Good PAF tone

[greenfingers]

I dont think voodoo pickups have A3 in both positions as standard, it's just in the neck. you can request it in both if you want, he usually puts in a A5 at the bridge.

My uncle just got hold of a Bravewood strat that has a set of voodoo single coils in and they sound very nice, I've never herd his humbuckers but would like too, just to quench my own curiosity.

[MattT]

Friend of mine has a Tele with Voodoo p'ups and the bridge p'up is fantastic IMO. But I've never owned a Tele and have only played a handful so I don't know Tele-tone. But playing that guitar got me lusting for a Tele ("hey...that's what I've wanted my Strat bridge p'up to sound like for 30 years!").

[greenfingers]

("hey...that's what I've wanted my Strat bridge p'up to sound like for 30 years!").

If you really want your guitar to sound like a tele there is only one think for it, Get a good tele The mount of the pickup is a piece of the sonic pie that the strat has missing along with other little things that make that sound you've been looking 30 years for,.... Man i was -1 years old when you started your search.

[David Schwab]

IThe mount of the pickup is a piece of the sonic pie that the strat has missing along with other little things that make that sound you've been looking 30 years for,.... Man i was -1 years old when you started your search.

I was 20...

But it's true!

Even this sounds like a Tele, and it's built more like a Les Paul. It's got to be that bridge.

[greenfingers]

wow, there are a lot of other guitar influences going on in that axe, i see a little bit of,les paul,strat,tele,a bit of jazzmaster or jaguar with the bound neck, i bet it was fun to make

[David Schwab]

wow, there are a lot of other guitar influences going on in that axe, i see a little bit of,les paul,strat,tele,a bit of jazzmaster or jaguar with the bound neck, i bet it was fun to make

You named them all, except the ES-335 lower cutaway! It also has martin style diamond inlays.

it's a funny story... I was going to make a plane jane Tele.. with the off-white on ash finish. I always wanted one. Then my partner said if I did that, I might as well get some kit parts and screw them together.

So I thought I'd do a carved maple top and a set neck. The swamp ash body blank was thick, and I didn't have a planer wide enough at the time, and didn't feel like ripping it in half, planing it, and gluing it back together, so I made a chamber the same size and shape as the control cavity in the upper half, and made it thick like a Paul. Carving the top was a real PITA... I was using a small bronze violin makers plane, after I routed steps. So it's more of a German carve like a Mosrite.

The neck is curly maple with a big hunk of purpleheart up the middle, and rosewood board.

I was going to do a cherry sunburst, but it evolved into what I call "mango-burst"... reminds me of Gretsch orange, so I like it.

In that photo it has three Bill Lawrence L-250's, but the bridge pickup was one of the newer ones, and I replaced it with a stacked pickup I made.

Sometimes you just have to let the guitar make itself!

Here's a photo of it unfinished.

[greenfingers]

you should call that guitar a "Strattelson"

The strat part comes from the three pickup config, the tele part from the maple neck and the ash body, and the gibson part because of the rosewood board set neck and maple top.

[Possum]

....

In defense of Voodoo pickups or any other pickups for that matter, some pickups hit particular amps right in a frequency range where there is a defect in the amp. Its not really the pickup thats "wrong" its the amps weaknesses. Silverface Fenders are famous for having obvious "ghost notes" for instance. I have a '73 deluxe reverb that I blackfaced and had two amp guys mess with. It had a really bad ghost note problem, I could take a frequency generator and sweep it slowly up in range and it would hit a certain frquency in the treble range and make an awful sound in a very narrow frequency spot. It used to drive me crazy, like fingernails on a blackboard when I'd hear it. Some of my pickups would hit right in there and yuk! Changing the junk new Jensen the music store had put in out of the amp helped it tremendously, but I can still hear the amp wanting to accenuate that tiny spot. Its a great amp and you don't notice it in gigs but at home I ocassionally bump into it still....

[RedHouse]

...I didn't play guitar way back then but it seems to me that Strats/LPs must have been more compatible way back then....

I did play "back then" (70's) and guitars IMHO were way more hit-n-miss than they are now-a-days.

I started back in the early 70's and gig'd through the 80's, I don't gig anymore (miss it though) but I still hang out, and frequent the guitar shops when I can.

I've noticed that guitars are way more consistant these days, for example I went the local GC a while back and played 14 Strats, they nearly all sounded the same, and I recall saying to my (current) wife how back in the day one could grab down like 3 or 4 of these and anyone could notice huge difference between them, but the modern ones are very close and consistant, may not be the best sounding but a dozen of them will sound very much the same, that's gotta be good for sales.

Sometime in my mind I wonder if the old days guitars that sounded "so good" were really just "not as bad" and then the payer gets inspired 'cause he has something that seemed so good (...'cause the others are so bad)

I remember back in '78 I bought an SG because, well you know, a lot of good stuff was done on SG's. Little did I know that Gibson had just started doing the epoxy-potted-humbuckers, sheesh! what a crappy sound it had, I couldn't get over it, yanked them out and replaced them with DiMarzio's. Larry DiMarzio and Bill Lawrence were pretty much all we really had to choose from back then * so I went with the D's.

* The word-up at the time was that Bill Lawrence was "designing" the Gibson pickups then, and since mine sounded horrible it was a no-brainer to go with the DiMarzio's as hundreds of other players were doing at the time. Thank god for those bad-old-days because it made me want to learn to wind my own (albeit years later)

[greenfingers]

In defense of Voodoo pickups or any other pickups for that matter, some pickups hit particular amps right in a frequency range where there is a defect in the amp. Its not really the pickup thats "wrong" its the amps weaknesses. Silverface Fenders are famous for having obvious "ghost notes" for instance. I have a '73 deluxe reverb that I blackfaced and had two amp guys mess with. It had a really bad ghost note problem, I could take a frequency generator and sweep it slowly up in range and it would hit a certain frquency in the treble range and make an awful sound in a very narrow frequency spot. It used to drive me crazy, like fingernails on a blackboard when I'd hear it. Some of my pickups would hit right in there and yuk! Changing the junk new Jensen the music store had put in out of the amp helped it tremendously, but I can still hear the amp wanting to accenuate that tiny spot. Its a great amp and you don't notice it in gigs but at home I ocassionally bump into it still....

that's got me thinking, Is there a perfect amp to compliment a p.a.f? Is there one amp that will get the best out of p.a.f or a humbucker designed to the same spec's.

With so many amp's to choose from is there one that stands head and shoulders above the rest, one that creates the sound that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck when partnered with a p.a.f

All of my favourite recordings have been with the guitarist using a marshall or matamp........Hayden is one lucky boy getting to test his own pickups with all them matamp's he works with

[RedHouse]

that's got me thinking, Is there a perfect amp to compliment a p.a.f? Is there one amp that will get the best out of p.a.f or a humbucker designed to the same spec's.

With so many amp's to choose from is there one that stands head and shoulders above the rest, one that creates the sound that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck when partnered with a p.a.f

All of my favourite recordings have been with the guitarist using a marshall or matamp........Hayden is one lucky boy getting to test his own pickups with all them matamp's he works with

In this order, I would prefer a nice (crunchy) Marshall 1959SL Plexi, a blackface Twin, or a 5E3 amp.

IMHO the hotter amps (JCM800/Mesa/Soldano) don't sound that great with a PAF loaded guitar.

(opinion alert!)....

As a side-note, and this is purely personal opinion, I'm not of the same opinion as Dave is on "good PAF's almost single coil sound", sure does explain the soundclips in his video's though, but IMHO a good sounding PAF is way richer than a single coil sound, has kind of a "gurrk" throaty-woody quality, and not so much the nasal-honk quality that many like as their preferred PAF sound (again this is just my opinion). I would cite Peter Green's Lester without the out-of-phase thing going on, or better yet Jimmy Page's lester in "Since I'ver Been Loving You" off of the "How The West Was Won" CD's, on disc-1 at 2:09-2:20 is a good example of what I'm trying to describe. Also the first minute and 17 seconds of "Over the hills and far away" (also from disc-1) has what IMHO is a good PAF sound.

I wholly agree with what was said earlier, once you turn up a PAF past about 8 on the volume ctrl you loose the distinctiveness of the PAF tone and the PAF starts sounding like any other pickup (or sometimes worse at high gain)

[greenfingers]

jimmy always gets a nice sound on the intro to "over the hills" I love the sound he got on "Thank you" from the BBC sessions, soft and then loud but with definition. the solo is epic. (note) this was still the original bridge p.a.f.

From what i can find Jimmy changed his bridge around the beginning of 72, You can hear a change in the voice of his guitar in zeppelin albums after this.

zeppelin IV was the last time the original bucker was recorded, after that his bridge was thinner and less woody to my ears,... like you said redhouse its just an opinion. But the change in sound gave jimmy a more telecaster sound from his les paul, and we all know jimmy's soft spot for a tele.

Just compare zeppelin II&IV, over, houses of the holy & physical graffiti, the first two are thick and robust, the other two, and after pickup change are, thinner and lighter not in a bad way, it just does not fill as much space, and i dont think that is just down to the production.

Going back to David's opinion on what a p.a.f should sound like, i tend to agree with all of his preferences in sound, the single coil sound is just a underlying sound that can be obtained if you chooes the right settings, but then sounds like the humbucker we all love when given a little push.

Redhouse have you had a go on a super 100jh head? you say you would like a 1959 plexi, well this is the Hendrix plexi, and with a name like Redhouse i'm sure it may intrest you

PAF's sure like a Plexi dont they

[MattT]

In defense of Voodoo pickups or any other pickups for that matter, some pickups hit particular amps right in a frequency range where there is a defect in the amp. Its not really the pickup thats "wrong" its the amps weaknesses. Silverface Fenders are famous for having obvious "ghost notes" for instance. I have a '73 deluxe reverb that I blackfaced and had two amp guys mess with. It had a really bad ghost note problem, I could take a frequency generator and sweep it slowly up in range and it would hit a certain frquency in the treble range and make an awful sound in a very narrow frequency spot. It used to drive me crazy, like fingernails on a blackboard when I'd hear it. Some of my pickups would hit right in there and yuk! Changing the junk new Jensen the music store had put in out of the amp helped it tremendously, but I can still hear the amp wanting to accenuate that tiny spot. Its a great amp and you don't notice it in gigs but at home I ocassionally bump into it still....

That's interesting the way you look at it Possum...you being a winder and all. I'm an amp builder (just a hobbyist though) and my perspective was from the 'amp-end'. What I mean is...your post basically says that p'ups vary in their frequency response (even 'good' ones). When you say "...some pickups hit particular amps right in a frequency range..." and "Some of my pickups would hit right in there and yuk!" then you are saying that the frequency response varies in these pickups (because 'some' do it and it follows that 'some' don't), i.e. different peaks and notches. But you don't see it as a 'flaw' in a p'up. Yet if an amp has peaks and notches in it's frequency response you see that as a 'weakness' or a 'flaw'. I just found it interesting...not saying anything wrong with it or anything.

[greenfingers]

Its a lot quicker to pull out your guitar cable and put it in another amp to make your pickups sound good than, changing the pickups over and over again to make the amp sound good...... so it must be the amps fault?

[MattT]

Its a lot quicker to pull out your guitar cable and put it in another amp to make your pickups sound good than, changing the pickups over and over again to make the amp sound good...... so it must be the amps fault?

I don't think it's either's fault. Amps/guitars/pickups/speakers/etc. all have little frequency peaks/notches/resonances/etc. and it's just a matter of the right combination. Of course, certain combinations defined what good tone is long ago...like that PAF-into-raging non-MV Marshall combo. But what if you have a Marshall that sounds great with just about anything you throw at it...except a certain set of p'ups in a certain guitar? At that point I just think that the p'ups/guitar combo isn't suited for what I'm trying to do and I go plug it into the BF Fender...then the Vox Ac30...and on down the line until it finds it's soul mate. Or I might throw a buncha pickups at it. Or maybe it's an excuse to get another amp. I have certain guitars that I wouldn't want to play clean...but dirty they rock and vica versa.