Japan PAF's fetch $600 easy ( Dry Z's by Greco)

[David Schwab]

as far as Roys bridge pup on nancy goes..

I'm a little gun shy on all that - it was a long hard 8 years of hell

Didn't you nail that tone though?

[pupoholic]

Didn't you nail that tone though?

yep -- and i may tell the specs - but i dunno?

the bridge pup was the hardest thing to get right

- the neck i'll pass along

6.1k brass cover A-3's

the bridge is A3... and its a ___________! i can't tell - but i'd love to pass it along..

maybe i should and just do it for the love of that crazy sound..
??????????????????????????

[pupoholic]

you know what was a trip?



my stock 1982 greco les paul came with factory installed dimarzios and factory 08k pots

80-freakin k pots!

it was like a jazz box when i rolled the tone back -- i really liked it -

i sorta wrecked it when i rewound the dimarzios and put in 500ks

i used to have a dimarzio paf and a X2N Power Plus bridge in a Les Paul Custom Sunburst - in the early 80's -- I loved that thing.. and the PAF was pretty good. just not crazy good - but somehow almost lovable..

[MattT]

Japan PAF's fetch $600 easy ( Dry Z's by Greco)

Yea, but $600 USD is like 4 dollars over there...or something.

[greenfingers]

Ok, I sent the ebayier in Japan a offer - on those - I'd like to buy them and share with you guys what I find inside - mismatch - wire - tension - magnets etc..
they are being called the best PAF copies ever made - and the fact that they were done over there - may prove they could do it again - right - I'd like to get these pups and have a good look..

the Greco high end "Super Real" series had Dry Z's - I'd like to just buy the whole guitar - and not spend 600 on the pups when I can get the guitar for 1200. or less

That would be really cool of you Don. from what i can find wich ain't much, is that they were touted as the best P.A.F copies from Japan and that was from the 80's. I have never heard a set before so i can not comment on sound so it would be good to know what you think of them, if you get them? I dont know how that title will stand up in todays market, but you never know untill you try.

There was a set of Tom Holmes pup's for sale in the U.K on ebay that i would of liked to have got, I want to look at the covers, a lot of people say they are the best they have seen, but the guy wanted 400 quid around $800, and i aint in that much of a hurry to get them. In the past Tom was said to be making the best P.A.F replica in the world, Now there are a few more guy's slugging it out for that title, who will be the next pound for pound Humbucker champ of the world

[greenfingers]

Is that like Boveril, or am I thinking of something else?.

It is very similar but tastes a bit different, but Bovril is a Beef extract and Marmite is a yeast extract........ Yum Yum

[David Schwab]

my stock 1982 greco les paul came with factory installed dimarzios and factory 08k pots

80-freakin k pots!

I had a Hayman guitar once, a 3030H. It had these strange but cool ReAn humbuckers. I've never found a photo of the insides of the pickups I had. The closest I saw had taped coils with no bobbins, but mine had toroid coils wound on ferrite donuts! They looked like AM radio antennas, complete with the cloth covered magnet wire. Really weird.

When I got it, it was pretty dull sounding. So I figured they were dark sounding pickups, and maybe they are using 250K pots. So my plan was to replace them for 500K. To my surprise, they were using 100K pots! What were they thinking? I put in 500K and it opened the tone right up! Then it sounded really nice. The pickups were bright and powerful.

You hear about people swapping out the pickups in those guitars, but the pickups are nice with new pots.

i used to have a dimarzio paf and a X2N Power Plus bridge in a Les Paul Custom Sunburst - in the early 80's -- I loved that thing.. and the PAF was pretty good. just not crazy good - but somehow almost lovable..

In this photo the ReAn's I had looked like the second from the right, but they weren't taped coils.
The Dimarzio PAF is a basic humbucker tone. I think at the time they came out they sounded pretty good. They weren't what people look for in PAF tones now, but they were clean and bright.

I had a DiMarzio Model G bass pickup, which was awful on bass. Inside it was an X2N with the blades removed, and with the allan pole pieces. Same windings. So I made thiner steel blades and stuck it in a lucite guitar I made. That was a great sounding pickup!

[pupoholic]

well.. I bought them - call me crazy..

but theres some history there - worth investigation - as they were said to be Sublime - and way better the the Greco factory installed Duncan 59's and Dimarzio PAF..

Worth having installed in my Greco - cause I only paid 675.00 for my Les Paul
the Dry Z's are costing me 525.00 ( off the ebay)
means I'll have 1,200.00 in my Greco if I install the Dry Z's into it.. and A greco with Dry Z's fetch 1200-2000 - so I guess I'm going to do Ok on this risk taking -

should be here soon - I'll gently pull the covers and measure coil separation - look at the wire coating and magnet --

anything else I should look into deeper - please advise..

this will be fun if nothing else comes out of it..

funny how the Japan maker beat Dimarzio and Duncan back in the early 80's
Don

[Possum]

...

Well the most important thing I'd want to know is how do they actually sound? If you can do some sound samples in all switch positions that would be great. I can pretty quickly tell if they got it right or not. I'm going to put together a YouTube list of vids and audios to watch/listen that have what are classic PAF characteristics to watch for, I know from personal experience with musicians that not alot of them know what to listen for, and its verbally hard to describe to someone. that YT video of that 335 type guitar I posted is super typical of what they do, pretty sure he was in middle switch postion for alot of that solo, modern buckers just don't do what they do....

[pupoholic]

I'll stick to my records that feature PAF's
Clips just sound like garble - I even have the top of the line BOSE System on a sound card here on the PC.. but its not happening on clips

I have Seymour Duncans CDs all 3 of his samples - and those are not all that either - Duncan could have saved a ton of time and cash $$$ and just lied and simply turned the treble down and the bass up on the master board and used one tele - one strat - one lester - one P-90 geeter- and simulated the whole product line with the same pups in each guitar -- simply boils down to this -- you just got to be in the room with it - then you have to take it out to about 3 different clubs and play it..

[Possum]

..

I'm not getting why alot of you are saying you can't tell what a pickup sounds like on YouTube
I"ve just got some Yamaha speakers and I"m on a Mac and a fast cable modem, I do think that YouTube configures itself to your system and if it thinks you're on a slow connection or something it will feed you a really compressed signal. Maybe thats whats going on? Some of my favorite sound clips of PAFs are on YouTube, why? Because they are REAL. They're not studio recordings. The true PAF tone is so distinct, to me anyway, that I"ve used YouTube alot because specifically they're not studio recordings. Of course there are some classic studio tones too, that are favs as well, but where else are you going to have access to a '59 burst playing simply, in your face at pretty decent sound quality. Check your preferences on YouTube, somewhere you can check "always use highest quality" somewhere I"ve seen it before.
Here's another good clip of a '59 LP with PAFs, nice clean tones with alot of typical PAF character. Kinda wish he woulda dug in a little more but its good to hear what some of these guitars sound like without any junk overlaid on them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Ujm4HEXGc

[Possum]

...

Here's another one of the same guy, '59 LP, nice clean playing, good quality sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyWTi9ZJhLk

[pupoholic]

those 58 -59 pauls were long tenon fat neck tone machines from another planet - and it was not all impart to a bunch of randomly assembled PAFS that were all over the map and they did not always sound good - some were pretty - some were do=do
the main thing was the wood - it was because those guitars were GREAT - the mill cuts of the timber etc.. theres books on this stuff -

thats why I bought the 82 Greco EGF 1000 made from 79 - to- 82 "super real" series EGF 1000 o also: the EGF 1200 with Dry Z pups or EGF 1800 custom ordered Les Pauls were among the best clones of those ever made and thats including these USA Gibson reissues!
the Greco 79-82 Super Real 1000's tp 1800's are the best replica 58 ever made according to many enthusiast !!!!!!!!

I noticed right away that the fat back neck and long tenon was kicking it up a notch and it felt like those old tiger tops I used to try out back in the day

something triggers inside that fat neck and long tenon and the right wood thats been milled properly -
so even low grade PAF Clones suddenly sound killer in those dang guitars.. especially true in the real Gibsons those 400 grand ones ... ouch!

my advise to all you guys chasing down the PAF - you owe it to yourself to grab a Greco like i mentioned above -- they go from 600 to 800
otherwise you may never get that PAF in a Les Paul vibe --
I can feel this Lester melting thru the neck into my hand and the body of the guitar - something is magic about that long tenon and fat neck and correct milled wood that just floors you and its noting to do with the pickups = so just be aware of these things in your quest for the most killer PAF sound - and you'll do well

If ya lived closer I'd loan ya mine - its already loaned out to a jazz player till Aug 1st.

I really think those old burst that were happening had much more magic going on then any PAF ..
proof of that is Billy Gibbons Pearly gates - they cloned the pups - but they never duplicated Pearlys tone --and they bought up and tried out many old Tiger tops but NEVER did they ever find another like Pearly - so be cautious - some of that magic was not all 100% the PAF
Don

[dai h.]

hey Possum what do you think of how these sound?

title: Playing the REAL Peter Green Les Paul - #2



title: betts toler les paul on a peter green classic



title: betts toler les paul through a 1965 jtm 45

[Possum]

...

Those are both good examples, I wish he would have played the PG guitar's bridge more than half a second, that out of phase tone, is cool but most buckers get real close to that anyway, but fail to do the PAF thing by themselves.

Well I'll admit there are probably some special old Les Pauls out there that all the wood came together just right, it just makes sense. But without the PAFs in them they wouldn't sound like that. Another thing to consider, I've been mulling over is the wiring in the Pauls, I was told by a customer who worked on alot of those old bursts that the pots more often than not were 600-700K, which would tend to really bring out pickups' character. Probably explains why that Bloomfield bridge sounds that way. I also agree about the long tenon thing, but also the FAT neck ones just sound better; I can hear this in my two cheapie guitars, the $200 Stellar has a nice fat neck and it beats the skinny neck Epiphone all to hell. There's just more there to sustain the tone. I wonder how many old LP's got ruined by the "neck shaving" fad of the 70's. I've seen some nice old Gibsons totally ruined in my opinion, necks whittled down to nothing :-)

I'd love to have one of those Greco's but thats still alot of money for me and most of them are shipping from Japan so add a another hundred at least for that. Have to buy another load of magnets soon anyway....