Tweet
I recently got my hands on a 59 original. This thing sounds awsome. The customer recently bought 3 pickups from the store I supply, and asked me to make this.......What a treat. Ofcoarse he wants it in double cream. HE also mentioned that my Paf was the best he had ever heard from a remake standpoint, and he has tryed some serious builders stuff. I was floored. Honored. I just could'nt believe he let me have this for research. I don't know him from adam, but he is a nice guy, and a vintage purist. Whatever means, he made some nice comments. I'd imagine he will be selling it in a few weeks on ebay.......
-
-
Thats a great complement about your pickups.
Congratulations.
Post some soundclips of that PAF if you get the chance. I'd love to hear it.
Peace -
Take lots of measurements and pictures.
Oh, and then post them here......
Comment
-
Well....I was completely flatterd. I am not a vintage guy by any means. I like high ohms 16k+. I make them though,( you have too) and I really needed a comparision from a vintage guy. Thanks for the congrads. Hey Mystic...Don't you find it strange that everyone here claims PAF this that, but you have Never seen anyone here make solid conclusions regarding researched specs, ohms, layer counts, gause levels from any Paf? I wonder why that is? I thought this was a place to share......I really wonder why there has'nt been more on this. I'm taking picks specs, and everything. I will not however post until there is a worthy discussion on the topic, and there may very well be a few snickerings and such. Thats ok. Well see who chimes in.
Ps. I'll not toot my own horn about my customers comments. I was overexcited and very pleased.Comment
-
Hi Nightwinder, I would post specs on a real PAF if I had them but no such luck here. I have read every post I can find on them and you are right, I know about what mags they used, maple spacers, offsets up to 1K sometimes more etc...... but not 1 mention of TPL. I did a what the hell wind the other day just messing around and employing some of what Seth said in his interveiw like winding the bobbins till full. So I wound like I thought a woman would do by hand. I would think they wouldn't use too much tension due to being afraid of breaking the wire, throw in a few talker distractions and I came up with a scary close PAF tone to the real thing, the coils were only about .27 offset with the slug being the hotter side, maple spacer, yes spacer not spacers as in 1. the other side gets the barstock and run the braided wire along the edge where the other spacer goes and solder to the base plate. I found doing that makes a world of diff in the tone. Actually with a disto pedal it gets very gainy, but run it through a straight tube amp on about 5 to 6 and it gets that PAF type almost breaking up almost good feedback, like it gets ready to go into feedback but just drops of slowly with good sustain, push it up to about 8 and controlled feedback all over the board. I was pretty impressed myself. Naturally I went in search of PAF and others sound clips and found a set at the LPF, 1 was a real PAF, 2 was Lindy's PAF and the 3rd was Wolfes Dr vintage. Mine was somewhere between the real PAF and Wolfes, a tad brighter than wolfes and a tad less honk that the PAF. SO there you have it. Now anyone with those dam PAF specs if you would please just give us a little something to chew on please
Comment
-
This was posted on another board some time ago..
"The time has come to let this one go. Ive had it 6 or 7 years. Ive had close to two dozen PAFs in that time, and this one is still the best sounding bridge pickup of all them. Unpaid bills and a recent old Marshall craze dictates that its finally time for this one to go. This is the pickup that Tim White and Jim Rolph have based their 'Ed A' winds on. This is the pickup that resided in my '99 #125 Murphy and every other LP, (reissue and vintage) Ive had since then. Its the pickup on many of those soundfiles I did a few years ago. I believe that part of the magic of original PAFs are the varying coil readings. This one is about 4.4 on the inside coil and 4.0 on the screw coil, for a total close to 8.4k. Ive always felt that the inside coil being a bit hotter is why this PAF has such honking harmonic mids. Who knows...
Im hearing that some double-whites have sold for 5k or more. I will run this ad for a week a so and will take the best offer I get over $4500. Otherwise, its not worth it for me to sell it...
Thanks.
-Ed
"Comment
-
PAF specs...
The problem with PAFs is they weren't consistently one thing or the other. Some of them sucked shit. Its too bad you don't have an Extech LCR meter and know how to use it, you would learn some things about it no other way will tell you. You won't be able to tell much without destroying its value unfortunately, just removing any tape and putting it back will drop its value and will be obvious to anyone who knows what they are looking at. Gauss readings aren't real useful with humbuckers, there is so much metal soaking up the magnetism that A2, A3 and A5 will sometimes read nearly the same, plus you won't know how much its been degaussed over the years. Gauss readings will never tell you what alnico a magnet is anyway, it just doesn't work that way. I doubt you can even get into the seperate coils to measure each one because its taped over and you'd have to pull the joined wires out between the coils, this is too much messing with a valuable pickup and if spotted could kill a sale. Ohms won't tell you anything much, there are things going on in PAFs that have to do with the insulation and wire size and you can't get to that either. The wire they used varied at last 3 times that I know of. Bummer, huh? Best thing to do is try to find one thats dead and fix it for free or something then the guts will be there for you to analyze if you know what you're looking at.
Some of you guys want this stuff handed to you for nothing, why don't you use your brains and do some digging, there's alot about PAFs thats out there in obscure books, Gibson history books etc. the more experienced and knowledgeable you are the more you can spot the clues. I have tons of books on guitar history, alot out of print, valuable info in all of them. If you don't do the work you'll never appreciate what makes a good PAF sound great. Listen to Duane Allman, find anything you can where he's playing relatively clean, that set is legendary to my ears. A good PAF has this magical kind of "bloom" thing going on with it, you hit chords or double stops and the sound blooms, hard to describe but very noticeable. A good PAF has a special kind of tonal dynamic to it, you play loud it blooms and sings, if you play soft wihtout turning it down there's a magical thing that happens with that. I've been obsessed with PAFs for 5 years now and have scrounged every bit of information I can from very diverse places, I have a big archive of Ebay photos of PAFs up close. I've never had a real one in my hands to study, but that will happen, still there's not much I don't know about them at this point except for definite slug dimensions and one collector I correspond with tells me they varied alot. PAF bridge pickups can be shrill, go to YouTube and watch Duane at the Fillmore switch to his bridge pickup and listen to it screech in not such a nice way. I continue to refine my own PAFs and am really happy with where they are now. Here's a sound clip in my LP copy plugged straight into a '73 Fender Vibrolux cranked up, you can hear the bloom factor right from the start.
http://www.sdpickups.com/audio/tone%20king%20dirty.mp3
Here's a clip from a customer playing through a Marshall (somewhat badly, oh well) doing the Duane thing:
http://www.sdpickups.com/audio/tonekinglive.mp3
One thing thats really starting to annoy me, I have a saved search on Ebay for PAFs and just the last couple months there are now about 8 guys I never heard of all selling PAFs and claiming they have been making pickups for years and alot of blab about mismatched coils etc. Some of these things look really shoddily put together, tape not even finished off with the ends hanging out etc. Its like no one out there is going to know what the hell a PAF is anymore, that label is on so much crap out there its starting to make PAF sound like a cheap name for generic humbuckers.
If you want to make great PAFs you have to work for it, that knowledge is worth money and no one is going to post trade secrets on a public forum for sure :-)http://www.SDpickups.com
Stephens Design PickupsComment
-
This is a place to share however......Originally posted by NightWinder View Post
So many people claim to have researched everything there is to know about PAFs that the picture has become clouded. People like myself and dave Stephens will happily pick a PAF apart and do. Whenever I have posted stuff on here about my findings other people dispute it. I've done the science and I've broadcast it here then a whole batallion of people turn up and talk bollocks about PAFs. But one thing is for sure,no two PAFs are the same. The PAF sound I personally like the most may not be your favourite. It doesn't mean I'm wrong.
In any case, you will now have the privilege to do your own hands-on reasearch and draw your own conclusions. Maybe, just maybe you will not like it. Maybe you'll post your findings on here and a whole host of people will ignore or rubbish your findings.
Some people just never want to know the truth because they either want to continue the myth or because they don't actually make pickups even though they'd like you to think they've been doing it for years. Then you get the ones who know someone who was there when Seth Lover had his brainwave blah, blah, blah.....sigpic Dyed in the woolComment
-
-
Ahhh Spence.....you impress the fuck out of me!!I may have to travel around the world to meet you!Comment
-
-
Here-
Slug read out at 4.46k Screw read out 4.25k. Gau. read out 25k .Unpotted. basically 8.71k. What a fucking joke. Needless to say, I replicated it, and it totally smoked! Some secret hun? There you go.Comment
-
Huh? What does that mean exactly? Forgive me for being slow to pick up on the jargon.Originally posted by NightWinder View Post
What kind of magnets did they put in PAFs? Did yours still have most of their charge, do you suppose?"Are you boys the police?"
"No ma'am....we're musicians."Comment
-
hold on...
Gauss 25K? Are you using one of those spring meters? They are horribly useless. How many turns per layer are the coils?, What is the magnet wire diameter? Slug diameter and depth, coil height of the bobbin? There's alot of missing info there. Guass should be read on the edges of the magnet not the poles, long magnet or short? did you take pictures? Sound clips?http://www.SDpickups.com
Stephens Design PickupsComment
-
You've got all the reason in the world to get excited and pleased everytime you get complimented by your customers. I am new at this stuff and am not yet really in it for the money (not yet, anyway) but I managed to satisfy a paying customer. It was indeed a thrill to receive an enthusiastic thank you SMS at 4:00 in the morning, saying that I exceeded his expectations.Originally posted by NightWinder View Post
I for one always looks forward to getting infos from you guys. You are the more knowledgeable people on the subject of pickup making. So any info from you is fully appreciated.Comment
Comment