My CURRENT list of top PAF's

Describing sound with words is often inadequate, no matter what the industry.

Creamy, buttery, raspy
​​​​hot
mid-ish
Brown


Seriously sound is a bit subjective

The single most important tone element may be speaker or amp

A good quality amp
With a quality speaker

And it won't matter which Amazon special you plug in
Or what cheap pickups reside in it

this may be an over reaction
Maybe
Maybe not
 
i have many good amps, with good speakers. in some ways, that lets you hear the nuances of guitars more than a lesser amp. that said, ill take a good amp and mediocre guitar over a mediocre amp and great guitar
 
A lot of those are not even noticeable thresholds of human hearing.

Physics is one thing, psychoacoustics and human perception is another...

You'll see that Lemme noted that those three vintage PAF bode plot profiles corresponded to those sample PAFs sounding "bright", "middle", and "soft" (translated from the German) - "Three of the old PAFs are shown, completely different: one relatively bright, one medium and one very soft." Of course we only have his word for that. It would be good to hear those actual pickups. But people have often reported that vintage PAFs were quite variable, which is consistent with what we know about their manufacture (although some people also simplistically conclude that sonic differences between vintage Les Pauls "must be the wood" ... never having seen measurements like Lemme's).

People can speculate about what they can subjectively hear until the cows come home, but to be objective we need to measure pickups properly, and record how people judge their sound in blinded tests, eg as in the GITEC PAF clones study I cited earlier in the thread. Those results did not really support the notion that common PAF clones sound particularly different*, nor do they measure very differently (resonant frequency and Q factor). That lack of variability is consistent with the notion that current PAF clone makers did not copy a vintage sample, but probably what earlier clone makers made.

*furthermore, in the last phase of the study the experienced players changed their perception of which (blinded) pickups were which (in their own guitars) over the space of several weeks; which is consistent with people easily thinking that new PAF-style pickups they buy sound different (whether they really do or not).

The audio industry has done much more to discern what people can actually hear. Which doesn't always correspond to what people think/say they can hear. Nor have the people with most "industry experience" (music or audio) always been found to be the most accurate listeners.
Toole, F. (2017). Subjective measurements - Turning opinion into fact. Ch 3 in: Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms (3rd edition). Routledge.
 
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A lot of those are not even noticeable thresholds of human hearing.

Physics is one thing, psychoacoustics and human perception is another...

Well, I've more than once shared here some charts of pickups played direct to the board and suggesting how their "cumulative" frequency response was following their resonance peak with such or such RC load, etc.

But as a matter of fact, thinking that two pickups sound the same because they have same resonant peaks / Q factors is like considering that two human beings are identical because they share a same silhouette on a picture, for instance - comparison inspired by what Bill Lawrence was saying about the size of shoes and to take with a grain of salt: I'm joking to dedramatize what is after all a rather futile question. :-)

Again, non linear properties and what happens in the time domain are to take in account IME and IMO (and are to me a missing link from physics to psychoacoustics / human perception) when two pickups share a same resonance peak but still sound different in a same guitar / with identical settings - which is not rare at all... :-P
 
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I've been looking for a reason to give Mr. Bezos' a few dollars. Any difference between the first and second edition?
 
A lot of those are not even noticeable thresholds of human hearing.

Physics is one thing, psychoacoustics and human perception is another...

I see differences of several dBs in this chart, 3 dB is equivalent of doubling the volume...
 
A 3 dB increase in voltage of a signal is an approximation of doubling the volume of the entire signal. It is not a rule of thumb for relative volume between frequencies. A 3 dB difference might even be imperceptible at really high and low frequencies. Even the 5ish dB difference between the highest and lowest amplitude at 5kHz would be a lot more subtle than you would think. The charts do, however show a significant difference in the upper midrange of the pickups, but I think the more important metric there is the peak frequency.
 
I've been looking for a reason to give Mr. Bezos' a few dollars. Any difference between the first and second edition?

The second edition is much bigger. But all the interesting stuff (to me) to dissect his subset of what makes a guitar sound what it sounds like are identical.
 
The difference between the two largest - yes

But the difference between any two next to each other? Not really.

I think I've already shared here the pic below, zooming on the induced resonant peaks of an Alnico Pro B VS a Pearly Gates B (old test from more than 20 years ago, capture of copy of low res copy, hence the blurry screen). Vertical steps of 1dB. As a matter of fact, there was a very slight difference - of Q factor.

Notes:
-In the old Duncan tone charts, resonant peaks of these models were at 6.7khz and 6.5khz. It's not the case below: if memory serves me, they had been tested at the output jack of a guitar (IOW: loaded resistively by the pots and capacitively by the wiring).
-No typo. The two pickups had the same DCR at a same temperature and for the same meter, although their theoretical values differ (but as recalled somewhere above, a slight variation in actual wire diameter will change the DCR for a same number of turns anyway). Measured inductance was very close too as one can see.
-This pic illustrates somehow my previous reply but isn't meant to prove anything. Just sharing again about how resonant peaks look in my own data, with two Duncan P.A.F. replicas - which brings this contribution on topic. :-P

A2P&PGb.jpg
 
its all copper wire :D

i get what you are saying, but i doubt they would do that. gibson winds pups with poly that is dyed to look like pe for example. im a hobby winder and i have three different types of [NODE="42"]A5 antiquity & Custom Timbucker neck[/NODE] pe from the same manufacturer so there is variation even in the same gauge with the same type of insulation from the same manufacturer. its really hard to look at something and tell what it really is unless you have some good testing equipment.

Hmmm, fake wire insulation. That's tough.

But I found a regular micrometer screw to be good enough to tell awg42, 43 and 44 from each other.
 
i dont know if thats totally true but most of the time youll be able to figure it out. i have 42 with very thin insulation that would measure about the same as 43 with a thicker insulation. and i have 42 with super thick insulation that might measure almost like 41. i dont use 44, though i do have some 40 sitting around. havent used it yet though
 
Well, I've more than once shared here some charts of pickups played direct to the board and suggesting how their "cumulative" frequency response was following their resonance peak with such or such RC load, etc.

But as a matter of fact, thinking that two pickups sound the same because they have same resonant peaks / Q factors is like considering that two human beings are identical because they share a same silhouette on a picture, for instance - comparison inspired by what Bill Lawrence was saying about the size of shoes and to take with a grain of salt: I'm joking to dedramatize what is after all a rather futile question. :-)

Again, non linear properties and what happens in the time domain are to take in account IME and IMO (and are to me a missing link from physics to psychoacoustics / human perception) when two pickups share a same resonance peak but still sound different in a same guitar / with identical settings - which is not rare at all... :-P
(my bolding)

"Identical settings" is an interesting notion when in comes to solid-body guitars. Whenever someone says - as they commonly do in forums - "I have two guitars that are identical" (usually followed by "except for the wood" ;) ), it's almost always the case that they have very little idea of what "identical" means. Thirty years of measurements of real guitars by (guitar-playing) scientists has shown that there are many, many things that can affect the sonic profile of solid-body electric guitars. Many are not well-known to players. Many are difficult to check. Many are difficult to fully control.

Changing pickups involves a number of possible changes in factors that have been shown to be sonically influential. The strings usually have to come off, which means that the guitar may have new strings. String sonic variability is a thing, as are aging efffects. We do not actually know how much the distance of a pickup from the strings has to change in order to produce a sonic difference hear-able by x% of people in a blinded test. Yet we rarely see any real precision applied to equating pickup heights.

Where pickups have different magnets, you would need to know the magnet strength vs distance function (inverse square or inverse cube) for each magnet, so that you could equate the field strength to which the string is exposed for each pickup (incidentally there is little reason to believe that different Alnico grades have different intrinsic "sounds" - but they do have different, easily-measured strengths ... that is likely why pickups with different Alnico grades can sound different*). If the string is saturated by both magnets at their particular heights then that no longer matters.

*which means that changing magnets would be no different to changing pickup heights

You said "same resonance peak". Did you mean same Q factor too ? Which two pickups have the same resonance peak and Q factor yet sound different when the magnet effect is normalized as above ?

And one would also need to measure the magnet strength of each pole piece or at each strings' screw. Which is not that hard to do with a gaussmeter. There is considerably published evidence that common pickups do not always have consistent magnet strength across all pole piece magnets or along the length of a pickup bar magnet (eg Zollner 2014; Jungmann 1994).
Jungmann, T. (1994). Theoretical and Practical Studies on the Behaviour of Electric Guitar Pick-Ups. Diploma Thesis, Electrical Engineering Degree, Helsinki University of Technology.
Zollner, M. (2014). Magnetic pickups. Ch 5 in: Physics of the Electric Guitar. https://www.gitec-forum-eng.de/the-book/

So there's no single test or measurement that tells the whole story. But suggesting as other people do, that we need to learn all about coil wire dimensions, insulation and variability, different magnet manufacturing techniques, variations in bobbin geometry or winding techniques, would be moving us further away from the relatively simple measurements that have a predictable direct effect on key aspects of how a pickup sounds ... rather than closer to that understanding. ;)
 
Yes...many many things could (and do) have an impact of the final sound. That said, of the 100 things that could, in the "great multiple regression of life" where is 90% of the noticeable differences coming from?

Measuring the length of my foot in nanometers - yeah, it differs from day to day and hour to hour. Makes no difference whatsoever in how hard I can punch you.
 
It does if you spend your time trying to find the best shoe that's 1:1 identical to the pair that EVH wore and resonates the most energy from the floor to your hands instead of practicing your jab.
 
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