Vintage Style Pickups Roundup: Part 2 – Humbucking PAFs

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When Les Paul fanatics talk vintage style pickups, there’s one pickup type that gets talked about more often than any other: the legendary "PAF". Those three letters stand for "Patent Applied For" and are a reference to the earliest humbucking pickups used in Gibson guitars. Even after more than forty years of continued development and advancement in pickup technology, the PAF remains the premier tonal choice for expressive blues and rock players.

This has driven early original PAF pickup prices to extreme levels and as of this writing in 2003, prices of $1000+ each are not uncommon for those that require the original deal. For the rest of us thankfully, replacement pickups fashioned after the original PAFs are offered by numerous pickup manufacturers and are much more affordable.
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Vintage Style Pickups Explored: Part 1 – Single Coil Stratocaster Replacements

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With so many different types of pickups on the market, choosing one that’s just right for you can certainly be a challenge. For typical non-active pickups used in most guitars today, the materials used and how each pickup is constructed can make a large difference in the final tone achieved. Active pickups (i.e., those that have some form of pre-amplification built in that requires the use of a battery of some type) are a whole different category altogether.

For the sake of focus, this two-part series will discuss varieties of vintage style pickups. First, we’ll take a look at some single-coil options that you’d typically use in a Stratocaster. Next time, we’ll bring out the Les Paul and play with some vintage-voiced humbuckers. As we go through the various options, some vendors were kind enough to provide great educational info about how each pickup is made and why they’ll sound a particular way. This will be helpful for the person that may not necessarily be interested in a vintage-voiced pickup but can use the information to read over the specifications of another pickup and then perhaps get a better understanding of how each specification may affect the tone.
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Fender Stratocaster Plus Series

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The Fender Stratocaster’s design, tone, and roster of famous past and current players clearly make it a legendary guitar. As with any other guitar model however, certain designs invoke a special feeling which deem it to be a classic or at least a legend in the making. The most prized Fender Stratocasters today are those known as pre-CBS (prior to the sale of Fender Musical Instruments to CBS in 1965) models, produced from 1954 through the early 1965. These instruments have a certain unique feel and sound as well as being historically significant since they were produced during some of the most interesting eras of rock and roll itself. As we moved into the 70’s, the Stratocaster became a more popular and more widely produced guitar, but also one that was constructed with less attention to detail. As a result of poorer quality control and materials used, the 70’s were seen as the low point of the Stratocaster.
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A/DA Flanger

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I loved the sound of the flanger from the first time I heard it used on recordings. I thought the jet-sweeping flanging sound used on recorded drums was simply awesome. Then I listened to Eddie Van Halen’s guitar on “Unchained” and thought it was cool having the up and down sweeps of the flanger move along in time with the dropped D pedal tone riff. After hearing that, I just had to have one for myself.
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Eric Clapton: An Appreciation of the Early Years

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If Eric Clapton had decided to lie down his guitar and never play another note, his legendary stature in the history of popular music would still be secure. At the ripe old age of 23, he had lit the pop music world on fire with the Bluesbreakers and had finished playing with the first supergroup, Cream. He topped critic’s polls, had platinum albums and a huge house in the English countryside and everyone wanting to work with him. But at this point, he was trying to elude the spotlight and continue his musical journey out from under the microscope. The grueling pace of the Cream touring and recording had left him burnt out, and by the end of 1968, Eric Clapton was ready for a change.
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Review of Seymour Duncan Phat Cat P-90 Pickups

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Introduction by David Szabados, Review by Mike Mullen

After playing through a P-90-loaded guitar for the first time, my immediate thought was, "OMG! Where have you been all my life? And where have I been all these years!?"

While focusing on getting my ideal rock and blues tones for years, I’ve always played through and with countless variations of Les Pauls and Stratocasters (and copies) with a myriad of pickup arrangements. For one reason or another however, I had never gotten to trying a guitar equipped with P-90s. Until late last year…
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The Fender Custom Shop Experience

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Jimi Hendrix. David Gilmour. I grew up admiring both of these artists…and their Stratocasters. Hendrix is most famously known for his late ’60s white “Woodstock” Strat, while Gilmour is best known for his black Strat (now a signature Fender model) which is a “mutt” of various parts – but started out as a circa 1968 stock model.

These late ’60s Strats are most easily identified by use of the large headstock design that originated after the CBS purchase of Fender musical instruments in 1965. Hendrix can be seen with his favorite Strat (he preferred his black one over the white he used at Woodstock) in his famous performance captured on video at The Isle of Wight in 1970. Gilmour used an identical black with maple board model in the Pink Floyd “Live at Pomeii” film shot in 1972. These classic performances, and those Stratocasters, left an impression on me that continues to this day.
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Typical Early Edward Van Halen Studio Setup Diagram

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  1. MXR e.q. set up as midboost (* only occasionally used depending on the guitar)
  2. Marshall plexi Super Lead, unmodified, although simple modifications such as a cascaded input stage or added gain through capacitor/resistor exchanges may have been made.
  3. Ohmite VARIAC set to approximately 90 Volts A/C
  4. Dummy Load
  5. MXR Flanger
  6. MXR Phase 90 (** This was sometimes put in front of the amp instead of after the dummy load)
  7. Echoplex EP3
  8. (***Equalization sometimes added prior to power amp)
  9. H & H power amp
  10. Various Marshall cabinets (sometimes two, sometimes four) used with various Celestion and JBL speakers

Typical Early Edward Van Halen Studio Setup



Marshall JTM-45 Reissue Modification – Part II

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In part I of our Marshall JTM-45 transformation process, we installed a point-to-point board from Metropoulos Amplification and began to hear the positive results of our test Marshall as it came to new life.

Now, in Part II of our continued Marshall JTM-45 transformation, we move forward with two additional changes in addition to having the opportunity to compare the final results to an original 1964 badge-logo Marshall JTM-45. The two changes that we decided to perform were to swap out the stock output transformer to a Mercury Magnetics Axiom O45JT-C model as well as to upgrade the board’s capacitors to those made by SoZo Amplification. To say that we were excited as well as just plain curious about the final results, especially when we could now compare it to an original JTM-45— is an understatement.
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EQ Tips

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We do get quite a lot of e-mails from folks asking about how they should set their tone controls on their amps and/or pedals. In fact, this "how should I set things?" question is the number one question we get here.

As a result, I thought the time was right to discuss equalization in general and offer some EQ tips. Much of this information comes from my own years of trial and error as well as from the valued insight of others. Even all these years later, I continue to learn from various people, mostly on the Internet these days, and of course I still experiment. I hope you find this information useful!
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