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I have more nostalgia for my undamaged hearing than I do for all the vintage instruments I used to play back then, one of which had '61 stickered PAFs. To me they were all just Gibson pickups.
Which is to say, I doubt I could hear much difference these days. Might be more about the feel thing JKritter touched on.
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08-07-2021 07:23 PM
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Maybe not a scam, but the way some pickup companies claim to have made the one true replica of a PAF again and again is not entirely in the up and up.
Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
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There is of course this business side of replicating PAFs but then there is this side of history and physics. How did Ted McCarty and Seth Lover create new inventions, how did Seymour Duncan start repairing pups and learned to make his own designs and end up to a aftermarket pickup market leader with Larry DiMarzio. Originally Posted by John A.
Not to mention this internet based boutique pickup wave, individual researchers and entrepeneurs who have investigated the secrets of the pickups during last decades.
I don’t know has it made me or anybody else a better musician but without the achievements of these guys and reading endless speculations in the guitar forums I had not learned how the Alnico IV magnet hb suits fine for my LP and how the Alnico II bar makes my jazz guitar sound sweeter to my ears.
This side effect of the ghost hunt of the PAF sound is not a scam, it is education and learning. I dig it!
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My understanding is that there is a lot of randomness in how the original PAF's were wound so try to replicate them is a fairly vague enterprise. I know that several of the current builders have based their efforts on studying a single pair of originals so in that sense they may all be accurate replicas of the sound and still all sound different. Originally Posted by John A.
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Winner winner chicken dinner!!! Originally Posted by Litterick
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Originally Posted by sgosnell
I'd be willing to bet against long odds that if Charlie Christian came back, he'd not use his namesake pickup. I have nothing against that pickup aside from its cost, heft, difficult installation and lack of versatility. I do like to sound, but few use it as their only pickup nowadays.
I wonder if Charlie would use a 335, Strat or Les Paul. I hope not a Firebird X!
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That's very insightful. I have had brief conversations with both Lollar and Fralin. They are very dedicated and thoughtful designers who, at least previously, were not too busy to answer customer questions. They also don't overpromise with hype. I have Lollar Low Winds and Imperials and Fralin P-92s. I've never sought anything more in the guitars that have them. That is not to say they are the best. But for me there is no reason to look further. All the boxes are checked and pickups are off my "to do" list. Originally Posted by jazzkritter
Last edited by Marty Grass; 08-08-2021 at 10:39 AM.
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Seth Lovers, Classic 57‘s, Ibanez Super 58’s, Lollar low winds they’re all really nice pick ups
And they’re affordable compared to trying to buy a real PAF.
You don’t need to go any further
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I talked to Lindy Fralin about the pickup choice. Explained I had an all maple PM200 that I wanted to get a smoother less sharp sound out of. As you say Marty he was great to talk to and recommended the Modern PAF at 8K.
Quite happy with that choice. Also put one on my AF200 which helped elevate the sound out of the ‘thin small body’ constrained sound.
On the right guitar the Super58 MIJ is a great pup.
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Nothing like selling a Myth, to market a product. Unfortunately there is always some truth involved and that's how it keeps on perpetuating.
If we all worked on actually playing our instrument as much, we'd probably be pretty good by now,LOL !
P.S. I'm probably the most guilty here!
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There is some truth to the myth in my experience. I have never owned a guitar with real PAF's, but I did have a 1963 ES-175. The guitar came to me with later T-Tops. I wanted to restore the guitar to original specs and located a pair of early Patent sticker pups which are pretty much identical to late PAF's (short magnet). Some are identical, others , like the pair I found are identical except for the insulating material on the wire. When I sold that guitar I pulled the early patent sticker pups and sold them by themselves and put a set of classic 57's into the guitar to sell it. Doing this maximized what I could get out of the guitar. So I had three different Gibson pickups in that guitar and can say that it did sound best with the early patent sticker PUPs. The Classic 57's were much less detailed. The T-Tops were not as warm as the other two. I have no experience with Lollars or Fralins and perhaps they are as good as the vintage PUPs? So far, based on my limited experience, there is a "there" there, when it comes to vintage Gibson PUPs. Originally Posted by jads57
Nothing like selling a Myth, to market a product. Unfortunately there is always some truth involved and that's how it keeps on perpetuating.
If we all worked on actually playing our instrument as much, we'd probably be pretty good by now,LOL !
P.S. I'm probably the most guilty here!
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I think you're right. Must be some reason (almost) all the jazz greats ended up with humbuckers of some sort. Technology marches on. Originally Posted by Marty Grass
In a similar vein: I find it hard to imagine Herb and Wes, or Grant and George, or even Mahavishnu and Devadip hanging out and talking about magnets, bobbins, wire gauges, and so on.
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Although the pickups can sometimes make a big difference. They are only part of the equation. If the guitar has no resonance and is Dead sounding,pickups aren't going to solve that issue.
They translate what the acoustic properties of the instrument. So while they can brighten or darken the tone like a tone knob, they sometimes are overly credited with Vintage Guitars.
Yes I know all about aging magnets and the like as well.
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I think many players, especially those who hit the big leagues in the 1950s-1960s, were not "tone chasers" to an extreme degree, and weren't talking about wire gauges and magnet materials. For that very reason, I think a lot of them ended up with humbuckers--they made life easy on the gig. Jim Hall and Ed Bickert come to mind. Both abandoned single coils for humbuckers, and both were very pragmatic guys who viewed their instruments as a workman's tool. I don't think in either case the switch to the humbucker was a clear improvement, though in neither case did their tones really suffer for the change. With Ed in particular, you really have to listen closely to spot the difference, though with Hall, the tone on the Sonny Rollins & Paul Desmond sessions is easily distinguishable from, say, the tone on "Live!" (not to mention his tone from the 1980s to 2010s). Originally Posted by ccroft
On the other hand, a player like Bill Frisell is as big a gear head as they come, and all about chasing down tones (though maybe not through an obsessive focus on pickups). Artists aren't always the best judges of their own work, and by the same token, don't always improve things when they make equipment changes or settings changes. Bickert tended to roll off the high frequencies more and more as the 1990s went on for some reason, which to me made a bigger difference in his sound than the equipment switch.
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The pursuit of tone is a product of Internet – particularly of guitar forums. The chatter created anxiety and competition, which manufacturers fed with pickups and pedals.
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I go back and forth.
No joke. Last week I was thinking about buying the same gear as another guitarist whose sound I loved. I've done it twice before.
This week, I don't feel that way.
I am reminded that Wes, whose tone is the grail for many, played a stock L5. Maybe he turned the neck pickup around.
Then, somebody posted a video of Wes with Lionel Hampton (late 40s, I think), playing a different guitar, with single coils (HBs were still in the future) and sounding ... well, one guess who he sounded like.
I've read that he was finicky about amps, but not guitars and not pickups.
Overall, I've heard incredible tone from single coils (P90, Tele and Strat), various humbuckers (Gibson, Seymour, Bartolini), solid state amps, tube amps and various pedals.
Does the exact pickup model matter? Yes and no.
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I've owned two guitars with Patent Applied For PAFs. A 1961 Les Paul SG with a sideways vibrola and a 1960 ES 345. Between the short neck joint and vibrola, keeping it in tune was a struggle. I traded it for the 60 ES 345 at a pawn shop in Jax FL. At the time, 1975-76, they were just old guitars. In a fit of stupidity, I took the pickups out of the ES 345 and put them in a brand new Gretsch Super Axe and then a year later when I became a "jazz purist" and renounced all things distorted, I traded the Gretsch with PAFs for a brand new Polytone 104 with the evil red knob distortion circuit. What a maroon. Anyway, I kept the ES 345 and when Seymour Duncan first offered the Antiquity line sometime in the 90's. I put a set in that guitar. Those pickups sounded better than the original PAFs to my ears.
Of the original PAF pickups in guitars I played, some were great sounding guitars, others were just average. I chalk that up to the combination of pickups, guitar construction and wood. Now strictly from a monetary standpoint, I wish I still had the PAFs, but if buying a pickup today today I wouldn't hesitate to put a Antiquity in any guitar where the user wanted a PAF sound. It doesn't have the cachet Du Jour of say a Tom Holmes but they IMHO sound just as good for way less the dollars.
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Boys and their Toys! Motorcycle, Race Cars, Golf Clubs, pickups, pedals,........
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I know I've said this before so forgive me. But back when I started my tonal search, I read an the reviews and all the posts and listened to all the clips. I narrowed it down to three or four of the biggest names in boutique paf makers at the time and I sent an email to each, asking for advice, explaining what I played and what I was after.
They each recommended something completely different. Different magnets, different windings, different pickups, basically.
So I just went with the cheapest. And I'm still using those mojotones today. Made by hand in the usa to my specs, with the magnet and winding I asked for.
So just pick something already and get back to playing.
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I like the Antiquities too, I think they are a little bit brighter than the Seth Lovers. I think if you built identical guitars, except one was mahogany with Antiquities and one was maple with Seth Lovers, they'd sound about the same. Originally Posted by rob taft
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Aw, man, thats a nice blues. I love the phrasing and timing. Thanks. Originally Posted by citizenk74
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Wes Montgomery, interviewed in 1965 for Crescendo:
Well, as you know, all amplifiers have different peaks, tonewise. That's one reason why I never want to go into the electronic end of it. I mean, for pick-ups, you've even got a resistor for your controls, man. If you're going to count on one, you've got to count on everything. If the sound has to be that fine - whew! you're in trouble. Search for the sound you want, but give your self reasonable space within it. You have to find the instrument you want first. This is much more important than the amplifier. You've got to feel comfortable. As far as the pickup's concerned, you could check that out with your amplifier. It shouldn't take you that long, because your concern is not all amplification. If you spend too much time trying to find out what bar does this, or what pick-up does that, you'll be getting away from the axe. Your first concern should be what you hear, what you're producing on your instrument. All this other stuff is secondary. I'm concerned about my set-up, but up to a certain level I always give it a lot of play. I got a standard box - I don't never want nothing special. I want it just as standard as I can get it. Then, if I drop my box, I can borrow somebody else's. Like, if I've only got one amp, with the precise sound, and it falls off on the floor - I don't have no job. And if they want to get with Charlie Christian - he had tape all on his box and everything. They tell me the controls and the tail-piece had fallen off, and he would be taping up holes, and things. Nobody wants that. That would look too bad. But you heard what he did with it.
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I haven’t got a clue about pickups, I figure that whatever the guitar came with is perfectly adequate!
My Gibson 175 (mid-70s) obviously has humbuckers, but beyond that I have no idea what type they are, and I could certainly never be bothered to change them.
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I have two Eastman AR503CE guitars. On the older one I changed the pickup to a Benedetto A6, and the newer one came with a SD Seth Lover. I always find it much easier to dial in a sound I like with the A6. Seems I want to scoop out the mids when I play the one with the Seth Lover. However, I am not sure if this is due to the electronics. Unplugged the two guitars sound very different. The older AR503CE seems to have a little bit more of what I would call acoustic character. (IE The sound and tone tends to vary more depending on the strength of attack).
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Benedettos use high-output pickups, designed to be played with the volume rolled back by at least 50%. That changes the resonance peak, and thus the sound. An A6 fully open doesn't sound that great to me, but at ~50% it is a great pickup, perhaps the best I've heard. Changing the volume changes the sound, and makes it easier to get the sound you want. A weaker pickup gives pretty much one sound, and you like it or you don't. The difference in tone from an A6 with volume changes isn't dramatic, but it's enough to be heard, at least by me. If I wanted to change humbuckers, an A6 would almost always be my first choice.
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