Seth Lover = Invented PAF, Les Paul = Making it Better?

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bluezguy

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I've been a career player for 5 decades ... mostly on LPs, ES335z and various other Gibbies and Fenders. Doing covers, stock pickups never bugged me 'cause when yer dimed out most of the time, your guitars' pickups really don't matter. A long time ago, I discovered SD'z Seth Lovers which have been my main guitars pickups with NO plans/need to change them out UNTIL maybe now (but I doubt it).
DOYLE 57 TRU PAFS.
Does anybody have them who can give an honest assessment?
The website really pushes Tom Doyle and Les Pauls' working relationship to cure 'the mudbucker'.
Videos mean absolutely nothing to me because of the honesty in recording factor. I'd rather hear directly from my piers.
 
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My thoughts:
Sorry, I don't have the Doyles. I have Gibson Custombuckers, Duncan Pearly's, Seths, and a dozen or more other Duncan humbuckers, a Bare Knuckle, Electric City and maybe a few others.

Les Paul didn't invent the humbucker, and being Les' soundman and tech doesn't necessarily make you the most knowledgeable pickup winder, though I'm sure you'd learn alot about all the experiments Les did. Most of his experiments were with low impedance pickups, rather than high impedance pickups.

I noticed that the ads for a fully-kitted out Les Paul with the Doyles specs 550k pots, which would probably take any humbucker to clarity, regardless of the wind.

I've heard and played multiple aftermarket pickups that already solve the problems the Doyles supposedly solve. I'm inclined to believe the price point is based on the names involved, more than how much better they might be than other already-existing variants that solve the same problems.

But hey, you could be the first here to try them. Drop the coin and let us know how they are. I can be persuaded to try them if they are really that much superior to other humbuckers out there.
 
My Seths are fantastic, no reason to change here. But I am not doing covers, nor using a Fender or Gibson (though my Gibson has Antiquities).
 
there was a time that pups didnt matter, but people were messing around by the 60s for sure. duane allman swapped the pups from his goldtop into the cherry burst so even then there was an awareness that they matter and there was a difference. we are so far past the point of splitting hairs and over analyzing things, but if it makes ya happy and ya aint hurting anyone, then whats the harm? find what works for you and make some music!
 
The Seth Lover is a great pickup, but it doesn't mean it is necessarily the best pickup for the guitar you have, or the tone you want. It is wound to the spec Seth made for the patent, so even turns per coil and the same pattern......a 'symmetrical' wind.
Most of the PAF clones out there are made to mimic what was actually wound......you can look up the Throbak site if you want to see a small slice of the patterns found on PAF's - they are quite different as practically every 'station' on the machine had its own quirks and tended to wind a slightly different pattern to the next one. Plus you had a machine for the slug coils, which was not the Leesona - one of which was so famously bought by Seymour.
So most PAF's out threre will have an unbalanced or asymmetrical wind to a greater or lesser extent based on which particular coils were paired together.

So every time you have a winder coming up with their own take you get a small slice of PAF possibility - as they will have only seen a few examples of what is actually out there. And non-destructive testing can only do so much to get all the secrets of why these pickups sound the way they do.
Plus not all winders go in for personalised fabrication. It costs a lot to get say a magnet company to make to a specific recipe, or a wire manufacturer to go out of their way to make the varied thickness wire that was the norm in the 50's. But this is what the most exacting of makers do, hence the cost differentials to PAF clones vs Seth Lovers.

And even with all of this, there is no guarantee that the pickup will be to your liking, or even suit the individual instrument. The more accurate the PAF clone the more finicky it is with its host instrument - thats what I've found.
So it becomes an expensive gamble......
 
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I certainly don't think that accuracy always equates to better tone, just as a 50s replica of a Gibson or Fender isn't always the best instrument out there. I dig the Seths a lot, but they have very a very specific sound I haven't heard in other PAF-type models.
 
The "secret" of Doyle PU's appears to be largely or at least partly in a very high Q factor + a low inductance and/or a low stray capacitance. "Normal" P.A.F. clones should therefore sound closer to them once paired with 1M pots (or regular 500k volume controls + NO LOAD tone pots) and a low capacitance cable (minus the cable or plus some parallel low value caps, if the tone becomes too bright).

Please, note that I've wrote "closer" and not "identical". :-)

EDIT - The resonant peaks pictured in the page below will illustrate what I mean: the "grey" line translating the resonance of Doyle PUs necessarily presupposes a low parasitic capacitance and/or inductance... which can be generated or emulated by other means than changing pickups. ;-)

http://www.doylecoils.com/PAF-specs.htm


That said, Seth's are still my favourite Duncan Humbuckers, along with my vintage Seymourized SH1's. :-)
 
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Mincer said:
I certainly don't think that accuracy always equates to better tone, just as a 50s replica of a Gibson or Fender isn't always the best instrument out there. I dig the Seths a lot, but they have very a very specific sound I haven't heard in other PAF-type models.
Click to expand...

To be fair, no ten real PAF's have the same sound either....
 
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