’t an off-the-shelf thing; it had already been thought about. By the time all that was done, though, the budget ran out before getting to the pickups, so I received it with the stock ones still in it.

They were dark, muddy, and very high output. Everything felt pushed forward and compressed. That’s probably fine for some people, but it isn’t how I tend to play. My reference points are more Telecaster and Gretsch - clarity, space, a bit of resistance under the fingers.

Over time, that mismatch meant I didn’t pick the Casino up as much as I should have. Which felt slightly strange, given where the guitar came from.

I spent a while thinking about custom pickups, talking to a few people, going round in circles. Eventually I spoke to Marc at Mojo Pickups, and that conversation cut through things quite quickly. No overthinking, no chasing something unusual, just his Classic P90 dogear set, done properly.

While I was at it, I made a couple of visual changes. I went for black plastic dogears to shift the look slightly, and added a bound black scratchplate. I’d previously gone for the no-guard look, but this felt more settled, more intentional.

The difference once the pickups were in was, of course, immediate.

The guitar now sounds open and clear. It responds to how you play rather than flattening everything out - you can sit back and it stays calm, or lean in and it gives you more back. It works just as well for lead lines as it does for sitting on open chords. Mostly, though, it just feels easy now. There’s no sense of fighting it, compensating or just trying to get it to work. I find myself picking it up absent-mindedly and playing longer than I meant to.

The pickup swap didn’t turn the Casino into a different guitar, it just removed the last thing that was getting in the way, which, in hindsight, was all it ever needed.