Lindy Fralin PAF clips anyone?

Re: Lindy Fralin PAF clips anyone?

No clips but I'm a big fan of Lindy's pickups. Balls with clarity is how I'd describe them.

Lindy's a Strat player, like me, who likes his humbuckers to have a little more clarity and articulation...especially from the neck pickup.

He winds his humbuckers with vintage spec wire and uses an alnico 4 bar magnet as opposed to the more usual alnico 2 or alnico 5 magnets Seymour uses.

According to Seymour, many Gibson pafs from around '59 were made with alnico 4, and when we were talking about the diff in Clapton's Cream tone and Clapton's Bluesbreakers tone a few months ago Evan asked Seymour about it and implied that the pickups Clapton used in the '60 Les Paul he used for the Bluesbreakers album may have been slightly dequassed alnico 4.

That '60 Les Paul Clapton used with for Bluesbreakers tone has less mids and more treble than his warmer, squishier Fresh Cream tone which was a '58 Les Paul and probably alnico 2 humbuckers, IMO.

In any case, Lindy's alnico 4 humbuckers have a little less "soupy smear" to the midrange that gives them a little more of an articulate edge than alnico 2 pickups like the Seth Lover and a little more mids than the alnico 5 Duncan '59.

Another nice flavor to have available!

I used Fralin HB's for years. I've since switched back to Duncan's and Tom Holmes HB's. Though I really, really loved the tone of the 9.5K Fralin alnico 4 HB I used to use. One of the best HB bridge pickups I've ever used.

So many great pickups...so few guitars to put them all in! :smack:

Lew
 
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Re: Lindy Fralin PAF clips anyone?

Sorry to hijack the thread, but, how do the Fralin PAF copies stack up against the Antiquities?
 
Re: Lindy Fralin PAF clips anyone?

On a side note, there's an interesting discussion of magnet strength over at the AMpage forum. Apparently, the Alnico numbers aren't ordered by magnet strength, but by patent date. So, the order of Alnico strength is, (from strongest to weakest):

Alnico 5: 12,800 gauss
Alnico 2: 7,500
Alnico 1: 7,200
Alnico 3: 7,000
Alnico 4: 5200 (Approx)

Also, there's some discussion to the idea that A4's aren't "official" magnet designations. That they're just A5's that are "faulty", or malformed.
 
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Re: Lindy Fralin PAF clips anyone?

Thank you all guys, these replies enlighten the things on pickups that here is a little difficult to find.
 
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