5000 winds to 8K - something's not adding up

[Meowy]

Plus the more winds on a P-90 bobbin and the further the outside winds have to travel. In other words the outside winds have significantly more wire per wind.

If I use 6000 winds per bobbin I'm a little over 9k.

In order to get the "typical turns" on a PAF you would have to un-wind every single one of them and get an average. And since I'm fairly certain that hasn't been done I think what is said to be typical is a mix of original design specs and whatever actual measurements can be taken. I don't think there is anyone in the world who has un-wound enough PAF's to be considered a good sample size in statistical terms to make absolute statements about turn counts. Everything I have read seems to be of the "We planned it this way but who the hell knows what happened" variety. Seth Lover himself is vague on the whole issue.

On the other hand it could be correct and the great sounding ones that we all want to copy are atypical. So we get a skewed view of the entire picture.

Bingo! That's what I was trying to figure out. Which are the ones we want to replicate? Just as no one has taken enough apart to have a representative sample, neither has anyone listened to enough in similar acoustical environment, same instruments, etc to be able to establish a pattern of the spec wound vs overwound vs mismatched are the holy grail pickups.

So if even Seth, McCarty or others didn't know for sure then thry truly are a holy grail. Anything that Seymour Duncan, Fralin, Lollar et al know is at best second hand.

[David Schwab]

Bingo! That's what I was trying to figure out. Which are the ones we want to replicate?

This has been discussed many times right here!

PAF's are all over the place.. great sounding ones and not so great.

It's also so silly to listen to great old recordings by brilliant players and say "hear that? it's a PAF!".. yes and it's also the player/guitar/amp/studio.

Best we can do is make something that is similar in construction and sounds good.

[corduroyew]

yes Essex PE 42

I could be wrong, but isn't essex one of the companies dying poly black and calling it PE?

[EtLa]

I could be wrong, but isn't essex one of the companies dying poly black and calling it PE?

I was thinking the same thing? I remember something like black soderon