Wooden Pickup Spacers?

[Demanic]

Re: Wooden Pickup Spacers?

It makes me wonder why they don't just sell their instruments at a lower cost without pickups.

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[Chistopher]

Re: Wooden Pickup Spacers?

It makes me wonder why they don't just sell their instruments at a lower cost without pickups.

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If I owned a guitar company, I would offer at least three options for pickups (with descriptions of course) and a reduced price BYOP option. I've acquired so many OEM pickups over the years that I've debated making a coffee table out of them.

[jeremy]

Re: Wooden Pickup Spacers?

that slows manufacturing waaaay down. cookie cutter is much more efficient

[Chistopher]

Re: Wooden Pickup Spacers?

Well my company, if I had one, would be a small boutique type business that sold only the finest of hand crafted instruments.

[AlexR]

Re: Wooden Pickup Spacers?

What I want to know is, have any of you tried mahogany?

Seriously though, it's hard to figure how they could make any appreciable difference. Pickup makers who want to be vintage correct use 'em anyway.

When Tim Shaw was designing a new pickup for Gibson - one intended to sound as much like the original PAFs as possible - he chose to use plastic spacers. Tim knows what he's doing when it comes to pickups and these sound great; they bring a pretty good price on the used market, especially for a factory Gibson pickup.

Still, many boutique winders (including some guys who have studied vintage PAFs extensively) use wood. Not sure whether that's for any tonal purpose or if it's just so they can say they do.

Just an FYI really......
.........the Shaw pickup's main vintage correct part is the bobbin having the 'square in circle' marking on the top. James Finnerty from ReWind has looked at the various components of the Shaw, and concluded that practically every element of that pickup is 'wrong' if you get down the nitty gritty of what makes a PAF. However Gibson themselves may well have been the more pertinent part of that decision.....they certainly made the decision on speccing a non vintage correct (cheaper to buy) wire over what Shaw himself wanted (the vintage correct coating).
So I'd most likely guess that the plastic spacer was a Gibson (Norlin) decision. The Heritage series that the pickup was designed for, was supposedly a 59 reissue, but was essentially a generic LP of the era with a 2 piece top and ABR. So there was not an overwhelming desire in any part of the process to make anything accurate.

[eclecticsynergy]

Re: Wooden Pickup Spacers?

Just an FYI really......
.........the Shaw pickup's main vintage correct part is the bobbin having the 'square in circle' marking on the top. James Finnerty from ReWind has looked at the various components of the Shaw, and concluded that practically every element of that pickup is 'wrong' if you get down the nitty gritty of what makes a PAF. However Gibson themselves may well have been the more pertinent part of that decision.....they certainly made the decision on speccing a non vintage correct (cheaper to buy) wire over what Shaw himself wanted (the vintage correct coating).
So I'd most likely guess that the plastic spacer was a Gibson (Norlin) decision. The Heritage series that the pickup was designed for, was supposedly a 59 reissue, but was essentially a generic LP of the era with a 2 piece top and ABR. So there was not an overwhelming desire in any part of the process to make anything accurate.

I don't doubt it at all. Gibson has long been notorious for paying more attention to production economy than to any designer's vision. It's a tradition that goes all the way back to the days of the original PAFs. And certainly James is one of the makers who have really delved into the details. The ReWind PAFs that I own (custom wind A3 neck, Pale Rider bridge, and three Creme Brulees) are some of my very favorite humbuckers.

Yet despite being entirely un-PAF-like in materials and construction, those Gibson Shaws are great sounding pickups in their own right. Very vintagey in both tone and feel.

I used both a '79 Standard and a Standard-80 for a number of years and IME they were quite different. Not trying to argue that the Heritage Series were vintage correct, but they did have nice mahogany necks with slightly chunky carve, no volute and the smaller 50s style headstock. Wonderfully lively feel to that neck, a very different animal from the Standard's typical Norlin maple IMO.

I have nothing against volutes though - that Standard-80 is the only one of my LPs ever which suffered the dreaded Gibson headstock break. With a volute I bet it wouldn't have snapped, despite being mahog. The guitar was never the same after being repaired; it sounded brighter & less woody, and had lost a lot of that great elastic feel.

[AlexR]

Re: Wooden Pickup Spacers?

Agree with you on tone......have a full set in one guitar which really do sound great. They are the tone of Brothers in Arms.....which is a grail tone in itself.

For myself, I don't care overly about pure vintage spec, unless I'm making a burst clone. I own both a 75 Custom and an 80 Deluxe........and love their tones. I tend to take guitars for what they are, rather than trying to make them fit some preconceived notion of what the should be.