double Cream 59 paf

[David Schwab]

I remember seeing that Zemaitis looking bass before.. very cool. I always wanted one of those Zemaitis guitars.

There's a website dedicated to Fenderbirds... seems everyone wants the old nickel covered pickups and not the new Thunderbird Plus pickups. It can't be that hard for Gibson to make those pickups... they also messed up the LP Signature pickup on the Epi Jack Cassidy bass. Doesn't sound the same as the original. The Ripper pickups were very similar to the Thunderbird.

I'm enjoying this too... everything is valid when it comes to music... even if I don't like it. It's amazing all the variation people can come up with using the same 12 notes, wood, wire, and some magnets.

I just miss all the funky guitars from the 60's and 70's... things are a bit too homogenized now. I remember playing a Silvertone with gold foil DeArmond pickups and thinking "these are cool sounding single coils, and they don't sound like a Strat!"

The music business used to reward artist being different... now everything is too safe and categorized. Bah!

[NightWinder]

Stitches anyone?

[NightWinder]

Rambo- the last scene.....noone knows their getting chewed up......it just happens.

[David Schwab]

Now here's a novel use of Thunderbird pickups... I wouldn't have done this to a 1956 P-bass ... But then I've done some wacky mods to old basses (well in 1974 my 1972 Rick wasn't an old bass... )

(Mike Watt's bass)

[PoorMan]

Slug Coil Biased?

Interesting...

Nightwinder, madialex and Mystic all gave examples of amazing PAF tone with the slug coil wound hotter. I was under the impression that traditionally the screw coil was biased because biasing the slug coil can make a pickup muddy.

How say you?

[Spence]

Cutting through swathes of crap........

The screw side of a PAF type pickup is sometimes wound hotter. This is only because it's closer to the bridge so if you coil tap it, you'll be switching off the slug side. You need a little more power from the screwside then.

Another case for The Mythbusters

[mick]

It was wound hotter because fitting a cover tends to lose some treble , so the thinking behind it was that increasing the screw side winds would counteract this ,

Mick

[Ruel]

I am of the same thinking as Spence. If and when you make a coil tap, the screw coil should be hotter if you are to shunt off the slug coil.

[NightWinder]

Please note, this is what the actuall 59' read out at without a cover. I believe it would be up to you as your signature paf pickup and its design. What your findings/etc are, and what you settle on with your ears.
Traditional in the modern times of NOW, MAny humbuckers are poping up with a screw side with a high turn count. This is not uncommon.
I will Say this.....The differing of turns between the two.....are remarkablely unstable. Meaning, for a givin number of turns,wire awg, there IS a fine line to work with, and finding it is really hard, and sometimes a real bitch. If you are slightly off one way or the other.....the magic does not exist!!
Welcome to the forum to POORMAN. Its fun to hang out, but I wound'nt want to live here!!!! Ah, and your already in the mix with the famous PAF myths.....LOL good times man!

[NightWinder]

LOL funny shit Spence, AHhhahahah.

[NightWinder]

POOR MAN- This place is great for agood laughs too....Read the whole thread,,,,,,

[David Schwab]

It was wound hotter because fitting a cover tends to lose some treble , so the thinking behind it was that increasing the screw side winds would counteract this

An interesting note is the idea behind the humbucker was to have the exposed screw pole coil to pickup more of the strings than the covered slug coil, which would pickup more noise. (or course Lover says he originally didn't want any adjustable poles...)

This is still the premise with stacked humbuckers, where the bottom coil is more or less a dummy.

So it is interesting to think of each coil on a PAF style pickup as having a slightly different tone.

One experiment would be to have a trim potentiometer in parallel with each coil, which would then be used to fine tune the balance between the two. This has appeared in a couple of patents for stacked pickups (on one or the other coil) most recently by Kevin Beller of Duncan pickups. (pat 7166793) It's an interesting read.

[PoorMan]

Cutting through swathes of crap........

The screw side of a PAF type pickup is sometimes wound hotter. This is only because it's closer to the bridge so if you coil tap it, you'll be switching off the slug side. You need a little more power from the screwside then.

Another case for The Mythbusters

So much misinformation out there. I'm trying to learn. I've been doing tons of research, but I don't know what to believe. (I'm not saying I doubt you). I got my info from an interview with a very well respected winder.

[PoorMan]

Ah, and your already in the mix with the famous PAF myths.....LOL good times man!

Wonderful.

Sorry, I'm not trying to spread misinformation. I'm just a hobbiest trying to learn (that's why I asked). That info came from a very prominent and respected pickup winder.

[David Schwab]

That info came from a very prominent and respected pickup winder.

You'll find a lot of the winders mismatch their coils. So that much is true. And there are winders here who can tell you first hand what that does to the tone.

I pointed out one day that Gibson never mismatched their coils intentionally with the PAF's (Or any other pickup they made... not sure about the new ones, but I bet they don't).

So while it could be a good formula for a great sounding pickup, it really has nothing to do with a PAF, albeit maybe matching one particular pickup, that happened to have mismatched coils due to the winder not paying attention.

Not everyone here agrees with me on this, and that's ok.