Flipping PAFs?

[JB_From_Hell]

Anybody ever rotated a PAF 180 degrees and noticed a difference?

And why haven't I just tried it? The guitar in question is 57 years old, I get nervous about messing with screws and whatnot more often than necessary, and does not technically belong to me.

 

[Discharged]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

Why would you want to do that? What exactly are you trying to achieve?

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

Classic problem. The neck pickup is too bassy, bridge is too bright. I can deal with it by dialing in a good neck pickup tone, then taking the edge off the bridge with the tone control, but it doesn't leave a lot of tweaking room, and I think it could be better.

What I REALLY want to try is swapping the pickups. I think the neck is hotter than the bridge, and think switching them would be holy grail awesome, but it's my dad's guitar, and despite it having had a neck reset and insert added to the neck joint to fix the scale length, he's set on leaving all the solder joints original.

I read in a few places that flipping the pole pieces toward the neck warmed up the bridge pickup a bit.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

it makes a subtle difference unless the coils are significantly mismatched. cant hurt to try, ive done it before

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

I'm kind of hoping one of the pots dies so I can guilt-free try swapping the pickup positions. In the meantime, maybe I'll flip both and see what happens.

 

[Discharged]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

Classic problem. The neck pickup is too bassy, bridge is too bright.

Great! That's first and foremost a sign that the basic setup of the guitar's NOT been properly done; most probably the p'ups don't sit anywhere near where their "sweet spot" actuall is, hence causing this very common but often overlooked problem.

However, IF this' been done with attention to detail, but still doesn't solve the issue, IME, here's where mag swapping becomes the most effective way to go, both economic- and tone-wise.

The 1st thing to do is to assess exactly what p'ups are there, then at least take a DC reading, assess what the pots actually measure, then we can start to think about what magnets would suit'em best, eventually changing pots to unleash their whole potential.

Without any real empirical data to go after, just flipping a p'up for the sake of it is basically an exercise in futility.

/Peter

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

These are real PAFs in a ‘62 Les Paul. There shall be no swapping of magnets.

And yeah, I’ve spent close to 30 years off and on tweaking this guitar.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

doesnt hurt anything to flip the pup and its totally reversible

 

[AniML]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

These are real PAFs in a ‘62 Les Paul. There shall be no swapping of magnets.

And yeah, I’ve spent close to 30 years off and on tweaking this guitar.

Unless it has already been done, I wouldn't want to unnecessarily remove or replace a drop of solder or wire, because then it is a repaired / further from original 62 Les Paul.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

Unless it has already been done, I wouldn't want to unnecessarily remove or replace a drop of solder or wire, because then it is a repaired / further from original 62 Les Paul.

It’s had a neck reset.

 

[AniML]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

It’s had a neck reset.

Carry on

 

[hamerfan]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

Another non invasive mod: i own a 52 P90 with A3 magnets for the neck which was a bit too warm and muddy. i changed the pole screws to 1022 steel screws. The bridge could benefit from 1010 which give a warmer sound.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

The setup certainly does not impede the ability to get the pickups to any height from the strings on any Gibson I have ever seen.

As to flipping, well not only do you have the ability to exploit the (well known) variability between coils that is most likely to be there on a PAF/Pat #. But also the ability to adjust screws (on every pickup) certainly makes for the ability to not only make the more treble side coil stronger in the mix of the two, but the screws add treble detail as well.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

doesnt hurt anything to flip the pup and its totally reversible

I see what you did there

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

Oddly, I’d never tried lowering the treble side of the bridge and bass side of the neck. This helped significantly.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Flipping PAFs?

sometimes the simplest option is the best solution. glad it was an easy fix