Gibson PAF Pickups History: Five Watt World

[HANGAR18]

 

[bolero]

This is a convoluted statement of logic:

"The characterization that a great burst Les Paul sounds like a Telecaster on steroids is really talking about how a humbucking pickup succeeded in sounding like a quiet P90"

WTF

I've never heard anyone say a great burst Les Paul sounds like a Telecaster with P90's

 

[LK155]

What?  You found something on the internet that you don't believe?  Hard to imagine.

 

[rockabilly69]

They are just saying that the goal of PAF was to sound like a PAF without the noise. There are many people, including the early pickup designers that feel the P90 is the best pickup that was ever made. And some of those early PAFs do sound quite a bit like an hot Balckguard Tele pickup.

[rockabilly69]

2 hours ago, rockabilly69 said:

They are just saying that the goal of PAF was to sound like a PAF without the noise. There are many people, including the early pickup designers that feel the P90 is the best pickup that was ever made. And some of those early PAFs do sound quite a bit like an hot Balckguard Tele pickup.

Meant to say "the goal of the PAF was to sound like a P90 without the noise" whoops

Edited May 29 by rockabilly69

[bolero]

Yep I know & realize that

It sounded like the guy was reading a bad LLM/AI prompt that scourged the internet & "logically" strung that sentence together. And he read it wirth such conviction!

influencers, I tell ya...

[skydog52]

Just pony up for one or both of these.

 

 

1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 1, | Gibson

 

1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 2, | Gibson

[TalismanRich]

On 5/29/2025 at 2:25 AM, bolero said:

This is a convoluted statement of logic:

"The characterization that a great burst Les Paul sounds like a Telecaster on steroids is really talking about how a humbucking pickup succeeded in sounding like a quiet P90"

WTF

I've never heard anyone say a great burst Les Paul sounds like a Telecaster with P90's

 

That's exactly why people work so hard to make their LP sound just like Page's Tele on the first LZ album.   They're really the same,  just different!

[bolero]

well, a humbucker is a single coil pickup on steroids...

granted I didn't watch the whole vid, just happened to catch that bit. I'm sure he put a lot of work into it I'll check it out sometime

I think I am aware of most of the PAF history though.

I'm bringing a shovel to PSP so I can dig around where Pete Moreno dumped that truckload of them in the landfill back in the day

[bolero]

2 hours ago, TalismanRich said:

That's exactly why people work so hard to make their LP sound just like Page's Tele on the first LZ album.   They're really the same,  just different!

haha!!

yes, there's that too

[rockabilly69]

7 hours ago, TalismanRich said:

That's exactly why people work so hard to make their LP sound just like Page's Tele on the first LZ album.   They're really the same,  just different!

That's why Page tried to make his Les Paul so much like his Tele  

Frankly though, I kind of do the same thing. I wired my humbucker Zemaitis guitars with a high pass filter so I can make the humbuckers sound like singles when I need to. I got that idea from the PTB (Passive Treble Bass) cicuit that's in my G&L Legacy. And my Teye guitar has what's called a mood control that does the same thing. I think Page moved to the Les Paul because he preferred the way the his Paul could conjure up the heavy tones with his stage amps, and when he backed up the volumes, the PAFs could get into the Tele zone. 

[bolero]

hey that is a pretty great idea!

And I finally watched that PAF vid, it was good!

I must have just landed on that earlier quote by chance, when I previewed it

[tbonesullivan]

On 5/29/2025 at 2:11 PM, rockabilly69 said:

They are just saying that the goal of PAF was to sound like a P90 without the noise. There are many people, including the early pickup designers that feel the P90 is the best pickup that was ever made. And some of those early PAFs do sound quite a bit like an hot Balckguard Tele pickup.

Honestly, the P90 is one of my favorite pickup sounds. Just wish there wasn't the hum. I know that they have all these "hum free" versions, but they are never quite the same. Then there's the staple top, which I have unfortunately not gotten a chance to really own. I have a Jazzmaster, and also like the sound of those pickups, but again, wish there wasn't so much hum.

My favorite humbucker pickups are always the vintage style ones with lower output. Yes, they don't push the amps as hard, but they just have a type of snarl that the higher output pickups lack. I'm fine with SD '59s, Seth Lovers, or Dimarzio 36th Anniversary PAFs. While I admit the high end PAF style pickups are enticing, I feel the law of diminishing returns is definitely in effect.

Edited June 10 by tbonesullivan

[rockabilly69]

7 hours ago, tbonesullivan said:

I'm fine with SD '59s, Seth Lovers, or Dimarzio 36th Anniversary PAFs. While I admit the high end PAF style pickups are enticing, I feel the law of diminishing returns is definitely in effect.

I've never heard a set of the '59s that I really liked. But I have had some good luck with the Seth Lovers and Dimarzio 36th Anniversarys. 36th Anniversaries are what the higher Zemaitis reissues shipped with, so I have had mulitiple sets, and I left them in two of my Zemaitis guitars and they are getting the job done.  I swapped out the original Pearly Gates pickups that my newer H150 had in it, for some some Seths and I liked the Seths much better. I later swapped the Seths for a set of Duncan Custom Shop non potted Peter Green pickups (without the reversed magnets), and they sound great! But the best sounding low gain PAFs I've heard from Duncan is the lowly Jazz pickup which most people just use in the neck, I loved the Jazz bridge pickup, I got some killer tones out it with my Marshall amp...

 

[bolero]

"makes my big toe shoot up inside my boot!'

To paraphrase Little Richard

[rwinking]

On 5/30/2025 at 2:19 PM, skydog52 said:

Just pony up for one or both of these.

 

 

1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 1, | Gibson

 

1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 2, | Gibson

Is it just me or did anyone else find it odd to be buying these pickups in a "Lifton Presentation Case" when you are (ideally) going to put the pickups in your guitar?

So then what do you do with the case?

 When these came out I suggested to Larry Dimarzio that he put out a limited run of his 50th Anniversary Super Distorion Humbuckers in a fancy case and sell them for $1k a pair. He declined the idea.

 

[TalismanRich]

People will buy anything these days if it says it's limited edition.   FOMO is a powerful driver of sales.   

"How can we sell a $130 pickup for $500?"   "I've got it!   We can put them in little cases like the guitars and call them a special edition."

"Good idea!  The boys in accounting will LOVE this one.  How many can we make?"    

"We need to do a thousand to get a break on the little cases.  Otherwise the cases will cost more than the pickups."

"Perfect!"

[RJLII]

On a related subject, I recall Pete Moreno (RIP) telling me that when he was fairly new at Gibson they had him haul a pickup load of stuff out to the landfill in Kalamazoo. Included were multiple bulk packed boxes of PAF pickups that were somehow deemed unacceptable for production. @brentrocks may have heard him tell the same story. I shudder to think what these would be worth today. 

[MartyGrass]

I definitely heard Pete talk about the PAF dump.  Gibson moved on to another pickup design and was promoting it.  Pete said there were to factors that led to burying them.  The first was that they were not going to put them in new production, and the second was the boxes of PAFs took up shelf space.

They were put in a pit in a dump Gibson used.  Pete would have told me if he kept any, and he did not.  However, there were a lot of billets and damaged guitars that Pete and other employees took home, presumably for firewood.  I mentioned before my 15 year old bandmate got a LP ebony Custom that was sawed in half due to some defect.  They put it back together at home with dowels and glue.  The mother worked in finishing, so this became an ebony.  It was a beautiful guitar.

Pete Moreno had a ton of guitar wood and metal parts.  He kept his shop warm with wood discards from Gibson and Heritage.  When Pete died his son managed the estate but didn't know much about guitars.  I believe he sold it off as a lot.  The really interesting collection Pete had was Marilyn Monroe memorabilia.  He had tons of it in his basement.  But there was no way I could take that stuff to my home.

Another strange Pete Moreno story is that he got four upright basses from Western Michigan University that needed some work.  They were being discarded.  He fixed them then sold them.  

[tbonesullivan]

On 6/13/2025 at 2:24 PM, RJLII said:

On a related subject, I recall Pete Moreno (RIP) telling me that when he was fairly new at Gibson they had him haul a pickup load of stuff out to the landfill in Kalamazoo. Included were multiple bulk packed boxes of PAF pickups that were somehow deemed unacceptable for production. @brentrocks may have heard him tell the same story. I shudder to think what these would be worth today. 

Jol Dantzig, one of the founders of Hamer Guitars, had visited the Kalamazoo factory many times, and he picked up some used / PAF pickups that had been pulled from guitars for some reason or another, and were just thrown a drawer, if I recall. Those ended up being used in the earliest Hamer guitars, some after being rewound by Larry Dimarzio. I need to re-read that part in the Hamer book to get the full history, but its always amazing how things that were considered "junk" back then would now be highly desirable.

[brentrocks]

On 6/13/2025 at 2:24 PM, RJLII said:

On a related subject, I recall Pete Moreno (RIP) telling me that when he was fairly new at Gibson they had him haul a pickup load of stuff out to the landfill in Kalamazoo. Included were multiple bulk packed boxes of PAF pickups that were somehow deemed unacceptable for production. @brentrocks may have heard him tell the same story. I shudder to think what these would be worth today. 

Yes!!!   The boss told someone at the Gibson factory (I don’t think it was Pete) to dispose of a huge pile of old PAF pickups lying in a corner 

[MartyGrass]

Time can alter memories.  I do remember Pete telling me about the buried PAFs.  He said it was a matter of them taking up space, along with some other stuff.  The PAF was no longer put on Gibsons.  They advertised an improved pickup on their models.  There were also a lot of other things discarded.  For example, Charlie Christian pickups were tossed.  The high volume discards were wood in various stages of evolution into guitars.

I remember the conversation pretty well because the military buried a ton of leather flight jackets at the time.  This was in the news.  They dug a crater, dropped in a large number of jackets, and bulldozed dirt over them.  The news article said there was a reason not to flood the Army surplus market.  I told Pete that new old stock PAFs could fetch $500 each at the time.  He told me that McCarty wanted them taken to the dump.  Gibson had a pickup truck that Pete put a couple of heavy boxes filled with them into the truck along with other stuff and disposed of them.  No one thought the PAFs were particularly special, and they were of no use to Gibson.

I heard from a few sources that those who worked assembling guitars were expected to bring anything with a flaw on it to the shift supervisor.  There were spring loaded stamps that would imprint the back of the headstock with a 2 for second or BGN for bargain.  If the employee wanted a particular guitar, they would not retract the spring and would leave a very shallow impression of 2 or BGN that didn't go into the wood.  The employee had to show the supervisor the headstock stamp.  If approved, the guitar could be acquired by the employee for a very low price.  The 2 or BGN could easily be sanded and touched up once taken home.

This came up in my discussion with Pete Moreno because a friend of mine had a LP Custom with a very light 2 on the back of the headstock.  I showed him.  He said that there was probably a small ding somewhere that happened in the factory, possibly intentionally.  The guitar being quite old at the time I showed Pete, there were a number of dings and scratches.  The guitar was white.  He said with the yellowing now it would be hard to match.  Later, Aaron Cowles confirmed what Pete told me.  It all depended on the supervisor and the employee as to how that worked.

Whether Pete took the PAFs to the dump or not, he told me that McCarty asked him to do that.  Dump runs were common for Pete.

Pete picked up wood discards from Gibson and Heritage for many years and fueled his shed heating stove with them.

[TalismanRich]

That's not uncommon in business.   In 5S methodology, there is a idea that if you don't use materials within a period of time, then it can be disposed.   Since Gibson had a new, improved version of the humbucker,  why keep a bunch of old obsolete equipment laying around taking up space?   Send them to the dump and write off the value.