PAF Buffet

[Possum]

I thought I'd tone it down and was going to re-write it so deleted it, well what the hell, let it ride. Wolfe, I saw they botched your mention with the Dr. V's too. It was a bad job all the way around. Some products had the full 30 word descriptions, from builder's I never heard of, and some like me had their descriptions cut down to nothing. It looks to me like their production artist ran out of space and just started chopping text out randomly to make it fit, not very professional, and my description is not anything that I wrote that they asked me for.

They didn't use any of the Seth Lover interview I sent them, maybe because of copyright protection, it was from a Japanese book put out in the 80's, where Seth said they wound to inductance. Basically they just used an old interview they ran years ago and didn't put any real work into the article. It just amazes me a magazine thats about vintage guitars, that all they could come up with was something like this, about pickups that can sell for $10,000 for a primo condition set, the most desired, most expensive vintage pickups there are on the planet. Will we ever see a truly full article on these pickups that covers the technicalities, the reverse-engineering work, what is known about the PAF's documented in the most famous Les Pauls on classic recordings that made those guitars so expensive to own now days? Probably not. Hunter did a good job of describing what sets them apart from anything made since, he has his own band and is not a fantasy bed room player. I keep learning new things about these pickups, recently got a first year early 57 set that violated all the things I learned from all the other years, and recently found out what the specs of the Peter Green and Kossoff guitar PAF's were, which also was a huge surprise. Nobody really seemed interested enough to ask those questions in all the articles or posts on those two guitars, the sound of those guitars basically ARE the pickups, in a guitar with vintage hardware using specific metals in each spot, something Gibson abandoned a long time ago, and a hand crafted guitar using woods that really don't exist anymore. This stuff just fascinates me no end so I keep looking at it again and again when I think I'm done with it all. I have a 68 conversion in here at the moment and was surprised how close I can make my LP's match it just by machining my own hardware parts using the same metal alloys the vintage guitars used, the hardware was a big piece of that picture. I got a vintage ABR1 bridge for research and it sounds nothing like any modern ABR1.
Anyway, Vintage Guitar Magazine is what it is, oh well. The last article they did was about the same, except they did a review, and amazingly they took the covers off all the entries, thinking it would "level the playing field," boy there were some mad pickup guys when that came out, LOL.

[RedHouse]

Oh whew! thought I was going crazy ...(er)

Was interesting to read your experience with the magazine.

[Possum]

They are good people at VG, just wish they had more of an interest in the historical pickup world. It really is aggravating when they feature some cool old guitar and say nothing about the pickups, its because they know nothing and don't seem to have any interest in our world. I was shocked when they did a video with Erlwine on the Bloomfield Tele and he actually measured the pickups! Oh well, life goes on, we do what we do....

[kayakerca]

Not from an issue of VG but I always enjoyed this read.

Vintage Gibson PAF Pickups

But then again, when you know as little as I do, everything is an interesting read.

[Mark Hammer]

My experience with Ward Meeker has been only positive. He has responded positively to pretty much everything I've ever sent in, so considered me biased. Probably about 8 years back, I sent in an e-mail letter in response to the court decision that settled the PRS Single-Cut lawsuit in PRS' favour, instead of Gibson. Ward liked my take on it, and responded within about 10 minutes, telling me he had forwarded my note on to George Gruhn. Twenty minutes later, I hear from Gruhn, and we exchange a few notes. Two years later, I was in Nashville for work, took George out for lunch, and we had a great old chat.

There are many days when I'm not all that sure that any of the folks who do gear reviews in any of the magazines (not just VG, but GP, PG, and others) are that technically aware. Dave Hunter is one of the more technically astute writers, I agree. Although I quite enjoyed his pickup book, his effects pedal book is pretty poor. The interviews are a great read, but Hunter's own text is terrible, chock-a-block with misleading information. You know how Charlie Brown would always get a stomach ache listening to Lucy's explanations of things? That's how I felt reading Hunter's pedal explanations. Amps and pickups are another matter. He seems more on familiar and comprehensible turf there.

[WolfeMacleod]

Wolfe, I saw they botched your mention with the Dr. V's too. .

Well, to be fair, the pickups that they had gotten were not mine, they were "Rick Norman Pickups" that they attributed as being the "Dr. Vintage" models. Rick does not make "Dr. Vintage" pickups at all, I do. So it's not like they thought my name was Rick Norman. They thought he produced MY model.
I never sent them any pickups, I didn't know about the article coming at all.

[Possum]

My experience with Meeker was quite different. I sent him a proposed rough article on my 15 years of PAF research and reverse-engineering. After all they are called "vintage" guitar magazine, right? No answer at all. So I wrote him again and said did you get it, was it too technical? He wrote back and said it was too technical and it was obvious he had zero interest in the subject at all, was not friendly in any way, and did not reply to my follow up email, which left a sour taste in my mouth. To them Seth Lover is the only true source of information worth using, but the real truth is that Seth Lover knew very little about the technical details of what Gibson actually produced, or what changed during the years they were produced. All he knew was they used "soft iron" and that they didn't build his actual design, which was a double slug pickup. I don't think VG even knows that.
About what I expected to be honest. They toe a very narrow line of interests and thats the end of that story. But you know thats guitar magazines in general. Not surprising at all they butchered the mention of Wolfe. Guitar mag articles are low information, aimed at low attention readers or focus on selling products for their big advertisers. Pickup ads in VG basically don't produce income, I ran ads for years and when I stopped running them my sales didn't change one bit, plus or minus.

Dave Hunter's books vary, his amp book is one of the best and when I was learning to build amps his book was a great resource among several other well known books as well. I have his pedal book and a couple others, I'm not a pedal guy so can't comment on how good it was, his descriptions of pedals I grew up with that are now worth hundreds of dollars were spot on, but the rest I have no clue about. His strength lies in that he builds stuff himself, he builds amps, is fascinated by technical things, and actually plays the guitar competently. His pickup book is quite good, but you're not going to find out any real technical information on historical pickups in it, or any other book for that matter. HIs Les Paul book is a beautiful work of art, really well designed, recommended.

[Mark Hammer]

The pickup book was quite good, I thought. Fair and balanced, and providing as much information as makers were willing to provide (i.e., whatever was missing was not his fault or the publisher). A decent read.

The pedal book had some good spots, but the technical info was simply awful. Indeed, for whatever reason, the technical diagrams and schematics used to illustrate how different effects worked were dreamt up, made no sense, and were often labelled with chips that simply don't exis (and never did). I don't know who to blame for that.

For whatever sins VG may have committed, whether against you or anyone else here, Hunter has regular articles and provides some nice analyses of older amps that CAN get "technical" from time to time, exploring why something sounds the way it does, rather than just the fact that it sounds different.

In general, gear reviews are probably why I take blood pressure medication. I'll bet you didn't know there isn't a single piece of gear ever sent in to a guitar magazine for review that wasn't absolutely amazing and deserving of a meticulous search through the thesaurus for superlatives.

[JGundry]

The Vintage Guitar PAF Buffet was just that, a laundry list of pickups that look like PAF's. It's good exposure but I never expect anything from articles, shootouts, etc.. The one thing you can count on with the definitive PAF review is, there will always be another one in 6 months.

[salvarsan]

In general, gear reviews are probably why I take blood pressure medication. I'll bet you didn't know there isn't a single piece of gear ever sent in to a guitar magazine for review that wasn't absolutely amazing and deserving of a meticulous search through the thesaurus for superlatives.

Agreed. (cue up the Sam Kinison scream).

In a mature industry, technical improvements are at the point of diminishing returns and reviewers know it. It's not that the Emperor has no clothes -- although the quality of finish is consistently very high, his fashion style has changed little over the last two decades.

I sympathize with their situation somewhat, but when I see a reviewer's effusive florid prose about how <attribute> simply explodes! from a <product>, I want to introduce them personally to some Class B fireworks.

Given such a lack of distinction, I have no doubt that publishers pad magazines with machine generated reviews. For a representative sample, check out the Little League reports in <yourTown>.patch.com

[Possum]

I seldom even buy guitar mags anymore, they grab you with cheap "grab you" images, usually Hendrix or Page, you buy it on impulse, take it home and there's nothing to read you didn't already know. If I see an interesting product in a guitar mag raving about what a game changer it is blah blah, I'll go on youtube and find a demo of it, and google reviews and look for the WORST thing anyone has said about it, because thats likely where you'll find the truth. Good example is this pedal that creates a band behind you in your chosen genre, the official product demo looks really good, but you know darn well you'll be bored with it after fifteen minutes, when a good jam CD collection that sounds like a real band is way better money spent.

As for there being another good PAF review, I don't think we'll see another one after what Hunter did, and there never was a good one before his. When you got TQ reviewing an actual 59 double white PAF set and saying how terrible it was to play them, you know something is missing there. Having HAD a real 59 double white PAF set here for a couple months, anyone who wasn't in love with them after they settled down from not being used for a couple years, needs to take up the accordion. The problem is there's never been a reviewer of PAF replicas who has actually known diddley about them, couldn't describe what they are if their life depended on it, and believe me, they have distinct differences that all modern products don't have. They just think they are "humbuckers," and thats all they hear. The worst are the "PAF shootouts," full of handwinders and kit builders and voting players who never played the real thing. I've seen two like that where a vintage PAF was included in the mix without anyone being told, and they never score at the very top where they should be. Hunter was the only guy I've seen who actually owns real PAF's, knows exactly what they are and why they aren't like anyone's modern humbuckers, and is able to describe in detail why they are different and so delicious. Two of the guys in that review were one whom I helped get started and one who obviously was following the path I originated back in 2007 with the first look into vintage steel at the advice of Joe Gwinn. Dave liked those guy's pickups but, a friend of his told me he couldn't wait for the article to be finished so he could put mine back in his guitar, and promptly bought a set for himself. The fact that the HD's took top honors was a vindication for me, I won't be sending them out for any future reviews, because my customers are generally guys exactly like Hunter, and give me the same reviews Hunter did because they own or have extensively played vintage PAF's for years. So, its nice to have bragging rights and the exposure of a major magazine and author I respect who really understands what I do. I'm not even that much focused on making pickups anymore, next year I'll be able to relax a little more and not work as hard, even now I'm not pushing sales at all, just what comes in. Mine is an extremely small niche product that very few actually "get." I barely even make 50 sets a year because of the complexity and extremely tight specifications of what I'm doing, they couldn't be mass produced anyway, so am not much of a threat in the general scheme of things. The saddest thing to me it that PAF's aren't understood by 99.9% of guitar players because they have no first hand playing experience with them. The article I did for Burst Believers II was exactly on that subject with some myth busting mixed in. As close as I've been able to get, the worst thing to learn was that there are things that no one will ever get, can't be had, that only vintage originals will do, because only vintage materials and technology did those things.