V16 '59 Clone PAF Humbucker Guitar Pickup Set Boutique

Description: This listing is for one pair of uncovered of pickups.A number of friends and customers over the years have suggested that I offer my pickups to the public. Well, I finally decided to listen, and I'm not getting any younger, so here we are. To make a very long story short, I've been building guitars since High School woodshop in 1983, and professionally since 1992. I've had the honor of building for guitar and bass greats such as Duke Robillard of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, "Dime Bag" Darrell Abbott of Pantera, Todd Rundgren, Allen Woody of The Allman Brothers Band, and both of those lovely gents, Peter Hayes & Robert Levon Been, of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. I decided at some point that that only way to have real control over my guitars builds' tone was to wind my own pickups, so in 2013 I went to work. The more pickups I wound (and in 10 years I've wound few), the more drawn I was to jump down the rabbit hole (and it is a deep, deep rabbit hole) and try to recreate that essential Seth Lover pickup we all know and love - the "The Holy Grail", otherwise known as the PAF. So I dug in, did a lot of research, wound a good many pickups that sounded really nice but weren't quite there, and found in the end that winding a PAF is a little like brewing beer. There are an infinite number of variations on the same concept, and how you as the consumer interpret the experience completely depends on your own pallet, body chemistry, even the glass you drink it out of. There are a number of factors that determine what a PAF can sound like and every variation likely presented itself in the late 50's when there were very few manufacturing guidelines in place related to winding humbuckers at the Gibson factory. One would clearly sound better to your ear than another. The characteristics that they all seem to have in common, though, are their "airiness", which most attribute to their lack of wax potting and use of enamel coated coil wire, along with their high touch sensitivity, clarity, and balanced frequency band. The PAF that I've chosen to recreate starts with a basis that you would expect, namely butyrate plastic coil bobbins, enamel-coated 42AWG coil wire, nickel silver baseplates, maple wood spacers, rough-cast AlNiCo magnets, low carbon 1010 alloy steel fillister screws and 1215 alloy steel slugs just like the originals. Anyone can buy the parts, though - the "craft" comes in the invisible details. My start-lead wire begins inside the pickup, just like the originals. That has a profound impact on the wind. I also build-in a significant coil imbalance for touch sensitivity and note articulation, more so on the neck pickup, a slight over-wind on the bridge for a bit of extra warmth coupled with a fully-charged AlNiCo V magnet, and heftier under-wind on the neck also paired with the same. Will this pickup make your SG, Tele, or S-series Ibanez sound like a '59 Les Paul? No, not exactly. Tone woods and construction have as much to do with what a guitar sounds like as the electronics. It will make an R9 Historic Les Paul sound like it was intended to, though. No matter what guitar you play - if you like that "bell-tone", if you like hearing a "Kerrang!" when you pound a chord, if you want note articulation when you play a lead, and like a clear signal when you roll of the volume for those clean parts, then this pickup is the right choice, and you don't have to pay $500 - $1000 for a pair. I offer double black, double cream, or Zebra in either direction with either nickel or gold plated fillister screws. Your two pickups don't necessarily have to visually match - Gibson never intended for the covers to be removed, so you could very well have had a guitar with a double-black and a zebra, a zebra and a double-cream, or a two double creams... you get it. Send me a message once you've placed your order with bobbin color choices and whether you want gold or nickel plated screws. Speaking of covers - there are a myriad of cover options out there, some of them quite pricy based upon their level of historic accuracy, and it's simply too expensive to keep every option in stock. If you want a cover, or covers, I can order them from the usual suspects and install at no additional charge beyond what I pay for them, but it may add a bit of time to your order. I offer a 100% money-back guarantee. I'll give you 30 days with them. If you don't like the way they sound, put them back in a box in saleable condition, send them back to me, and I will refund your money. No problem, no hassle. I really like my stuff, and I'm pretty sure you will too!Be sure and check out the video demo by Mike Nixx. He is playing through a Wonder Dawg 1X12 amp and a couple of different OD pedals - a True North Tweed Drive and a J Rockett Audio .45 Cal.

Price: 299 USD

Location: Denver, Colorado

End Time: 2024-10-17T14:39:07.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD