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I guess this is what you buy to put in your $9K Murphy Lab'd Les Paul. Or something. Comes in a nice little box at least
Gibson $999 PAF limited edition pickups - The Best Tone ever? - gearnews.com
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01-22-2024 05:31 PM
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Originally Posted by jim777
I guess this is what you buy to put in your $9K Murphy Lab'd Les Paul. Or something. Comes in a nice little box at least
Gibson $999 PAF limited edition pickups - The Best Tone ever? - gearnews.com
And people have the nerve to complain that PRS guitars are expensive!
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Murphy lab stuff is awesome. Not the heavy relic stuff, but the quality of the builds, playability, sound, attention to detail are amazing. I have two of them and both have completely outclassed collings and other high end solids and semis.
These pickups sound bogus.
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It's a fair price... if you have that kind of money. One word: Invest.
I have a bridge I can sell you.
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You're right. The presentation box is totally worth it.
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Don't be giving Gibson any ideas or soon we will see a $999 Murphy Labs TOM Bridge! Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Almost Hammond prices. :P
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ABR-1 or Brooklyn? Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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A fool and his money are soon parted. Seymour Duncan has the original PAF winding machines. Seth Lover himself was the consult for the SD Seth Lovers. These are worth maybe half of what they are asking, at best.
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If I remember correctly Seymour has ONE of the original machines. For what it’s worth, Throbak has two original Gibson Kalamazoo machines. Originally Posted by DawgBone
Lastly, I know the history of the SD Seth Lover, but I’ve never thought that the Seth Lover sounded quite true to any PAF I’ve heard.
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Neither, Zilwaukee. Originally Posted by John A.
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If they are double cream I'll buy a set!
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I love it! Brilliant marketing.
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PBRs (PAF Blue Ribbon)!
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Call me old-fashioned, but I thought pickups were supposed to be in a guitar, not a case.
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Now to explain to the wife how my air guitar now costs a grand.
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This is a collectible, nothing more. Even then it is an arrogant, annoying collectible.
There was no exact PAF. The bobbins were machine wound under the control of the ladies (mostly) doing the work. There was a wrap count, but there were variations and some scattering.
In the mid 1960s McCarty told an employee, Pete Moreno, to take a bunch of boxes to the dump because they were taking up space. He filled up a pickup truck with these boxes and disposed of them. They were PAFs. Gibson didn't use them anymore. Pete doesn't know how many pairs of pickups there were, but it was enough that the trunk of a car wouldn't do. He could have kept them if he wanted them, but the general feeling then was that they were inferior pickups. He said there were many hundreds of pairs.
It is true that Seymour Duncan worked with Seth Lover to make an idealized PAF. Throbak in Grand Rapids got two winding machine that Gibson left when moving to Tennessee. Heritage had no interest in those machines.
Personally, I like the Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers. You will get a loud click if your pick taps the cover.
Throbaks are good pickups. Those guys use every detail to replicate the original idealized PAF, much more than Gibson ever did. They are about $730 per set. Seymour Duncan's version is about $250 on Amazon. I had a Les Paul with Throbaks. They sounded fine. I wouldn't pay extra for them, just like I wouldn't pay $1000 to have an archtop relicked. I can do that job.
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w all due respect to Pete, I'm still not buying this story. To be clear I'm not saying he's lying, why would he? I'm guessing he doesn't exactly remember. How many instances have we heard of someone confusing the details of something that happened 30 yrs ago let alone 50 or 60. Why in the world wouldn't Gibson use them? It certainly couldn't be because of a decal, otherwise we wouldn't see some 60s guitars w a combination of PAFs and Patent # pickups. And Gibson never stopped using humbuckers Originally Posted by Marty Grass
I'd love to be proven wrong/know the real story/answer.
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Yeah, the story I heard was they had two boxes, PAF and Patent. The production team just pulled from the PAF box until they ran out, then moved onto patent. Very uneventful, as real life is. Originally Posted by wintermoon
I also don't see why they would throw away functional pickups. That's bad business.
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Besides, if the story were true and those pickups hadn't been thrown away the bottom would have fallen out of the PAF pickup market and they wouldn't be as valuable and hence as desireable as they are today. People want what other people can't get. The hagiography was built up around their scarcity.
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In the mid 60's Gibson switched to the T-top pickup which had a different architecture than the earlier humbuckers. It is possible that a decision was made to no longer use the existing PAF/early Patent sticker pickups and that they were discarded. At that time the PAF craze had not yet come into existence and it was not at all foreseeable that the original design pickups would one day sell for $2500 each.
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I recall a story where Gibson found a stash of 1938-1940 Charlie Christian Blade pickup parts in a box in some dusty corner of the Nashville factory and decided to make a small run of CC guitars with them in 2000. Imagine, Gibson brought this old box of a long obsolete and unfashionable pickup parts from Kalamazoo to Nashville when they could have thrown them out in their move. I own two Gibsons with Charlie Christian Blade pickups made up of those old parts. Seems like Gibson was not in the habit of throwing out things. Originally Posted by wintermoon
I guess Pete's underlying story is how much money that truckload of PAFs could be worth today if he had kept them. Makes for a great story to tell a client. Not saying that Pete is lying but memory tends to be faulty.
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Having had a good look at the 70s/80s CC pickups as well as the originals, I really don’t think they found 1930-40s old stock. Basically every component on the ones I’ve seen are a bit different in the newer ones compared to the older. Granted, I haven’t seen them all. Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
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If there was an issue with what decal was on them, it also seems like it would be far easier to wipe off a decal and apply a new one than it would be to make an entire pickup. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have used them if they had them. Originally Posted by wintermoon
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Well, I've never known Pete Moreno to lie.
I've been in his shop and storage area many times. He has all kinds of stuff from his Gibson days. He did their warranty repairs for years after their move to Tennessee up to maybe 15 years ago. He has gallon containers of finish he bought from Gibson prior to their move to Tennessee. He also has several unused Charlie Christian pickups that Gibson didn't need.
Pete doesn't brag. He mentioned the PAFs only because I was asking him to install pickups on a guitar. They were PAF-like pickups, and he asked how much they cost. He brought up the dump run. He hauled out other stuff for Gibson as well because there was little storage space. He said the Beatles drove guitar demand through the roof and production, particularly for acoustics, was at a peak. Also, marketing was hawking improved pickups with T-tops.
I grew up in Kalamazoo and had friends with parents who worked at Gibson. My mom's bridge partner was Jullius Bellson, Gibson's CFO. The Gibson Story 1973 Julius Bellson Excellent Condition Rare! | Reverb My friends got firewood from Gibson guitar bodies that had flaws. My bandmate's mom worked at Gibson for decades. There was a LP Custom that had a ding on it. Gibson pulled the hardware off it and sawed the body in half. The mom took it home for firewood. My friend drilled the body, put dowels connecting the halves, glued it, and had his mother take it to the Gibson spray booth, where she worked, and gave it a black finish. Once assembled it played very well.
Check this out. At 54 minutes into the recording Rich Severson says something I hadn't heard before about Gibson stamping "second" on guitars simply as a market strategy.
I've owned quite a few Gibson 2nds and "bargains" over the years and usually found nothing wrong with them. Very often the Kalamazoo employees would get them with great discounts. I've heard that sometimes this was done to reduce inventory.
Back to Pete Moreno's veracity. I wasn't there when the PAFs were dumped. You don't have to believe his story. But I've known him for many years. He doesn't brag. But he's helped Eric Clapton pick out a Gibson, he's worked on instruments for ZZ Top, Ted Nugent, and BB King, and he made a custom instrument for Prince, all at their request. The only reason I know this stuff is because I found a photo album while I was waiting one day and asked him about photos of them with him holding a guitar.
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