VINTAGE-ST
PAF
TO SUPER-SIZE YOUR T
Can you hear me from the bottom of
the rabbit hole? I’ve fallen and I can’t get
up; my mind is a jumbled mess of alnico
magnets, butyrate, 42 gauge enamel wire,
and snake oil. Trying to piece together any
sentence without the words “Patent Applied
For” in the last few weeks has proven to
be quite the task. I have subjected myself
to all manner of tonal buzzword torture for
the last few weeks at the bottom of this
can of worms for you, dear readers. If you
are in the market for new pickups (let’s
be honest, who isn’t?) for your Les Paul
or humbucker-equipped guitars, chances
are very high you have heard of PAFs. PAF
stands for Patent Applied For, and is the
colloquial term of the original early Seth
Lover and Les Paul designed humbucking
pickups for their Gibson made guitars (the
reason for this being that the patent had
34
TONE TALK //
not gone through until after a few years
of production, hence the famous “Patent
Applied For” sticker on the backs of
the most sought-after PAFs). These are
considered by many to be the holy grail
of the humbucker design, and is sought
after for it’s rich, tonally balanced, and
harmonically complex tone that only comes
from those two coils. The early ’57 and ’59
humbuckers found in Les Pauls made in
those years are the most sought after, and
the most copied. Before the internet, you
had to rely on your ear, a vintage guitar, or
a local pickup winder to approximate the
tone of these hallowed pickups. With the
advent of the internet, literally hundreds
of different pickup makers from garage
dwellers to factory owners have sprung up
in every corner of the world, all promising
the same thing; we will get you that tone.
8 Vintage-Style PAFs to Super-Size Your Tone