HISTORY OF THE PAF - THE MAGIC!!!!!!!!

So that's the components sorted but how does all the magic happen??????????


All of the components inside a humbucker contribute a little of themselves to your tone.

I believe that the biggest part of the paf sound comes from the fact that certain parts of the assembly process did not always have a constant outcome. This is where the beauty of 1950's manufacturing comes in.

Original PAF'S from the 50's can vary massively in terms of their tone and output.

One credible explanation is that the machines Gibson used to wind the coils around the pickup's magnets did not have an automatic cut off, allowing an unknown number of turns. Consequently, the machine's operator would manually stop the process when they judged that it was 'done', most likely by timing the machine, causing some PAFs to have more windings than others.

The tension on the cable was also adjusted by the machine's operator which allowed bobbins to fill up quicker than others. Generally speaking no two coils were the same which means that one side of the pickup could be hotter than the other, making it less efficient at cancelling hum and obviously again changing the tone of the pickup.

Gibson used Alnico magnets in PAFs, the same magnet as used in the P-90. Alnico has several different grades and different magnetic and tonal properties (grades II, III, IV and V are usually used) and Gibson apparently assigned them quite randomly until the end of the era of early PAFs ( roughly 1961 ). The most common of magnet in use though was the Alnico IV, which is backed up by some GIBSON paperwork.

These few facts means that your average PAF pickup could measure at anywhere between 7.0 - 9.5 k ohms and could have been built using any of those grades of magnet.

Obviously having so many variables makes for a problem for pinpointing that PAF sound.

Well chances are, if you use the same materials, the same techniques and used the variables from above, you have got the sound of a PAF that could have been made in the 50s.

Your very own PAF twin, it's just maybe you don't like this one.