Kent Armstrong PAF 0 vs. Seth Lover vs. Lollar Imperial

[omphalopsychos]

Hi,

How would people describe the difference in sound between the three pickups mentioned? I've heard some indirect comparisons, but I really can't get a sense of how they compare. I'm considering of of these to replace a Korea-made Kent Armstrong in an all-solid-wood archtop.

[oriv]

I had a seth lover in my Holst archtop which I replaced with Kent Armstrong. I feel the seth is more responsive to finger touch, more delicate, but I wanted something with a fuller sound and the KA gives it exactly. I feel it's fatter, stronger, and works better for single line soloing. It misses a bit of the responsiveness of the seth but for me the tradeoff was worth it.

I also have Lollar low winds on my semi hollow but it's hard to compare as it is not the same guitar.. I love their sound however.

[omphalopsychos]

Thanks for the reply!

I have hear contradicting comments about the KA. On the one hand, some players say that it has a very acoustic tone. On the other hand, some players describe it as warm and full. These seem contradictory to me. Can you provide more detail? My guitar is an Eastman AR680 John Pisano. The pickup in it is not bad, but it's pretty muddy. Given the looks (12 pole black humbucker), I think it's based on the handwound KA PAF 0. But I've heard the real KA sounds much better. Is it also a very dark pickup?

I don't hate the electric tone, but I'd like a pickup with more versatility. Using the controls on the guitar and amp, I don't usually have trouble getting darker (which characterizes this pickup). What I'd like is a pickup thats a bit more touch-responsive and dynamic. If I want a more compressed, dark tone, I know I can still achieve that with a more detailed pickup, but I can't go the other direction.

[Herbie]

Don´t know about KA but Lollar Imperials are more 'trad PAF'. They are a bit darker than Seth Lovers, which have a bit of bite in them. Or Seths are thin, as others say.

Seths are unpotted, Imperials are about 10 second potted (according to my memory of some Jason Lollar interview). Low Wind Imperials are loved pickups among specially semi hollow players. In my Les Pauls they did not shine.

Seths have Alnico 2 magnets, Imperials come with Alnico 5. This might explain some of the softness of Seths and some hardness of Imperials.

You should try both three!

[vernon]

It looks like the Pisano has a set-in neck pickup... right? I had Kent Armstrong wind me a PAF floater for my Heritage Eagle which had plenty of top end clarity. Certainly wouldn't call it a dark pickup. I tend to turn down the tone control about 75% (25% open).

[omphalopsychos]

Thanks! These are helpful. I guess what I'm looking for is something with a bit more 'air' around the notes without necessarily a very bright or nasal character. I guess this means I'm looking for something with low bass, moderate low-mids, low high-mids, moderate treble, and moderate presence, to break it into Henriksen EQ terms. I don't necessarily want something too mid-forward, as I already have some p-90 equipped guitars.

[ccroft]

I can't add anything about the comparisons you're after. Just wanted to say I recently put KA hand wound in a Pisano 880 (maple). It's a very substantial improvement for me. I don't know the Henrikson EQ. I'll say the pickup has great clarity, and none of the upper midrange (1K?) 'honk' that I was fighting with the stock one. Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

I'd say it's a very balanced tonal output. If anything it's slightly mid-scooped. I like sparkling top over a big round bottom. (I'm talking strings here...) I run guitar tone and volume mostly full on, and run the amp pretty flat in treble and mid, with a bit of bass boost. I think it's very responsive, if you're talking dynamics.

But I'm weird. I like my Mesa EL84 based amp a lot. Seemed to me that the combination of the stock pup and this particular amp gave me a lot of trouble. The new pup is dead easy. In a previous life I played vintage Les Pauls and I feel much more at home with Vermont made. If that makes any sense. Very different guitars of course.

I noticed them in many top end hand-mades like Bory, Campellone, Hopkins and Trenier. The 12 poles are pretty recognizable with the allen head screws. After talking to Joe Vinikow at archtop.com it seemed like a dead easy choice to me.

Another very recognizable trait is the 3 point ring-mounting for tilt adjustment. 2 on the base side and 1 on the other. They can also mount with the typical 2 point, which is what I should have done. If you go with the Armstrong it's a straight ahead swap. The tilt adjust isn't really needed with the Pisano. I just thought if it's possible I'll try it. And I screwed up. Got a couple extra holes in the mounting ring to show for it.

You should be made aware that the lugs on the Kent-made are much thicker that the Asian. The result is that the pickup can't get as close to the strings as the stock one. If that matters to you. It doesn't to me.

Apologies for the encyclopedic post. Things kept occurring to me that could be useful, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about this particular combo as best I can.

[jads57]

I've had the best luck with Manluis Landmark PAF regular wind. Reasonably priced, closest to an original PAF I've tried. I have them in a Gibson ES-339 Studio and a benedetto Bambino Std. I've also owned Seth lovers, KA PAF as well. Tried Lollars and they were nice but over priced.

[omphalopsychos]

ccroft, that was a tremendously helpful post. I had emailed Kent, and he said that the there should be no issue with the 3-hole mounting bracket in most setups. My major concern with the 3 hole mounting is that the bracket on the bass side seems too wide to fit through the existing cutout on my guitar. Is this the issue you had?

I think I know what you're talking about regarding the EQ of the stock pickup. It has a ton of mid range, but no clarity. Through my princeton it sounds ok, but it sounds terrible through a tweed style amp. Through a solid state it has no clarity either. Tonight I did an experiment and I swapped it out for a Seth Lover pickup, which I had taken out of another guitar. I had a realization from the experiment. A lot of people think that this guitar has a very acoustic tone plugged in. I don't think that's the case at all. I think that the stock pickup is just so dull that the only high frequencies you hear are coming from the guitar itself (which is very loud for a thin archtop), giving the impression of an acoustic sounding electric.

As a result of the experiment, I also found that I kind of like the Seth Lover. I'm not typically the kind of person that does a lot of pickup experimentation, but we'll see if I stick with it. It is definitely an improvement over the stock pickup. Based on your description, the actual Kent Armstrong seems like what I'm looking for. I'll give the Seth a few weeks at least to see how I like it.

[Herbie]

(...) I'm not typically the kind of person that does a lot of pickup experimentation, (...)

Well, in the end it is only one swap You have to do: from a bad one to a right one!

Good to hear that Seth helped. It is great pickup in a right guitar.

[ccroft]

Hi Oomph,

I did have to relieve the opening slightly. Mounted in the ring the assembly did fit. I screwed down the ring no prob. When I tried to raise the pickup it got caught somewhere. I removed maybe 1/32 inch off some part of the treble side opening with a rasp. I think what's going on is there isn't quite enough tolerance: if the ring is mounted slightly off centre, or the ring holes are slightly off then there's trouble. New pickup has wider and thicker lugs than the stock one. It's a trivial fix.

Lugs and mounting: bass and treble lugs are the same size if I remember right. Treble side has one threaded hole. Bass side has 3. It has a centre hole. So you can mount it 2 point. You don't have to drill the ring that way. The new pickup will sit at the same angle as the old. In the end I wish I had just done that.

Tone: I think you're on to something with your experience of hearing it in 2 amps. Just before springing for the new pickup I started to feel that in trying to tame the upper-mid/lower treble I was losing all sparkle. And I felt it was partly the amps fault. IE: mud-bath. I think everything depends on the particular combination. I also switched out my speaker to get really happy.

I'm not a pickup connoisseur. I had a '61 Les Paul (yes... that one...the one that looks like SG) that got stolen in the mid-seventies. I got a LP Custom that was about 5 years old. So I think I went from original actual Gibson PAF to... whatever you call what came after. I found no difference whatsoever. But I was also using a Epiphone Wiltshire for backup and liked that too. I was running a brown face Super Reverb playing fusion & latin jazz... chasing Johnny M and DiMeola.

I wish I still had the '61 so I could sell it for what... $25K and buy a top end archtop or 2. And I'd sell the super as well. Everything I used to own is worth so much now!

[Marty Grass]

Pickups generate endless discussion, mostly opinion in which musical sound is described in non-auditory terms such as airy, sweet, warm, ice pick, monster, etc.

I have found the Seth Lover to be similar to what the original PAF was supposed to be. The PAF came about after a lot of trial and error at Gibson. It's a pretty low output thing.

The ladies at Gibson scatterwound the bobbins and kept winding until they looked filled up, unless they were in a hurry. The magnets were not consistent. So the often emulated PAF had really a spectrum of specs. Seymour Duncan, who worked with Seth Lover, standardized the PAF, for better or worse.

By the early 60s Gibson was through with the PAF and literally considered it junk. Pete Moreno, who was fairly new at Gibson, was ordered by Ted McCarty to take a truckload of PAFs to the dump, which Pete regrettably did. Gibson needed the space and was cleaning house. I reflect on that when I hear of people paying crazy prices for some scatterwound PAF clones wound with the original winders.

The SD 59s are a bit hotter, meaning there is more midrange but a touch "muddier", meaning less distinction between notes when played simultaneously. The KAs I've played seem similar or a little hotter.

Last night I was unhappy with the brightness I was getting on my new instrument. I worried it may be the pickups that I had never heard before (Wolfetone DR Vintages). I put on a fresh set of strings and, voila, it sounded full like Kenny Burrell's Super 400.

Here's another thing to think about. Wes Montgomery produced some of the most beautiful sounds ever made by an electric guitar. I believe he used a stock pickup. That humbles me when I think that maybe I should get a different set of pups.

[omphalopsychos]

I'm not much a 'tone quest' guy, and this is the first time I installed a pickup just as a test. Fortunately, the Seth Lover did what I was looking for. I get more 'air', by which I think I mean amplitude of frequencies above 4 khz, and also more 'clarity', by which I think I mean a slight relative reduction of frequencies in the ~200-800 hz range compared to the stock pickup. I also think the response is more 'dynamic', by which I think I mean that there is a greater range in output volume when I strike the string compared the the stock pickup. Anyway, I only think I mean these things; my subjective experience may not actually correspond to these definitions. I can still get darker by rolling off the tone, and it sounds like the stock pickup. It's a bit lower output, but I was never using full volume on the stock pickup. I know a lot of guys who would be disappointed that the change was so satisfactory. I'm just happy it worked out, it took an evening, and I now can go back to playing.

[Marty Grass]

I'm glad you like the Seth Lovers. That validates the years of work that Seth and the Gibson boys put into designing and testing them. They put them in archtops and solid bodies for exhaustive sound testing, altering the structure of the pickups and where they were placed on the guitar. They settled on the PAF, and it was by consensus. The exception was the pickup covers. The suits wanted nickel and gold for marketing purposes, looking more elegant than Fender. The engineers didn't want the covers because the dampening of higher frequencies. Years later, rock musicians found the value of pulling off the covers. Jazz players had no interest generally.

Anyhow, I think you'll be happy with what you got.

[oriv]

I would basically say the kent is less acoustic, more "in your face" sound than the seth.

I think that's a good example of the KA:

the seth is softer.

[omphalopsychos]

Just an aesthetic update. I missed the black cover and I thought it looked a little too prissy with the gold Seth lover cover, so I opted for a compromise. I couldn't find new pole screws to fit the Seth lover but I got a pretty slick new cover.

[Jimmy Mack]

Fabulous. Where did you get the black covers? And the Gold screw heads are perfect. Nice.

[omphalopsychos]

Humbucker Pickup cover "Jet Black Nickel" plated nickel silver 50mm - Philadelphia Luthier Tools & Supplies, LLC

The screws are from the Seth Lover. My plan was to replace the pole screws too, but now that I've seen it with gold ones, I've stopped looking.

[Herbie]

(...)The exception was the pickup covers. The suits wanted nickel and gold for marketing purposes, looking more elegant than Fender. The engineers didn't want the covers because the dampening of higher frequencies. Years later, rock musicians found the value of pulling off the covers. Jazz players had no interest generally.(...)

I have never heared or read this story. The most told is Seth Lover's own story about the adjusting screws. He wanted the covers without holes but the marketing people wanted holes and screws. Then they put them there but deciding which way they are (in the neck pu towards neck and in the bridge pu towards the bridge) was based only on visual aesthetics!

Here Seymour interviews Lover ca 1978. There he doesn't even think about a possibility to have them without covers. Except that removing the cover would make shielding worse.

Seymour W. Duncan's Interview With Seth Lover | Seymour Duncan

[omphalopsychos]

Ok, one more post for posterity. I'm really happy with the tone now. Plenty of detail without being very harsh. Here's a demo I did really quickly (about time for bed). I'm using the direct out of my Schertler David to record.

[KirkP]

I get more 'air', by which I think I mean amplitude of frequencies above 4 khz, and also more 'clarity', by which I think I mean a slight relative reduction of frequencies in the ~200-800 hz range compared to the stock pickup. I also think the response is more 'dynamic', by which I think I mean that there is a greater range in output volume when I strike the string compared the the stock pickup.

I love this description! I find it annoying when reviewers throw around words like "air," "clarity," and "dynamic" without any useful description of what they're actually hearing, but you made the effort to define your terms.

[yebdox]

I really like that tone you're getting, a good combo of "wood" and "air"! I think it's a keeper in that configuration. I've never played a pisano, are they solid wood? Sounds great!