Hot PAF style pickup

[SoundAt11]

Re: Hot PAF style pickup

The "guys that make it", or the guy that designed it, or the marketing department, or some ad agency? I play blues; no blues player I've talked to at gigs and festivals uses ceramic magnets (I'm sure there's a few though). They're into vintage PU's. Sorry, Customs aren't 'perfectly voiced for blues.' And that's why Seymour has put decades of effort into designing the rest of his extensive PU line, including a great assortment of PAF's. Likewise ceramic magnet PU's are usually not the first choice of guys playing classic rock. You can't get 14K of PAF gauge wire in a HB, so Customs aren't really an overwound PAF. If Customs were "perfectly voiced for supreme blues, rock, and metal" Duncan wouldn't have spent the time, effort, and money making so many other PU's.

As was made clear on this site earlier this year, Duncan values our opinions about their PU's, both pro and con, tell them like it is. We provide invaluable research and testing for them, on far more guitars and amps than they could afford to do. We buy their products, they want to know what we like and what we don't. They become a better, more responsive company because of it. They've made PU's based on our recommendations. They do not expect or want blind praise and slavish devotion from us. Their egos don't need that. They want candid feedback from everyday players.

Regardless, the poster wanted to replace the 61 Zebra with something "tighter" with "more mids" and better for "metal" without too much output and cleans up well. The 61 Zebra is a great pickup, but it's a little loose and doesn't cut as much as it needs to for really tight, razor-sharp metal. I've owned the '61 Zebras and plenty of Duncan and Dimarzio PAF style pickups and for something like this specific player is describing, the SH-5 Custom will give him a roughly PAF EQ-curve and give him a classic Gibson humbucker sound that works for hard rock and metal, is tight in the bass, has little bump in the mids, is not too loud, does clean up with light pick attack or a slight roll of the volume knob. He never said he was looking for a vintage PAF to take to blues night and play Allman Brothers songs on. He want something that rocks hard, but still has a vintage vibe to it: that's the Custom and Seymour's description is spot-on.