gringopig's guitars
This was my first attempt at some objective demo of different PAF reproduction pickups.
The Patent Applied For pickup, brainchild of Seth Lover whilst working for Ted McCarty in 1955 wasn't a new concept and had been developed in the mid 1930's and the principle of cancelling noise and stray radio frequency signals was quite clever, cancelling the noise in the signal which would have been then amplified alongside the desired guitar signal. It also got one up on Fender and this must have been a big factor as the two companies were in heated competition.
The coils are wound in opposing directions and also have opposing magnetic polarities. The stray signals are cancelled by inversion of phase of 180 degrees in the coil only but the guitar signal is then additive due to the extra inversion of the magnetic field which only acts on the signal induced by the string.
No hum!
The hum is gone but a side product of the twin coil layout and the extra windings result in the tone of Rock™.
This suited Jazz players as the warm fat tones played well with their warm fat 'licks' but also resulted in guitar players of a later generation seeking them out as they put out quite a lot of extra signal into the amplifiers of the day and could more readily get the distorted sound favoured by them.
This is why Clapton, Bloomfield and the like started using the Les Paul as it was a perfect platform for the then modern electric blues style.
Later came Hendrix and the fuzz pedals and the re-design of amplifiers to more readily distort and now Humbuckers are just another tone in the palette.
The PAF pickup was an origin point for rock guitar and it's no wonder replicas are produced today by quite a few companies large and small.
The set up is as follows:
I have my Carr Skylark set up with 2 microphones as can be seen in the photos below. One setting for clean. I have 2 microphones, an SM57 and a Rode NT1-A positioned as seen.
Click on the pictures for full view and description
I have a Presonus Studio68C as an audio interface into which the microphones are plugged, using the phantom power for the Rode microphone and levels set and mixed to be the nearest I can get to the sound in the room. I record with Presonus Studio One.
The video was done with my Sony Xperia Z2 at 1080p on a tripod. Not the best but it's all I have!
I recorded all the parts with the stock Custombuckers first, then swapped out the pickups for a set of Monty's and repeated the process, keeping all the same settings intact. I think this is surely the way to compare pickups as it's using the same guitar and amplifier and solely swapping the pickups. I make a living working in R.F. and microwave engineering, so I suppose I have a need to calibrate and test the unit correctly and if I had a sub 50kHz vector network analyser at hand, you can be certain I would use it to record the frequency response of the pickups too but that would not demonstrate anything musically relevant.
I kept this test clean as the impetus for this video was hearing a lot of pickup demos on YouTube which purported to be clean but were anything but or were attempted recreations of a Slayer live concert with massive saturation.
Both of which, of course, completely obliterate any small differences in the pickups.
I have no personal gripe with Slayer, just so you know :-)
I wasn't entirely happy with the Custombuckers that were stock in the 2017 Les Paul and inspired by my friend Brian, who was trying out different humbuckers, I decided to buy a set of Monty's PAFs which got great reviews. I bought a Hakko soldering station, some 60/40 tin/lead solder and a bigger tip and was ready to try having a go myself.
So what you have is one guitar, seen here , one amplifier, a curly cable and two sets of PAF humbuckers. Any volume change or tonal difference is down to the pickup. Or that was the intention anyway.
Make sure you select 1080p and listen on good speakers or headphones...
Click on the pictures for full view and description
So, any conclusions?
My personal observations are that the Custombuckers sound good and, given the fact that they are supplied in Gibson's custom shop models up until the 60th anniversary models, they are well regarded and serious contenders to be official PAF replicas.
However, there was always something I didn't like about them and, like a lot of pickups, it happens at the midrange and top end part of the spectrum. My preference is for a lower output pickup and one that has a certain spankiness or 'honk' if you will near the higher regions. The Custombucker subjectively has a mid hump just below what I would describe as being the high end that is always there. It's there on both pickups.
I thought it was too brash and in your face but that could be exactly what you're after in a PAF, it's all subjective.
The Monty's PAF sounded more defined in the top end and clearer, with a similar output and a certain spank I liked. I actually bought these on the basis that they are unpotted; that is, they aren't dipped in wax or otherwise protected against internal resonance and microphonic feedback at higher volume and gain settings. I have read that stock Custombuckers are potted, so it may be that differences are down in large part to that but I liked the squonk of the Monty's pickups.
Note the use of odd terms of description but isn't it hard to describe these things?
Unfortunately I only started measuring the pickup resistance on my PAF shootout video of four types, so didn't personally measure the Monty's but their website specs are:
Scatter wound using 42-gauge Plain Enamel wire:
Neck- Alnico V, 7.2k
Bridge- Alnico II, 7.7k
The Custombuckers measure 7.86 k ohms in the bridge and 7.92 k ohms in the neck and I don't know what
magnets are in them. You could search the guitar forums but all you are going to get is opiniated guff and misdirection followed by an ego battle. I'm going to say I don't know. I do have pictures of the resistance measurement though!
Bridge pickup
Neck pickup
Listen to the video at 4:05 then 4:15 for neck, 4:48 then 4:58 for the bridge to hear the immediate difference. Not massively different but for me it's enough to keep the Monty's in and enjoy the guitar a lot more than I did previously. I would buy Monty's pickups again without hesitation but would maybe go for Alnico III if they allowed magnets to be specified.
I'm still using the Monty's!
Check out Monty's PAF Humbuckers here: Monty's Website
