P90 tone without the avoiding 60hz hum noise! Using a second coil, these pickups buck the hum (like a humbucker), but retain their P90 characteristics.
he biggest reason your cheap P90 equipped guitar sounds poor is due to the use of ceramic magnets in the pickups. This isn't to say ceramic magnets can't be good in some pickups - they certainly are. But your cheap P90s are made to imitate vintage pickups which are very much incompatible with ceramic magnets. Even in middle of the road guitars you can find such pickups sometimes. These pickups are not made to sound good. They're made to make noise and save money. No P90 was made this way in the 50s when Gibson designed the first P90s. When they were first designed, they were designed to sound good, with alnico magnets.
Here's a set of P90 pickups with alnico magnets under each coils. These sit nicely between the ceramic rubbish that you can find stock in many low end guitars and boutique offerings which have been extensively tested and tweaked (such as our exclusive Alegree pickups). These use high end components, but are machine wound to a rough spec. You'll get yourself 70% of the way to a boutique offering for a fraction of the price. Anyone who says otherwise is simply kidding themselves.
The specs:
Resistance: 16k approx
Magnets: 2 x alnico 5
Brass soapbar baseplate
4 conductor output wires (for split/parallel wiring)
Wax potted for no microphonics
Pole spacing - 50mm neck, 52mm bridge
85 x 30 x 25mm (excluding pole screws, 28mm including)
Green hot, red/white soldered together and insulated, black + bare ground.