Tweet
Its kind of an unfortunate myth that PAF's were ever considered "hot" pickups, they never were. If you get one of the hottest of the old PAF's, 9.2K is the hottest one I had here, they lose some treble and don't sound as loud as the 7.5K range ones that were actually wound to the official recipe. PAF magnets were always very weak, another reason they were never hot. Compared to a Tele pickup I guess you might say they were hotter, warmer for sure because you have two coils sensing two different spots on the strings, two outputs. Guitar players often think that bright cutting pickups are "hot" when they are actually normal or even low powered. A guy brought a '55 era LP into the jam once, and after playing commented how insanely "hot" his pickups were, so I measured them on the spot. They were P90's of course and were about 7.6K ;-) PAF's are great up to about 8K then things start to get lost after that, P90's can go a little hotter and get away with it, but most of them hit 8K or under.
Comment