What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

[kziss]

Hi everyone.
Does anyone know for certain what the actual metal composition of the humbucker covers of the 1950's Gibson PAF and the 1960's Patent Number and T-top pickups was?

Were the metal covers of the 1960's and 1970's Patent Number and T-top pickups identical to the metal covers of the 1950's PAF metal covers?

Are the metal covers currently used on the Gibson as well as the Seymour Duncan and the Dimarzio PAF style range of pickups tonally identical to the covers used in the 1950's and the 1960's ?

I have read that the very earliest production run of Gibson PAFs in 1956 had brushed stainless steel covers but that this was soon replaced with nickel plated brass covers and that most PAFs after 1956 have these nickel plated brass covers.

However I have also read conflicting information that the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbuckers had pure nickel steel covers which are supposed to be more "transparent" with less treble loss or overall affect on the tonality compared to the nickel plated brass covers.

Considering the fact that so many guitarists of the 1960's and 70's removed the metal covers of the 1950's and the 1960's Gibson Les Paul, or SG, or ES-335 etc guitars, this seems to indicate that the metal covers used on the 1950's and the 1960's Gibson humbuckers were not "transparent" but that the pickup covers did have a noticeable effect on the tonality otherwise the guitarists would not have felt the need to go to the trouble of removing the metal covers.

With this in mind, the particular tonal mellowing effect of the metal covers used on the Gibson pickups during the 1950's and 60's are a factor in the tonality of those Gibson pickups so therefore using the more transparent nickel silver covers is not the correct way to go if you are trying to accurately recreate the sound of the 1950's and 1960's Gibson humbuckers which have the original covers on them.

Interestingly whilst I was experimenting with the Epiphone P90 style pickups on my 2006 Epiphone Casino guitar with and without the dog ear metal covers, I noticed that these chrome plated brass dog ear covers produce a noticeable but pleasant sounding mellowing effect on the tonality and I actually like this warm mellowing effect because it helps to create a similar mellow woody sound as Paul McCartney's and John Lennon's Epiphone Casino guitars as heard on the Beatles songs such as 'Ticket to ride', 'Another girl', I've got a feeling', 'Get back' etc.

With the metal dog ear covers removed, the P90 style pickups on my Epiphone Casino (whose DC resistance measures at a hot 12K ohms instead of the more normal 8k -9k Gibson P90 range) produce a brighter tonality with a more growly "bark".

Does anyone know if the metal dog ear covers used on the 1960's Epiphone Casino guitars were of the same metal and thickness and whether or not they produced a similar mellowing effect on the tonality as the metal dog ear covers used on the modern regular Epiphone Casino guitars ?

Thank you in advance for a reply.
kziss.

 

[AlexR]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

All covers will change the tone a bit. The originals may or may not have done much, but they were designed with a metal cover and that cover had to be as much as possible tonally inert (as they were trying to match a p90 tone but in hum cancelling format).

But have you not considered that someone might want to do something for looks?? Clapton was a big influence and his 1960 LP had covers removed.

 

[kziss]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi Alex.
Yes the uncovered exposed humbuckers do look very nice, especially the double cream PAF bobbins which are my favourite look.
The look of exposed pickup bobbins is definitely one reason why guitarists would have removed the metal covers but other guitarists did remove the metal covers in order to get the brighter sound.

I have uncovered double cream pickups on my 1992 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar because I love the look, but also so that the brighter direct sound is produced, but with my 2004 Gibson SG Standard and my 1986 Yamaha SA2100 (335 style semi acoustic guitar) which I have wired up with PAF style pickups, I want to have the metal covers on the pickups both for the look but especially for the resulting mellower tonality and I would like to use the type of metal covers that have a similar effect on the tonality as what the 1960s and 1960's metal covers had.

Of course the metal covers are only a small part of the overall tonal equation of the electric guitars, but they still are a noticeably audible part of the tonal equation of pickups, and the installing or removing of the metal covers from the pickups is a very easy and cheap modification for me to do as I am an experienced DIYer hobbyist with guitars.

kziss.

All covers will change the tone a bit. The originals may or may not have done much, but they were designed with a metal cover and that cover had to be as much as possible tonally inert (as they were trying to match a p90 tone but in hum cancelling format).

But have you not considered that someone might want to do something for looks?? Clapton was a big influence and his 1960 LP had covers removed.

 

[jollymonk000]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Of course the metal covers are only a small part of the overall tonal equation of the electric guitars, but they still are a noticeably audible part of the tonal equation of pickups, and the installing or removing of the metal covers from the pickups is a very easy and cheap modification for me to do as I am an experienced DIYer hobbyist with guitars.

 

[AlexR]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

The difference is pretty small....all things considered. If you were to play the covered/uncovered back to back you can tell the difference......if you listen closely. The original PAF covers were pretty good actually.



What pickups do you have now?? If you're not starting from something that really ticks all the boxes of PAF clone then having a cover that 'takes away' the same thing as a 50's type pickup cover seems somewhat pointless.

And the pick of covers is Throbak

 

[kziss]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi AlexR and everyone.
I am an amateur hobbyist and experimentor who loves the 1960's and 70's tones.
Over the years I have built up a large collection of various humbucker and single coil pickups including vintage type output as well as hot output pickups, with the vast majority of all these pickups purchased second hand from ebay and from local second hand guitar shops as well as disused or damaged pickups given to me by a tech, including a damaged 1960's or 70's ? Gibson T-top pickup (with dark red/ purplish coloured enameled coil wire) which had a broken wire in one coil which I then opened up and repaired. The DC reading of this T-top is around 7.8 K

Along with this T-top, I have several other PAF style pickups in my collection to choose from for my guitar projects.
I experiment with the pickups by using a simple test rig which is a short cable which on one end has two alligator clips to be connected to the output hot wire and the ground of the pickup being tested, and a separate grounding wire with an alligator clip so that I can properly ground out the guitar strings and bridge of the guitar.

The other end of this test cable has a regular 1/4 inch phono output jack socket so that I can connect the guitar cable into this, and I have wired up this phono output jack with a 500K ohms resistor in series with a 22 nf capacitor between the output lug and the ground lug, and a second 500K resistor wired up in parallel with the 500K resistor the the 22 nf capacitor combination in order to accurately simulate the loading effects on the pickup created by the 500K Volume control and the 500 K Tone control in Gibson and other similar type guitars.

I attach two thick blobs of blu tack putty on the two ends of the pickup and I then stick the pickup on top of the guitar by carefully positioning the pickup to be either directly above the existing bridge pickup or above the existing neck pickup and I set the pickup height above the strings to be the same as what the existing pickup is below the strings for an as accurate as possible volume level and tonal comparison between the pickups, and I make sure that the pickup being tested is correctly magnetically aligned to the existing pickups beneath it o that there are no magnetic phasing problems which would affect the sound.

This simple crude testing rig is very effective and it allows me to do direct A/B comparison tests between the existing pickup and whatever other pickup that I am testing and it gives me a realistic indication of what the different pickups would sound like in the guitar.

At the moment my large collection of PAF style pickups includes the following:

Seymour Duncan Seth Lover Bridge and Neck versions
Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates Bridge and Neck versions
Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro Bridge and Neck versions
Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro "Slash" Bridge and Neck versions
Seymour Duncan 59 Bridge and Neck versions
Seymour Duncan Jazz Neck version

Dimarzio 36th Anniversary Bridge and Neck versions
Dimarzio PAF from the 1970's or early 80's
Dimarzio Air Classic Bridge and Neck versions
Dimarzio PAF Classic Bridge
Dimarzio The Breed Neck (which at 10.56 K ohms is in the hotter range of PAF style)
Dimarzio PAF Joe
Dimarzio PAF Pro

1970's Ibanez Super 70 pickups with the alnico 8 magnet.
1980's Ibanez Super 58 pickups with the alnico 5 magnet. The two Super 58's from my 1982 Ibanez Artist guitar have brass baseplates whilst the other Super 58 pickup has a nickel type baseplate.
1980's Ibanez humbuckers with double cream coils. The output reading of one pickup is 7.84 K ohms and there is the number ""20401 8" printed on the brass baseplate, and the other pickup is 7.69 K ohms and there is the number "20101 1" printed on the brass baseplate. These two pickups came with a ceramic magnet and they have identical looking brass baseplates and internal construction to the Ibanez Super 58 pickups that came with my 1982 Ibanez Artist guitar. When I replaced the ceramic magnets with alnico magnets, these two pickups sounded similar to the Ibanez Super 58 pickups so therefore I suspect that these two pickups are the same pickup coils and physical construction as the Super 58 except for the ceramic magnet.

1970's Bill Lawrence L90 Bridge (cream cover) and Neck (black cover) versions
Bill and Becky Lawrence Wilde L90 4 Henry version which is basically the same as the 1970's Bill Lawrence L90 Neck version. I also have the hotter 6 Henry and the 8 Henry versions of the L90 pickups. The 1970's cream covered Bill Lawrence L90 is similar to the current 6 Henry version of the Wilde L90.
Bill and Becky Lawrence Wilde L500R 4 Henry version. I also have the hotter L500XL 8 Henry version.

1960's or 70's ? Gibson T-top pickup with the "2737842" number stamped on the baseplate.
Gibson Burstbucker 1, Burstbucker 2 and Burstbucker Pro pickups.
Gibson 57 Classic and 57 Classic Plus
Gibson 490R which were the original stock neck pickups in my 1988 Gibson Les Paul Custom, my 1992 Gibson Les Paul Standard and my 1998 Gibson SG Standard. These three guitars also originally came with the hotter 498T bridge pickups.

RH Factor PAF 2 (the Alnico 2 magnet version ) and the PAF 4 ( the alnico 4 magnet version). These RH Factor pickup are very nice sounding and the alnico 4 version sounds very similar to the Dimarzio The Breed Neck pickup.

Stewmac Golden Age Parsons Street alnico 5 version. This pickup sounds similar to the Gibson Burskbucker Pro pickup.

Guitar Fetish GFS KMZ Professional Series Alnico 5 Bridge pickup. This sounds very similar to the Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro "Slash" pickup.

Guitar Fetish GFS Fat Pat Neck version which at 9.5 K is at the hotter PAF range.
Guitar Fetish GFS VEH Intage Extra Hot Neck version. This has a similar DC output reading and tonality to the GFS Fat Pat Neck so therefore I suspect that these are both the same pickup marketed under the different names.
Guitar Fetish GFS Dream 180 Bridge version. This is around 8.5 K ohms and it has a ceramic magnet, but when I replaced the ceramic magnet with an alnico 5 magnet, it sounded like a typical PAF style pickup.

Epiphone 57CH pickups. Even with the cover removed and the thick wax potting melted off with a hairdryer, the 57CH pickup still has a somewhat darker sounding treble response as if the guitar tone control was partially turned down which is what several other people have complained about, however the Epiphone 57CH pickups are good for the swampy bluesy late 60's / early Keith Richards style tone, and they would also be good for an inherently very bright sounding guitar such as an all maple guitar or other guitars built with very dense hard woods.

No name Chinese pickup with an 8K ohms output and a ceramic magnet sold by the Chinese eBay seller for $4 each pickup.
This comes with a ceramic magnet, but when I replaced this with an alnico 5 magnet, it actually sounded quite decent with a typical generic PAF style sound. The fact that these ultra cheap priced Chinese pickups sell for $4 each on eBay makes me wonder how much a humbucker pickup actually costs to manufacture. The quality of the bobbin plastic is not as good as the more rugged and thicker plastic bobbins used by Seymour Duncan , Dimarzio, Gibson and other manufacturers, but this would not be a problem if a metal cover is used in order to protect the bobbins.

These ultra cheap $4 humbucker pickups would be very good for someone to experiment with such as by learning how to wire up a 4- conductor cable or how to wax pot or to learn how to unwind or rewind the coils etc without risking damaging a much more expensive pickup.

The Gibson 490R and the 298T pickups that originally came in my 1988 Gibson Les Paul Custom , my 1992 Gibson Les Paul Standard and my 1998 Gibson SG Standard were not bad, but really they are not the best sounding pickups so I replaced all these.

I am thinking of wiring up either the Dimarzio Air Classics or the Dimarzio 36th Anniversary or the Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickups into my 1992 Gibson Les Paul Standard and leave these uncovered with the very nice looking double cream bobbins on all these pickups.

I currently have 1970's or early 1970's Dimarzio Super Distortion pickups with the double cream bobbins on my 1988 Gibson Les Paul Custom, and I have wired up a 330K resistor in parallel with a 1 nf capacitor as the treble bleed on both of the Volume controls , and this allows a wide tonal variety ranging from the full on hot Super distortion sound when the Volume controls are set at the full volume settings, or a clearer more vintage PAF or Gretsch Filtertron type sound with a more chimey sounding "krang" when the Volume controls are turned down, and this is especially useful when using overdrive.

I currently have the Gibson Burstbucker Pro pickups in my 1998 Gibson SG Standard but I intend to replace these either with covered Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates or covered Dimarzio PAF style pickups because whilst doing the A/B comparison tests, these sounded noticeably better than the Burstbucker Pro pickups.

I currently have the Seymour Duncan 59 Bridge and 59 Neck pickup in my 1986 Yamaha SA2100 semi acoustic guitar, but I have modified the two 59 pickups by replacing the alnico 5 magnets with Addiction FX rough cast alnico 2 magnets.

I currently have late 70's Dimarzio DP102 X2N Power Plus high output pickups in my 2004 Gibson SG Standard guitar which I bought as a project guitar from the eBay seller "Gibsondependable". I have wired up my own customized set up with this guitar by wiring up the two Volume controls with two 500K log push- pull potentiometers in order to set up the two X2N pickups either in the normal high output series humbucking set up or the parallel humbucking set up for a brighter and more vintage type sound. I have wired up the bridge Tone control as a Master Tone control for the whole guitar with a 22 nf capacitor wired "50's style" to the 500K log push-pull potentiometer which also switches the bridge X2N pickup in or out of phase with the neck X2N pickup.

I have wired up the Neck Tone control to be a low/ mid cut filter with a Kent Armstrong Tone Choke TCIUS inductor wired to a 500K log push pull potentiometer which selects either a 47 nf capacitor in parallel with a 10K ohms resistor between the Tone Choke inductor and the ground, or the Tone Choke is directly connected to ground thus allowing two different low / low mid cut filtering effects.

I have opened up the two 500K log potentiometers that are the Master Tone control and the Low/Low Mid cut controls and I have carefully scraped off the end of the carbon track from the terminal 3 lug thus converting these two potentiometers into "No Load" type potentiometers so that the 22 nf capacitor and the Kent Arstrong Tone Choke inductor are completely removed from the signal path circuit when these two potentiometers are turned up to the position "10" setting.

I have also wired up my 1998 Epiphone Japan Les Paul Standard guitar with the identical set up as my 2004 Gibson SG Standard except that there are the Bill and Becky Lawrence Wilde L500R pickups in this Epiphone Japan Les Paul Standard guitar.

With all these push-pull switches and controls, both these guitars are much more versatile sounding than a regular Gibson style guitar and thus would make very good guitars for those who want a "multi trick pony" guitar.

The Kent Armstrong Tone Choke and also the Bill and Becky Lawrence Wilde Q-Filter inductor coils are very good for taming the thick sound of the high output pickups and making them sound a lot closer to vintage pickups such as PAFs and Gretsch Filtrertrons or P90 pickups.

kziss.

The difference is pretty small....all things considered. If you were to play the covered/uncovered back to back you can tell the difference......if you listen closely. The original PAF covers were pretty good actually.



What pickups do you have now?? If you're not starting from something that really ticks all the boxes of PAF clone then having a cover that 'takes away' the same thing as a 50's type pickup cover seems somewhat pointless.

And the pick of covers is Throbak

 

[AlexR]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

What an essay!!

Of all those, really the only one that comes close to vintage is the T-top....and if its a stamped baseplate then its I think 73 or 74 at earliest, and they had changed the magnet supplier/formulation by then which did make it a bit more midsy and biting. The t-tops had chrome plating on the covers - I think more layers were needed for the chrome plating so a 50's style cover isn't accurate to this pickup anyhow.

Of the Duncans, the Seths come closest to PAF spec, but they have decent enough covers for you to investigate the effect. The rest well.........


...............in fact what is the point of this again.

Many of the pickups you have might well be good for some experimenting, but maybe you should try and get yourself a pat# pickup - then you'll see just how different some of these you have are to real vintage style.
I've never though of Dimarzio as particularly vintage - although thats from clips (admittedly most guitars/pickups won't do well back-to-back with Larry's real 59, even an R9).
Apart from the Seth all of the Duncans are wax potted - straight away a much bigger change than a cover.
And as you get past 10K you start to lose for good the bit that is subdued by the cover.

So anyhow - find pickups that you like best the tone of from your stocks and stick them in. A no load pot for the neck will do more to add back than a cover will remove, especially a good cover. Bridge PAF pickups are better with covers anyhow

 

[kziss]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi AlexR.
Unfortunately there was no cover on the dead T-top pickup when it was given to me by a tech and which I subsequently repaired.
After not having seen the coil wires for about 8 or 9 years, I decided to open up and have a look inside the T-top earlier today and I noticed that the coil wire is in fact a bright reddish colour instead of the dark red-purple colour that I wrote about in my previous post. I may have confused the wire colour with another dead pickup that was in the same box of disused and dead pickups that was given to me by the tech around nine years ago.

The red colour of the coil wires along with the fact that the metal slugs on the slug coil are a matte light greyish silver colour instead of a glossy silver colour might also possibly be able to give some indication about the approximate era when this T-top was built.

I measured the DC resistance with my current Digitech multimeter, and the reading is 7.21K ohms which is on the lower end of the PAF range.
The original stock magnet was the "short" alnico 5 magnet, but after experimenting with different magnets, I currently have a regular "long" rough cast/sand cast alnico 4 magnet that I bought from the ebay seller Addiction FX so therefore this magnet would possibly help the T-top sound closer to a lower wind earlier era PAF because many 1950's PAFs had alnico 4 magnets.

With my simple test rig that I mentioned in my previous post, I mounted the T-top on my 1998 Gibson SG Standard which has Gibson Burstbucker Pro pickups, and when I inserted an Addiction FX rough cast "long" alnico 5 magnet into the T-top pickup, it then sounded very similar to the Burstbucker Pro pickups however when it comes to splitting hairs, the T-top did sound just slightly better than the Burstbucker Pro pickups.

For some reason all my Gibson Burstbucker 1, 2 and Pro pickups as well as my Gibson 57 Classics have a somewhat "stiff" or "dry" sounding characteristic compared to the spongier sound of my T-top and my Dimarzio and Seymour Duncan PAF style pickups.

The T-top produces the spongiest or most "elastic" sound for lack of a better term with the "long " rough cast alnico 4 magnet so therefore I prefer to have the alnico 4 magnet instead of the original stock "short" alnico 5 magnet which produces a somewhat "harder" and less spongy sound.

I also tested the T-top with a Philadelphia Luthier Tools raw unplated nicker silver cover, and a 1990's Gibson cover and an Epiphone 57CH pickup cover. Whilst all three covers did have some effect on the sound, the Philadelphia Luthier Tools raw unplated nickel cover had the least effect on the tonality whilst the gold coloured Epiphone 57CH pickup cover had the most noticeable effect by slightly mellowing the sound but this produced a pleasant smoother tonality perhaps comparable to the difference between an alnico 4 or 5 magnet and an alnico 2 magnet so therefore even the much maligned Asian built Epiphone pickup covers which seem to be plated brass are musically useful, especially if the uncovered pickup sounds too bright and the Epiphone covers give the pickup a more Jazzy or Bluesy tonality.

I have never heard a 1950's PAF in person, and I don't think that I have heard a 1960's Gibson Patent # sticker pickup in person either so therefore I do not know how close my modified T-top pickup with the "long" alnico 4 magnet or any of my other PAF style pickups come to the actual 1950's PAF sound or the 1960's Patent # sound, however I can hear a particular more "vintage" sounding character with the T-top when it has the "long" alnico 4 magnet which seems to be a little closer to the sound of recordings of 1950's and 60's Gibson guitars.

My ideal tonal reference for ideal Les Paul sounds are the many Rock / Heavy Rock/Blues / Progressive Rock /Heavy Metal etc recordings of the 1960's and 70's which used 1950's Les Pauls.

My ideal tonal reference for Gibson SG guitars are Eric Clapton's 1964 "The Fool" SG that he used with Cream, and Angus Young's (AC/DC) favourite 1968 Gibson SG.

My ideal tonal reference for Gibson ES-335 guitars is Eric Clapton's 1964 ES-335 that he used with Cream, and Ritchie Blackmore's 1964 ES-335 that he used in the early Deep Purple era, and also BB King's ES-355 sound that he got, for example on the U2 song "When love comes to town".

Some people seem to feel that Dimarzio pickups are inferior sounding when it comes to PAF style sounds, but the various Dimarzio PAF style pickups in my collection do sound quite good and each model type sounds somewhat different but still good, just as the original 1950's PAF pickups all sounded different due to the inconsistent production such as the winding turns, the mismatched coils and the random use of alnico 2, alnico 3, alnico 4 and alnico 5 magnets during that time.

Unfortunately the audio samples of the various Dimarzio pickup models on the Dimarzio website are not very useful at all in helping us to evaluate the sound of the pickups because most of the audio samples are heavily overdriven and seem to sound the same and as well as that, the audio samples are from recorded albums with all the other instruments masking the guitar sound thus making it very hard to hear the actual nuances and subtleties of the various pickup models.

I wish that the Dimarzio website would feature audio clips with the pickups heard in isolation instead of in a band recording, and with the pickups played cleanly as well as with the typical mildly overdriven Blues/Rock sounds as well as the high gain heavy overdriven sounds so that we can get a much more accurate assessment of how the pickups sound.

As well as that, ideally the Dimarzio PAF style range of pickups should be demonstrated in Gibson guitars for a more accurate reference point.

The Guitarworld demonstration clip on the Dimarzio website featuring Larry' Dimarzio's 1959 Les Paul Standard A/B tested with the modern R9 Les Paul with the Dimarzio 36th Anniversary pickups is a much better way of demonstrating the sound of the pickups, and in that clip Larry's 1959 Les Paul does sound better with a more spongy and elastic sound whilst the R9 Les Paul sounds somewhat drier and stiffer in comparison, however the R9 does still sound quite nice in the clip.

I will eventually go through my pickups and test them with my guitar projects, and I will then decide which pickups to put in which guitar. Even if the pickups in my collection do not 100 % accurately nail the true 1950's and 60's PAF sound, they do still sound very nice so therefore they are perfectly useful in the guitars.

kziss.

What an essay!!

Of all those, really the only one that comes close to vintage is the T-top....and if its a stamped baseplate then its I think 73 or 74 at earliest, and they had changed the magnet supplier/formulation by then which did make it a bit more midsy and biting. The t-tops had chrome plating on the covers - I think more layers were needed for the chrome plating so a 50's style cover isn't accurate to this pickup anyhow.

Of the Duncans, the Seths come closest to PAF spec, but they have decent enough covers for you to investigate the effect. The rest well.........


...............in fact what is the point of this again.

Many of the pickups you have might well be good for some experimenting, but maybe you should try and get yourself a pat# pickup - then you'll see just how different some of these you have are to real vintage style.
I've never though of Dimarzio as particularly vintage - although thats from clips (admittedly most guitars/pickups won't do well back-to-back with Larry's real 59, even an R9).
Apart from the Seth all of the Duncans are wax potted - straight away a much bigger change than a cover.
And as you get past 10K you start to lose for good the bit that is subdued by the cover.

So anyhow - find pickups that you like best the tone of from your stocks and stick them in. A no load pot for the neck will do more to add back than a cover will remove, especially a good cover. Bridge PAF pickups are better with covers anyhow

 

[AlexR]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

The T-top wind is quite a nice one. I have 2 of the stickered T-tops. Both from 72 when they featured the embossed covers. I have several PAF clones too.....from boutique winders like Wizz , Electric City Pickus and ReWind. All of these guys produce pickups mimicing the way the originals were wound - in the case of Wizz it is a full cosmetic clone too.
I have never heard a PAF or Pat# either. All I can say about the clones I use is that other who have tried PAF's say that the winders I mentioned do get very close to the tone they are trying to copy.
The stamped baseplate is the best indicator of T-top age - as they changed to the stamping in the early-mid 70's.

So what can I say about the T-tops.....well mine are in stock form with the short A5's. I have several LP burst clones (I make guitars from scratch) and so can compare with a moderately similar base for comparison. The T-top is much more ringing in the top-end in the bridge. It has a solid 'glaaaaannnggg' on strummed chords with a rich upper mid content. The PAF clones are a bit drier and balanced. In the neck the t-top is perhaps stiffer....it is not a million miles away, but seems to be less hollow and more present - like the glang and upper mids part is present there too.


What I would say with pickups as an overall, is that the guitar will tell you what is best for it. I have a very expensive set of handwound Zhangbuckers (yes, handwound, no machine usage). These were in a semihollow Hagstom. Didn't quite cut it.....and mags got swapped several times before the Zhangs got yanked. What is in there now and works best of everything I tried is a very cheap set - secondhand Gibson 490R's with a short A5 in there. Don't know why, but these just seem to work with the guitar's tonality better than anything else.
The Zhangs now have some throbak magnets and covers on them, and reside in another of my burst clones. They suit that guitar better than other pickups that have been in there.

The final note is that PAF clones can be very picky. Both Duncan and Dimarzio are smart in the way they make their lower output pickups. As they are going for mass appeal, they make the pickups with a more regular/uniform wind than what the PAF's had. This means they are easier to make, but also that they suit more guitars. They do lose a fraction of the liveliness, but unless you actually have pickups to compare with that do have this attribute I doubt you'd notice the difference.

 

[kziss]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi AlexR.
Your two lefty faded sunburst Les Pauls look very nice.
I am also left handed, and my 1988 Gibson Les Paul Standard, my 1992 Gibson Les Paul Custom, my 2004 Gibson SG Standard, my 1998 and 1999 Epiphone Japan Les Paul Standards (which have the Gibson "open book" headstock shape instead of the regular Epiphone headstock shape), my 2002 Belman Albatross, my 2011 Fender American Standard Stratocaster and my no name Telecaster copy guitars are all left handed guitars whilst my other guitars are right handed guitars which I have modified the bridge positions and strung up upside down for left handed operation.

By using my test jig to experiment with different pickups on different guitars, I too have noticed that the pickups respond differently with different guitars so therefore I have to choose which pickups from my collection sound the best for the particular guitar that I am testing.

For example, last year I bought an all maple 1974 Gibson L6-S project body guitar from the ebay seller Gibsondependable, and I have modified it by fitting a Guitar Fetish XGP Slick Guitars Brand solid brass wraparound bridge in order to keep the set up simple and because the wraparound bridges are reputed to produce better sustain and tone, and when I tried out various pickups with my testing jig, I noticed that the PAF style pickups sounded too thin and wimpy because of the bright sounding all maple body, and after experimenting I finally installed a Dimarzio X2N Power Plus pickup on the bridge position, and a Dimarzio MegaDrive pickup in the neck position.

With the mahogany bodied Gibson type guitars these high output Dimarzio pickups with thick ceramic magnets can sound too thick and dark, but they sound better and more balanced with the bright sounding all maple Gibson L6-S guitar.

I will also install either a Kent Armstrong Tone Choke inductor or a Bill Lawrence Wilde Q-Filter inductor in order to be able to vary the response of the pickups as well as install two 3-position "on / on/ on"switches that select between regular series humbucking or parallel humbucking or single coil operation and also a phase reversal switch in order to maximise the tonal variety of this Gibson L6-S guitar from a brighter, more vintage type sound to a thicker heavy sound.

Whilst experimenting with the T-top pickups, I did notice that when they had the alnico 5 magnets they produced a brighter and stiffer sound than the PAF style pickups which have alnico 2 or alnico 3 or alnico 4 magnets, however the Gibson 57 classic and the Burstbucker pickups sounded stiffer than the T-top pickups even when the T-top pickups had the alnico 5 magnet.

Apart from the fact that the 1950's PAF coils have plain enamel wire whilst the T-tops have polyurethane coated wires, and that each 1950's PAF pickup has inconsistent winding turns whilst the T-top pickups have more consistent windings, I wonder how different the actual winding methods and the physical internal dimensions of the bobbins and the metal slugs, screws, metal keeper bar and the metal composition of the baseplates are between the 1950's PAF pickups and the T-top pickups.

The magnets and the winding inductance and DC resistance and also the internal capacitance of the coil wires do audibly affect the sound of pickups, but some people say that the metal composition of the baseplate, the metal keeper bar, the slugs and the screws also affect the tonality of the pickups, but from a pragmatic real world perspective I wonder how much the metal composition of the baseplate, the metal keeper bar, the slugs and the screws would actually affect the tonality or whether this is just simply a "splitting hairs" or a "voodoo mojo" issue for extremely picky "cork sniffer" type purists who demand absolute "vintage correct" parts for the whole pickup even for parts that do not affect the tonality.

As a pragmatic practical minded person I am only interested in the factors that actually do audibly affect the tonality instead seeking to have everything "vintage correct."

Some people even claim that the maple wood spacer inside the PAF pickups somehow affects the tonality and that plastic spacers of the identical size and shape are somehow inferior, but I tend to doubt this because wood and plastic are not ferromagnetic.

The highly regarded Tim Shaw PAF style pickups of the 1980's had white plastic spacers and my two Seymour Duncan SH55 Seth Lover Neck and Bridge pickups have black plastic spacers instead of maple spacers. I do not know what year my Seymour Duncan SH55 Seth Lover pickups were built, but most of my Seymour Duncan pickups have maple spacers.

Some people also say that there is a noticeable tonal difference between Gibson style braided single conductor shielded cable and 4- conductor shielded cable because of the different capacitances of these two different cable types.

If there is a tonal difference, then I suspect that this would most likely be because the braided single conductor cable has a noticeably higher measurable capacitance than the 4-conductor cable.

As well as that, when a 4-conductor cable is wired to a humbucker, it separates the two outer wires of the two coils in the humbucker before they finally meet up on the push pull potentiometer terminals or a separate coil split switch inside the guitar control cavity so therefore this extra length of wire connected to the two outer wires of the two coils in the humbucker introduces a small capacitance.

On the various Gibson pickups with the braided single conductor cable and also on other pickups which use a single conductor cable, the two outer wires of the two coils of the humbucker are directly joined together inside the pickup so therefore there is no additional stray capacitance on these wires.

I measured the capacitance of a disused disconnected 30 centimeter (12 inches) long Dimarzio 4-conductor cable.
The capacitance between the joined black and white wires that used to be connected to the two outer wires of the two humbucker coils, and the green wire which is soldered to the ground shield wire is 80 picofarads (pf).
The capacitance between the joined black and white wires that used to be connected to the two outer wires of the two humbucker coils, and the red output "hot" wire is 30pf.

The capacitance between the green wire soldered to the ground shield, and the red output "hot " wire is 44 pf.

I also measured the capacitance between the braided shield and the signal wire of three disused 12 inch long braided single conductor cables, and the capacitance of these cables is much higher, with one cable measuring at around 100 pf, the other cable at 300 pf and the other cable at 430 pf.
This much higher capacitance, particularly of the cable with the 430 pf capacitance would be enough to to some degree affect the resonant peak and the high treble frequencies of the pickup.

I would like to know what the capacitance of the braided shielded cable that was used on the 1950's and 60's Gibson pickups and Gibson guitars is like compared to the braided shielded cable used on current PAF style pickups and in Gibson guitars, or the Allparts braided shielded cable so that I could then wire up a similar value capacitor in order to recreate the typical 1950's or 60's braided shielded single conductor cable capacitances.

With the pickups that have the low capacitance 4-conductor cable or a lower capacitance shielded single conductor cable, it would be easy to simulate the higher capacitance of the 1950's and 60's braided shielded single conductor cable by connecting a small value capacitor between the ground and the "hot" output wire of the pickup.

Likewise a grounding capacitor somewhere between 1 nf to 4.7 nf can be wired up to simulate the cable capacitance of the guitar cables (especially the coiled cables) often used during the 1960's and 70's because this cable capacitance is a factor in the way that the guitars sounded back in those years, especially with overdriven sounds, for example there are many photos of Eric Clapton with Cream and Jimi Hendrix as well as others using a coiled cable, and apparently the coiled cables in those days could have up to 3 nf or 4 nf of cable capacitance, and this capacitance noticeably affects the treble response and thus is particularly important when trying to get the smoother or less edgy sounding overdriven guitar sounds of that era.

Some guitarists did use very long cables ( even up to 100 feet long) when playing on stage, and the measured cable capacitance of my cheap 100 foot long cable is 8 nf which results in a very noticeably rolled off treble response which sounds good with overdrive but it is way too dull sounding for clean sounds.

The measured cable capacitance of my 30 foot (10 meter) long Fender Koil Kord cable which has modern construction and oxygen free copper is 1 nf which is lower than that of the 1960's coiled cables so therefore it has a brighter sound, but I have built a passive tonal filtering box with various switches and potentiometers in order to create a wide variety of different grounding capacitances, as well as series capacitances, and grounding inductances (Q-Filter) and grounding resistances and these are very useful in recreating the effects of 1960's and 70's cable capacitances as well as Varitone style filtering and passive EQ-uing.

kziss.

The T-top wind is quite a nice one. I have 2 of the stickered T-tops. Both from 72 when they featured the embossed covers. I have several PAF clones too.....from boutique winders like Wizz , Electric City Pickus and ReWind. All of these guys produce pickups mimicing the way the originals were wound - in the case of Wizz it is a full cosmetic clone too.
I have never heard a PAF or Pat# either. All I can say about the clones I use is that other who have tried PAF's say that the winders I mentioned do get very close to the tone they are trying to copy.
The stamped baseplate is the best indicator of T-top age - as they changed to the stamping in the early-mid 70's.

So what can I say about the T-tops.....well mine are in stock form with the short A5's. I have several LP burst clones (I make guitars from scratch) and so can compare with a moderately similar base for comparison. The T-top is much more ringing in the top-end in the bridge. It has a solid 'glaaaaannnggg' on strummed chords with a rich upper mid content. The PAF clones are a bit drier and balanced. In the neck the t-top is perhaps stiffer....it is not a million miles away, but seems to be less hollow and more present - like the glang and upper mids part is present there too.


What I would say with pickups as an overall, is that the guitar will tell you what is best for it. I have a very expensive set of handwound Zhangbuckers (yes, handwound, no machine usage). These were in a semihollow Hagstom. Didn't quite cut it.....and mags got swapped several times before the Zhangs got yanked. What is in there now and works best of everything I tried is a very cheap set - secondhand Gibson 490R's with a short A5 in there. Don't know why, but these just seem to work with the guitar's tonality better than anything else.
The Zhangs now have some throbak magnets and covers on them, and reside in another of my burst clones. They suit that guitar better than other pickups that have been in there.

The final note is that PAF clones can be very picky. Both Duncan and Dimarzio are smart in the way they make their lower output pickups. As they are going for mass appeal, they make the pickups with a more regular/uniform wind than what the PAF's had. This means they are easier to make, but also that they suit more guitars. They do lose a fraction of the liveliness, but unless you actually have pickups to compare with that do have this attribute I doubt you'd notice the difference.

 

[AlexR]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

You seem quite curious, but be careful of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

I would suggest buying a set of pickups that actually does a good job of cloning a PAF. Throbak and Wizz in particular are quite specific about both the alloys in the various components of their assembly, but also in the magnets and copying the wind type and patterns. Short of buying a PAF or pat# its the closest you'll get.

Otherwise all you're dabbling in is endless speculating with an open end.

 

[kziss]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi AlexR.
Yes I am a very curious inquistive experimentor/ hobbyist and I like researching the aspects of pickups and guitar woods and construction that actually do affect the sound.

I would like to eventually get hold of a high quality PAF clone set of pickups such as the Throbak or the Wizz, or the Stephens Designs, or the Bare Knuckle Pickups "The Mule" etc, but at this time I really cannot afford the very expensive retail prices charged for these pickups, but hopefully I might eventually be able to find any of these pickups second hand at much more affordable prices.

The vast majority of the other pickups in my collection that I have bought over the years were second hand on ebay so therefore I paid much cheaper prices than their original retail prices.

As well as that, I live in Australia so therefore the international shipping costs are grossly expensive thus exacerbating the unaffordability of expensive boutique quality pickups for me.

In the meantime I will use the pickups that I have, and I do have plenty of very good sounding pickups in my collection to choose from and many of these do a decent job of creating vintage style tones close to the PAF sounds that I hear on recordings and on the better quality recorded youtube demo clips of 1950's and 60's Gibson guitars.

I am not an obsessive purist type who would would only use an absolutely 100 % accurate PAF clone, so therefore even though the pickups in my collection might not be absolutely 100% accurate in nailing the true 1950's PAF sound, they do come close enough from a practical perspective, and as well as that I use additional filtering such as the Kent Armstrong Tone Choke or the Bill Lawrence Wilde Q-Filter inductor coils which when used in a suitable manner are very useful in shaping the sound of a pickup to produce a more vintage PAF - like approximation.

However it would be great to one day be able to have a genuine 1950's PAF or a Throbak or Wizz etc so that I can have a more accurate authoritative sounding reference point.

kziss.

You seem quite curious, but be careful of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

I would suggest buying a set of pickups that actually does a good job of cloning a PAF. Throbak and Wizz in particular are quite specific about both the alloys in the various components of their assembly, but also in the magnets and copying the wind type and patterns. Short of buying a PAF or pat# its the closest you'll get.

Otherwise all you're dabbling in is endless speculating with an open end.

 

[freefrog]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

The magnets and the winding inductance and DC resistance and also the internal capacitance of the coil wires do audibly affect the sound of pickups, but some people say that the metal composition of the baseplate, the metal keeper bar, the slugs and the screws also affect the tonality of the pickups, but from a pragmatic real world perspective I wonder how much the metal composition of the baseplate, the metal keeper bar, the slugs and the screws would actually affect the tonality or whether this is just simply a "splitting hairs" or a "voodoo mojo" issue for extremely picky "cork sniffer" type purists who demand absolute "vintage correct" parts for the whole pickup even for parts that do not affect the tonality.

In my humble experience, all the parts involved in the magnetic circuit count.

Example: a Mojotone keeper bar hasn’t the same shape or mass than an AddictionFX one. I've compared two of them a few days ago and the Mojotone one carried the magnetic field with roughly 30% less efficiency – according to the surprising measurements that I’ve done with our lab teslameter.

More generally: until now, I've always found that slugs, screws and keeper bars of different alloys, masses and shapes (plated or unplated) change the magnetic circuit quite a bit and are able to have a pretty noticeable influence on the tone of a P.A.F. replica. As noticeable as a magnet swap, IME…

Some people also say that there is a noticeable tonal difference between Gibson style braided single conductor shielded cable and 4- conductor shielded cable because of the different capacitances of these two different cable types.

[…]

The measured cable capacitance of my 30 foot (10 meter) long Fender Koil Kord cable which has modern construction and oxygen free copper is 1 nf which is lower than that of the 1960's coiled cables so therefore it has a brighter sound, but I have built a passive tonal filtering box with various switches and potentiometers in order to create a wide variety of different grounding capacitances, as well as series capacitances, and grounding inductances (Q-Filter) and grounding resistances and these are very useful in recreating the effects of 1960's and 70's cable capacitances as well as Varitone style filtering and passive EQ-uing.

FWIW, I’ve measured 268pf per meter on a typical aftermarket Gibson style braided shielded wire (vs an average 147pf per meter for the dozens of cables that I’ve tested these last decades).

And I agree, varying the capacitive and inductive loads is indeed a simple and effective way to change a tone. I’ve also some home made “capacitive load boxes” in my pedalboards, designed to emulate various lengths of cable. ;-))

I am not an obsessive purist type who would would only use an absolutely 100 % accurate PAF clone, so therefore even though the pickups in my collection might not be absolutely 100% accurate in nailing the true 1950's PAF sound, they do come close enough from a practical perspective, and as well as that I use additional filtering such as the Kent Armstrong Tone Choke or the Bill Lawrence Wilde Q-Filter inductor coils which when used in a suitable manner are very useful in shaping the sound of a pickup to produce a more vintage PAF - like approximation.

Instead of a conventional Q filter of 1H or 2H, you could build and try a higher inductance filter made of multiple coils. It can be wired for an humbucking effect and adds more harmonic richness than single low inductance chokes when it comes to emulate vintage pickups (I’ve wired such a 6 coils / 6 H thing in parallel with stock Epi pickups in a cheap guitar and in this case, it works surprisingly well).

I would like to eventually get hold of a high quality PAF clone set of pickups such as the Throbak or the Wizz, or the Stephens Designs, or the Bare Knuckle Pickups "The Mule" etc, but at this time I really cannot afford the very expensive retail prices charged for these pickups, but hopefully I might eventually be able to find any of these pickups second hand at much more affordable prices.

Among various boutique pickups, I’ve got a second hand set of Stephens Design for a cheap price so it’s doable.


Good luck in your tone quest!

 

[AlexR]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi AlexR.
Yes I am a very curious inquistive experimentor/ hobbyist and I like researching the aspects of pickups and guitar woods and construction that actually do affect the sound.

I would like to eventually get hold of a high quality PAF clone set of pickups such as the Throbak or the Wizz, or the Stephens Designs, or the Bare Knuckle Pickups "The Mule" etc, but at this time I really cannot afford the very expensive retail prices charged for these pickups, but hopefully I might eventually be able to find any of these pickups second hand at much more affordable prices.

The vast majority of the other pickups in my collection that I have bought over the years were second hand on ebay so therefore I paid much cheaper prices than their original retail prices.

As well as that, I live in Australia so therefore the international shipping costs are grossly expensive thus exacerbating the unaffordability of expensive boutique quality pickups for me.

You missed the boat with that........I bought a few of mine a short while ago and got the Aus$ very strong against the US. And most boutique winders charge $16-19 for postage which is not at all expensive.

If/when you do go for some, look at ReWind and Zhangbucker too. The former does a lot of work on his PAF clones and is not all that expensive (especially by comparison to retail prices here) and Zhangbucker often has sales on. I recently got a set of Firebird pickups from him on sale for about $180 Aud shipped. James at ReWind also has a stock of accurate parts and magnets - 2 of my PAF clone sets have vintage 50's long magnets in them courtesy of James.......but not a cheap buy at all.

The reason why I build my own guitars is due to the local Gibson distributor........well all distributors really - almost nothing in LH brought in.

 

[kziss]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi Freefrog.
Thank you for your reply and the details about what you have measured and noticed.

>Example: a Mojotone keeper bar hasn’t the same shape or mass than an AddictionFX one. I've compared two of them a few days ago >and the Mojotone one carried the magnetic field with roughly 30% less efficiency – according to the surprising measurements >that I’ve done with our lab teslameter.

I don't have any advanced equipment such as a Teslameter so I cannot test how the metal part such as the metal keeper bars affect the transfer of the magnetism, but the keeper bar in my 1970's Gibson T-top pickup does not have perfectly smoothly straight sides like what a more precisely manufactured keeper bar would have, instead the sides are slightly slightly bulged as if someone had hit sections of the top of the keeper bar with a hammer thus causing the sides to slightly bulge outward and no longer be perfectly straight.

Because of this, the side of the keeper bar does not make a perfect full complete contact with the magnet along it's full length, instead only the slightly bulged sections of the side directly touch the magnet so there is a slight air gap between the rest of the keeper bar and the magnet.

I wonder if this imperfect contact between the magnet and the bulged keeper bar is enough to subtly affect the transfer of the magnetism between the magnet and the six screws and thus very slightly reduce the inductance of the screw coil.

>More generally: until now, I've always found that slugs, screws and keeper bars of different alloys, masses and shapes (plated or >unplated) change the magnetic circuit quite a bit and are able to have a pretty noticeable influence on the tone of a P.A.F. replica. As >noticeable as a magnet swap, IME…

Interestingly on the Dimarzio website clip where Larry Dimarzio discusses his 1959 Les Paul Standard, there is a close up shot of the opened up PAF pickup and I noticed that there was no metal keeper bar inside. I wonder how the absence of the keeper bar would affect the sound (perhaps creating a mismatched inductance between the two coils ?). I dont know if the absence of the keeper bar was a mistake made by the Gibson employee who assembled the pickup a the factory, or whether Larry or someone else purposely removed the keeper bar because doing this changed the inductance of the screw coil and thus helped to create a unique or distinctive sound.

I also wonder if the absence of the keeper bar in Larry Dimarzio's 1959 PAF pickup might have influenced Larry to begin experimenting with what became the "air bucker" set up.


>WIW, I’ve measured 268pf per meter on a typical aftermarket Gibson style braided shielded wire (vs an average 147pf per meter for >the dozens of cables that I’ve tested these last decades).

This might possibly slightly affect the very high treble frequencies but I wonder how audible the 268 pf capacitance would be with a PAF type pickup. I have noticed that stray capacitances more noticeably affect higher output pickups so therefore the 268 pf capacitance might possibly be enough to slightly affect the high output pickups. I have noticed that a 1 nf grounding capacitance is enough to roll off the treble response of my Dimarzio X2N and my other high output pickups, but the treble roll off is no where near as strong with my PAF style pickups.

>And I agree, varying the capacitive and inductive loads is indeed a simple and effective way to change a tone. I’ve also some home >made “capacitive load boxes” in my pedalboards, designed to emulate various lengths of cable. ;-))

Yes I have found these to be very useful. As well as that, the treble roll off produced by a grounding capacitance between 5nf to 10 nf can make a typical PAF style pickup sound much more like a high output pickup, especially when using the overdrive sounds thus allowing a PAF style pickup to produce the more modern chunky midrangey overdrive sounds and pick harmonic quality that normally requires a high output pickup such as a Seymour Duncan JB or a Dimarzio X2N etc.

An ice-picky or too shrill sounding pickup can be smoothed down to sound fatter with the grounding capacitance.

Alternatively an inductive load can make a thick midrangey sounding high output pickup to sound much closer to a vintage output pickup such as a PAF style or a P90 style or a Gretsch Filtertron style etc pickup.

>Instead of a conventional Q filter of 1H or 2H, you could build and try a higher inductance filter made of multiple coils. It can be wired >for an humbucking effect and adds more harmonic richness than single low inductance chokes when it comes to emulate vintage >pickups (I’ve wired such a 6 coils / 6 H thing in parallel with stock Epi pickups in a cheap guitar and in this case, it works surprisingly >well).

I have experimented with wiring inductor coils in series such as two or three Bill Lawrence Wilde Q-filter coils ( including the 1.8 H "Guitar" inductors and the 3 H"Bass" inductors) and the 1.3 H Kent Armstrong Tone chokes. Different pickups react differently with the various inductor coils.

I have also experimented with guitar pickups wired up as a Q filter inductors, and a P90 style pickup or two Fender style single coil pickups wired up as humbucking inductors can produce an inductance in the 6H region, but the main problem with this is that the guitar pickups are too big to fit inside the guitar control cavity so they will need to be mounted inside an external box.

The Bill Lawrence Wilde inductors are interesting because the measured DC resistance is extremely low, at around 50 ohms to 100 ohms but they still allow the bright treble response to pass through. Other low resistance inductor coils noticeably roll off the treble response compared to the Bill Lawrence inductor coils.

I opened up a Bill Lawrence Bass (3H) inductor, and the round coil was enclosed in a round pot core made of a very fragile and easily breakable black ceramic or ferrite material. A friend who looked at the broken pot core said that it might be some specialized kind of high MU metal which is brittle instead of being ceramic or ferrite.

After I accidentally broke the fragile pot core, the inductor no longer allowed the bright treble response to pass through and it severely loaded down the guitar pickups thus making it useless for guitar use.

I don't know what the fragile pot core is made of, but considering that the coil is only around 50 to 100 ohms, but the 1.8H and the 3H inductances are very high for such a small winding so therefore the pot core has a very strong effect on the inductance and these Bill Lawrence inductors are very well designed and very efficient inductors.

Another benefit of the Bill Lawrence inductors is that they are extremely low noise so that even when using heavy gain overdrive, there is very little hum or noise created by the inductor.
The 1.3 H Kent Armstrong Tone Choke inductor which has a much higher DC resistance of 3.2 K ohms does induce some hum noise when using the heavy gain overdrive.
I think that the very low 50 to 100 ohms DC resistance of the Bill Lawrence inductors contributes to their very low noise quality.

>Good luck in your tone quest!

Thank you.
kziss.

 

[kziss]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi AlexR.
Unfortunately the Australian dollar is currently around 77 US cents thus making it prohibitively expensive to buy expensive items from the USA. Around two years ago the Australian dollar had overtaken the US dollar with $1 Australian dollar being $1.05 US dollar thus making much better to buy things from the USA.

However there are still some good deals to be had buying second hand pickups from USA ebay sellers, for example I have bought several Seymour Duncan and Dimarzio PAF style pickups from USA ebay sellers for around $40 to $50 whilst the same Seymour Duncan pickup model retails here in Australia at around $200 which is ridiculous. This is the notorious "Australia tax" in action whereby so many things in Australia seem to retail at significantly higher prices ( sometimes up to double or more ) than what they retail for in the USA , and the expensive Australian prices go far beyond the factor of the international shipping costs being added into the Australian retail prices.

It has always been very hard to find left guitars and left handed guitar parts such as certain bridges, whether new or second hand and if that is not bad enough, there is the unfair higher price gouging for left handed guitars and parts.
kziss.

You missed the boat with that........I bought a few of mine a short while ago and got the Aus$ very strong against the US. And most boutique winders charge $16-19 for postage which is not at all expensive.

If/when you do go for some, look at ReWind and Zhangbucker too. The former does a lot of work on his PAF clones and is not all that expensive (especially by comparison to retail prices here) and Zhangbucker often has sales on. I recently got a set of Firebird pickups from him on sale for about $180 Aud shipped. James at ReWind also has a stock of accurate parts and magnets - 2 of my PAF clone sets have vintage 50's long magnets in them courtesy of James.......but not a cheap buy at all.

The reason why I build my own guitars is due to the local Gibson distributor........well all distributors really - almost nothing in LH brought in.

 

[AlexR]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

At the moment the Euro is a great way to get parts. We're still almost the same to it as we were before, and often you can get VAT free too.

Your goal seems different to mine - I don't avoid bargains, but I tend to know what I want and am prepared to spend the $$ to get it.

 

[freefrog]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi Kziss,

Relatively short answers below ‘cause I’m busy right now.

I don't have any advanced equipment such as a Teslameter so I cannot test how the metal part such as the metal keeper bars affect the transfer of the magnetism, but the keeper bar in my 1970's Gibson T-top pickup does not have perfectly smoothly straight sides like what a more precisely manufactured keeper bar would have, instead the sides are slightly slightly bulged as if someone had hit sections of the top of the keeper bar with a hammer thus causing the sides to slightly bulge outward and no longer be perfectly straight.

Because of this, the side of the keeper bar does not make a perfect full complete contact with the magnet along it's full length, instead only the slightly bulged sections of the side directly touch the magnet so there is a slight air gap between the rest of the keeper bar and the magnet.

I wonder if this imperfect contact between the magnet and the bulged keeper bar is enough to subtly affect the transfer of the magnetism between the magnet and the six screws and thus very slightly reduce the inductance of the screw coil.

According to my limited experiments, yes, obviously, the overall shape of these parts and their mutual contact are important.

Now, when we’ve tested here some screw poles of the same length / shape but made of different alloys, our teslameter was reacting differently with each kind of screw.

Interestingly on the Dimarzio website clip where Larry Dimarzio discusses his 1959 Les Paul Standard, there is a close up shot of the opened up PAF pickup and I noticed that there was no metal keeper bar inside. I wonder how the absence of the keeper bar would affect the sound (perhaps creating a mismatched inductance between the two coils ?). I dont know if the absence of the keeper bar was a mistake made by the Gibson employee who assembled the pickup a the factory, or whether Larry or someone else purposely removed the keeper bar because doing this changed the inductance of the screw coil and thus helped to create a unique or distinctive sound.

I also wonder if the absence of the keeper bar in Larry Dimarzio's 1959 PAF pickup might have influenced Larry to begin experimenting with what became the "air bucker" set up.

AFAIK, some aftermarket PU’s (including WCR’s and Lollar’s if memory serves me) don’t include keeper bars either and I’ve even found two examples of “airbucker” technology in some cheap anonymous MIC pickups (!)…

I wonder if the keeper was INITIALLY absent in Larry’s P.A.F. , BTW. Keeper bars are important for ‘’that P.A.F. tone’’ in my personal experience…

This might possibly slightly affect the very high treble frequencies but I wonder how audible the 268 pf capacitance would be with a PAF type pickup. I have noticed that stray capacitances more noticeably affect higher output pickups so therefore the 268 pf capacitance might possibly be enough to slightly affect the high output pickups. I have noticed that a 1 nf grounding capacitance is enough to roll off the treble response of my Dimarzio X2N and my other high output pickups, but the treble roll off is no where near as strong with my PAF style pickups.

As a P.A.F. has its resonant frequency higher in the spectrum, it’s pretty logical to me….

FWIW, I’ve personally noticed a relative “immunity” to cable capacitance with vintage PU’s in general, at least with those that I find great (I’ve the memory of a L series Strat in my mind while I write that).

Now, the effect of stray capacitance due to braided shielded wire is of course more than subtle… although I’ve personally found that it contributes to the sound when the pickups are in parallel in a Les Paul (situation involving several good lengths of inner wiring + four pots + a selector + a jack plug: in this case, parasitic capacitance appears to rise enough to shape in an unmistakable way the combined tones of the PU’s).

Yes I have found these to be very useful. As well as that, the treble roll off produced by a grounding capacitance between 5nf to 10 nf can make a typical PAF style pickup sound much more like a high output pickup, especially when using the overdrive sounds thus allowing a PAF style pickup to produce the more modern chunky midrangey overdrive sounds and pick harmonic quality that normally requires a high output pickup such as a Seymour Duncan JB or a Dimarzio X2N etc.

An ice-picky or too shrill sounding pickup can be smoothed down to sound fatter with the grounding capacitance.

Alternatively an inductive load can make a thick midrangey sounding high output pickup to sound much closer to a vintage output pickup such as a PAF style or a P90 style or a Gretsch Filtertron style etc pickup.

My experiments and findings are the same than yours.

I have experimented with wiring inductor coils in series such as two or three Bill Lawrence Wilde Q-filter coils ( including the 1.8 H "Guitar" inductors and the 3 H"Bass" inductors) and the 1.3 H Kent Armstrong Tone chokes. Different pickups react differently with the various inductor coils.

Once again, agreed.

I have also experimented with guitar pickups wired up as a Q filter inductors, and a P90 style pickup or two Fender style single coil pickups wired up as humbucking inductors can produce an inductance in the 6H region, but the main problem with this is that the guitar pickups are too big to fit inside the guitar control cavity so they will need to be mounted inside an external box.

The Bill Lawrence Wilde inductors are interesting because the measured DC resistance is extremely low, at around 50 ohms to 100 ohms but they still allow the bright treble response to pass through. Other low resistance inductor coils noticeably roll off the treble response compared to the Bill Lawrence inductor coils.

I opened up a Bill Lawrence Bass (3H) inductor, and the round coil was enclosed in a round pot core made of a very fragile and easily breakable black ceramic or ferrite material. A friend who looked at the broken pot core said that it might be some specialized kind of high MU metal which is brittle instead of being ceramic or ferrite.

After I accidentally broke the fragile pot core, the inductor no longer allowed the bright treble response to pass through and it severely loaded down the guitar pickups thus making it useless for guitar use.

I don't know what the fragile pot core is made of, but considering that the coil is only around 50 to 100 ohms, but the 1.8H and the 3H inductances are very high for such a small winding so therefore the pot core has a very strong effect on the inductance and these Bill Lawrence inductors are very well designed and very efficient inductors.

Another benefit of the Bill Lawrence inductors is that they are extremely low noise so that even when using heavy gain overdrive, there is very little hum or noise created by the inductor.
The 1.3 H Kent Armstrong Tone Choke inductor which has a much higher DC resistance of 3.2 K ohms does induce some hum noise when using the heavy gain overdrive.
I think that the very low 50 to 100 ohms DC resistance of the Bill Lawrence inductors contributes to their very low noise quality.

Interesting. Thx to share.

I also think that Wilde/Bill Lawrence designs and parts are extremely good. I’m more than happy to own a vintage L500 among ''a few'' other old things (like some “Seymourized” SH-1’s, prehistoric Duncan’s that I like a lot too)…

Regarding high DCR with inductors: personally, I’ve no problem with that. When I put a home made Q filter in parallel with a PU, I like the LR readings to stay ‘’realistic’’ and I tend to ADD a resistor to achieve this result. My filter coils being shielded and wired as humbuckers, I’ve not noticed any issue with noise. YMMV.

More later, maybe. Whatever is my pleasure to talk with you, work is calling me. : -/

See ya!

 

[uOpt]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

I think it is a mistake to focus on magnetism.

What matters here is Eddy Currents. Eddy Currents and their complexity as they form in a plate-like conductor that is layered with different conductive materials on top could easily be mind-blowing. Unfortunately measuring them is really, really annoying since you can't directly access them, and trying to observe them over the air makes you pick up your oscillating test field.

 

[kziss]

Re: What was the metal composition of the 1950's and 60's Gibson humbucker covers ?

Hi AlexR.
As well as the Euro still being closer to the Australian dollar, I think that the shipping costs from some European countries as well as from the UK are cheaper than the American shipping costs.

I buy second hand pickups and parts and look for bargains out of necessity because I have a small income so therefore I cannot afford the extremely high retail prices charged for boutique quality pickups but if I had a better income then I would buy a few boutique pickup sets to try out.

kziss.

At the moment the Euro is a great way to get parts. We're still almost the same to it as we were before, and often you can get VAT free too.

Your goal seems different to mine - I don't avoid bargains, but I tend to know what I want and am prepared to spend the $$ to get it.