Swap Out Your Humbuckers! Lollar Pickups Novel Foil & Novel 90

Swap Out Your Humbuckers? You've gotta try the Lollar Pickups Novel Foil & Novel 90!

One of the key components of my tone journey on guitar was my discovery of Lollar pickups. I have Lollars in every single non-vintage guitar that I own, and I’m constantly blown away by their quality, tone, feel, sparkle, body… I could go on.

Another one of my favorite companies in the music space is Prisma guitars. Prisma make amazing instruments using really interesting materials, among them reclaimed hard rock maple from skateboard decks! An amazing and sustainable design element, from the minute I saw Prisma’s offerings I knew I had to have one dating back to NAMM 2017 or so. A couple years back, I was planning out my first build from Prisma and going back and forth on specs with owner and designer Nick Pourfard.

At the time I was lacking any Guitars with humbuckers, and so I really wanted to take the success I had had with Lollar pickups in my single coil Guitars and try out the humbucker side of the aisle. This time around I was fixated on his sunset model, which is a beautiful Offset Design named after the district in San Francisco, where he used to operate before we locating to San Diego a couple years ago. I’ve been playing Lollar low wind imperial humbuckers and this guitar since I got it, with a treble bleed on the volume potentiometer and I’ve really enjoyed it however overtime as I’ve gotten to understand the different pedigrees of guitars out there, I began to grow curious when I realized that most solid body alder guitars don’t expect to see humbuckers, and of course I know in the space there is no manual and no wrong way to do it, if it sounds good it is good.

But I wondered what if I could put some other pick ups into this guitar and hear how they combine with the Tonewood and see if there are any other interesting fits out there? The only obstacle on my way was that the routes for humbucker routs.

So imagine my enthusiasm when I discovered that Lollar actually makes a series of diverse pick up styles but in a Humbucker rout compatible form factor which they call the “novel series.” Over the last series of years I’ve been growing to love gold foil pick ups as well as P 90s and I was stoked to see that they offer both of these species of pick ups as the novel form factor. Thanks a ton to Lollar for sending these pick ups over! So, I made an install video here where you can see the process of dropping these into a humbucker routed guitar (it’s very easy), but in this video we’re gonna be focusing on an A.B. comparison and I want you to let me know in the comments which configuration you like better, the Lollar low wind imperials humbucker‘s I originally had in the Prisma Sunset guitar versus the novel 90 Bridge and novel foil neck from Lollar. Honestly I love both sounds, but which would you keep in the guitar?

——

What if you could drop a Gold Foil or a P-90 directly into your humbucker-routed guitar — no routing, no modifications, no drama? That's exactly what Lollar's Novel Series makes possible. Welcome back to Edge of Breakup.

In this episode, I'm doing an A/B comparison between my original Lollar Low Wind Imperial humbuckers and the Lollar Novel Foil (neck) and Novel 90 (bridge) in my Prisma Guitars Sunset — a stunning offset guitar built from reclaimed hard rock maple skateboard decks in San Diego, California.

The Lollar Novel Series exists to solve a real problem: single-coil players with humbucker-routed guitars. Lollar developed the Novel lineup to bring their most popular single-coil pickup voices to standard humbucker footprints — same 2.75" x 1.50" housing, drop-in installation, zero routing required.

The Novel Foil in the neck is Lollar's Gold Foil design in humbucker form. 44-gauge wire wound around a rubberized ferrite magnet, DC resistance of 6.2K at neck. Crystal clear top end, massive harmonic overtones, wide dynamic range that pushes a tube amp into natural breakup. If you've heard Lollar's Gold Foil in a traditional mount, the Novel Foil delivers that same character in any humbucker-routed guitar.

The Novel 90 at the bridge is Lollar's P-90 voice in the same form factor — Alnico 2 magnets, 11.67K output at bridge, designed to deliver P-90 grit and power with a slightly more open, less mid-heavy character than a standard P-90. Clarity and chime without losing the bite. Touch-sensitive in exactly the way a great P-90 always has been.

Against those, the Lollar Low Wind Imperial humbuckers are the reference point — a lower-output PAF-style humbucker with a warm, round, vintage character that the Prisma Sunset has been wearing since it was built. Both configurations are genuinely compelling, and this video exists to let you hear exactly what switching from one to the other actually sounds like in a real guitar.

The Prisma Guitars Sunset is one of the most interesting guitar platforms available — offset body, San Francisco-neighborhood named, built from reclaimed hard rock maple skateboard decks by designer Nick Pourfard. Sustainable materials, boutique build quality, and a resonance that makes every pickup swap a meaningful experiment.

Which one would you keep? Let me know in the comments.