Thanks everyone for watching. Comments are turned back on. Off topic comments will be removed. The ONLY purpose of this video was to show that you don't need to spend 100's of thousands of dollars to get these tones. You don't even need a Gibson. My demo guitar here is an unremarkable Gibson Classic, thats been heavily updated to the closest vintage replica parts, and I'm NOT talking about parts that only LOOK vintage, but the MATERIALS I learned directly from vintage Gibson parts from real vintage Les Pauls. The Four Uncles ABR! replica that I did all the reverse engineering on the REAL zinc alloy, not the junk the commercial companies use, thats just way way wrong. I don't tell anyone what I found, and you would have to spend a LOT on money in metallurgy labs to find out whats real. I had a Senior alloys engineer work with me for 6 YEARS or so, and gave me a deep education so I understood the material and thru direct experimentation with real vintage parts, figured out HOW those materials affect the sound, not only in hardware, but the 22 years now, of the work I did with PAF's from every single year they were made, as well as ALL the pickups Gibson made in a FOURTY YEAR TIME SPAN. There is NO MAGIC HERE. Its pure physics and there are no engineering books on how material affect MAGNETIC AUDIO COILS that can tell you these things. I sourced the closest modern materials to see how they compare with the very LOW QUALITY materials used that far back. This involved years of experiments and ways to make modern materials sound more like vintage materials. The comparison to the 1959 Les Paul in this video prove my methods are very effective, and no, I don't share any of this information with anyone. Go do your own work and take a coupe decades it takes to even get into that headspace using SCIENCE. I'm 75 now and I covered all of it in this insane OCD long trip, where I knew nothing at the start, and nobody knew anything. Most of them will never figure out or even try, they all copy each other, and use the same wrong materials parts from StewMac and others. NO ONE WAS EVEN INTERESTED IN THIS STUFF BACK THEN. AS I discoved more and more things directly from PAF's themselves, I bought ALL the buckers claiming to be PAF copies, and ALL of them were Allparts, StewMac and Korean parts, and none were even close to true PAF character and sound. It burned me out, but I finally got THERE at the end. ENJOY!
When I see people raving about how much better the old guitars were, I always remember a quote from a Fender executive (whose name escapes me at the moment) who worked for the company back in their Glory Days. He said "Even we didn't make them as good as we used to".
Yeah thats true. But you know Strats also sufffered from the changes in steel making. The heavy tremolo block and its modern version don't sound the same, same for the metal saddles and plate. The old ones has baseball bat necks which gives a lot more warmth than skinny necks do.
Exactly to everything you said. It drives me crazy when someone says "Hey, let's listen to how this guitar sounds." Then they plug it into a pedal board and a amp stack. Then they crank the volume all the way up on the guitar. What exactly are we supposed to be listening too? All I hear is the effects on the pedal board or the overdrive on the amp. A guitar doesn't make the tone. It's great players who understand what tone is. It certainly isn't those endless number of hacks with a youtube channel. By the way it's doctors, lawyers and dentists driving the overpriced guitar market. They used to buy airplanes and portray the weekend pilot. Then they discovered people can end up dead. So then they turned to Harleys and put on those weekend colours and bandanas only to discover they could still get hurt. So the next step was to take two weeks of guitar lessons and show up at a shop, seeming to know everything about guitars, and pay for whatever the over valued sticker price on the axe of their dreams was.
I gave up on pedals 15 years ago. The only guy I know that did good use with them, and that was Gary Moore. So I have 3 pedals that he used over time. But you go look up his settings and all he did was use them as a clean boost. I should sell off all my pedals, they dont add anything and some them are worth more than I paid for them now.
Family doctor here :-). And drummer and guitar player since boyhood. My brothers are also musicians, but one of them says the same stuff but is more serious. I see the humour in your comment and appreciate the sentiments, being someone who is not going to be able to afford a vintage LP of this type, but loves a good guitar regardless of the year it was made. As you get older (62) and can buy something that's not a 'beginner" guitar or can buy something other than the $150 - $300 or so area, where you can find tons of really good guitars, but at about $3,000 to $5000 Canadian it must be said, you can find some instruments that you might not have ever hoped to play, but you can afford one or two, as you are now late 50s, early 60's to 75 plus and have saved enough and put your kids through everything thing they needed and things are taken care of through a life lived within one's means and anything extra is saved, yeah look into it and enjoy something of a reward for a life well lived.
@@arifq123 I have no savings, my life is hand to mouth self employment. High stress. Now we have a criminal president, he is bent on killing the ACA, so a lot of poorer Americans are going to lose the only healthcare that Obama foughtso hard to get us. Its a real bad scene here and the country is aimed directly going into Depression economy under really awful "leadership."They also want to kill Social Security and that could easily make us homeless. We'd love to escape to Canada, but they don't want old people coming in. People are terrified of whats coming.....
It's always funny to see guitar players hating on strangers for having nice things. Lawyers can have a passion for guitar too. Would you prefer to live in a world without PRS Custom shops etc? No. Of course not. Expensive guitars have a market. If I was rich you better believe I'd own $10k guitars.
@@SDPickups As a born and raised Canadian you and your loved ones are welcome here imo. It's definitely easier said than done though. I'll never understand Americans views on healthcare but this is a guitar video...
PLEASE DON'T COMMENT WITHOUT WATCHING THE ENTIRE VIDEO. THE PAF COMPARISONS START AT 13:30. You won't understand anything unless you watch full video. I had to remove a couple comments for this reason. The real PAF comparison of real PAF's to the X set at the end of this video, was originally done as a BLIND AUDIO POLL. comparison. 60% of viewers on FB and UA-cam swore that the X set were the REAL PAF's. They were not told which was the real set until the poll ended and I tabulated the results. In this video I wrote exactly which were the real PAF's and which were the X set. What happens if I do an audio demo and I say "these are real '59 PAF's, anyone watching and listening are right away going to think they ARE. Its a mind trick that your mind will immediately think thats what they are because it is written. I also DID say that the PAF's are both 7.6K, bridge and neck. And that the X bridge is 8.8K. So obviously the real PAF's are going to sound noticeably BRIGHTER but not really obviously. So because I wrote that, a couple guys right away are saying that the real PAF's are "magical" and they can hear that completely. LOL. Talk about "magical thinking," many of these same type guys are the ones who couldn't tell the actual PAF's from the X set in the original BLIND audio poll. So suddenly they are "experts" and can easily tell which are which? I don't think SO......Not only that, but nowhere did I claim the X set is a clone of the real PAF's or any specific PAF's at all. They are simply a demonstration of all the combination of ALL knowledge i have learned directly FROM all the PAF's from every year into one set that in many ways replaces all of my other set designs from years past. Stay tuned for my next video showing how rotted braided wire may be why some old LP's don't sound great because rotted braide wire kills capaitance and more than that......subscribe to view it when its done.....thanks everyone for great comments!
Not every player can be a first call, session musician, and not every first call session guitarist can be a stock broker, dentist, hedge fund manager or divorce lawyer. Let's be honest, it's the later group that can afford to buy these vintage guitars. And if they're happy getting together with their "weekend warrior" buds, playing 3 chord classic rock, more power to them. Buying an extremely expensive vintage guitar is mostly a vanity purchase in my opinion. I'm a skilled player having done it all (sessions, touring, producing etc), and have compared my reissue Les Pauls, 335s, SGs, Strats & Teles, and they have more than held their own against the supposed "real McCoys" of yesteryear. Once an ensemble starts rocking, who cares if the guitarist is using vintage PAFs or reissues.
I care :-) The better your guitar sounds, the more inspired you'll be to play your best. I get that comment alot from customers. Why do I care? Because I was told over and over----"ITS IMPOSSIBLE, YOU CAN'T DO THAT, YOU'RE KRAZY." I watched every youtube video ever made of these guitars and the SOUND, is something nobody could get. I wanted to know WHY. Thats where it started. I really dislike hype and the vintage LP subject is infected with that kind of thing. Dishonesty. Corporate dishonesty. One man can do what an entire corporate empire is incapable of because no employer is going to tell you "Hey, spend 20 years trying to figure out why these sound better than everything that came later. A LOT of my customers are "Boomers" like me, they grew up when these things were made. They want that sound again. Some customers of mine sold their real PAF's because they could get what they wanted in my work, and they'd rather have the money. All I wanted was to find the truth, and to be able to make all my guitars sound like the old ones. It only took 20 years out of my life and I love what I do. Its not really a profitable businesses, not the way I do things. Everything is done the way it was done back then, but had to invent methods and machine all my own parts or it doesn't work at all.....
@@SDPickupsgreat answer. I care too, man. I would imagine if the UA-cam algorithm sent someone to your channel, they most likely spend a non-zero amount of time watching content all about “the sound” they’re searching for. Because while I agree to an extent with the original comment that it is harder to tell within a mix, it’s about how it feels to the player. If I think it sounds good and excites me, I’m gonna feel better->play better->sound better, despite whether it’s perceived by others or not as sounding better.
I ain't dead yet, but am hitting 75 in a few weeks. Believe me, I can see the Grim Reaper out there on the horizon, LOL. I have written down every single thing about vintage PAF's that I've verified the last 20 years, but it remains to be seen how I can make sure all that stuff is publicly exposed when I pass. My wife thinks no one would be interested in it, she could make a nice side income by selling it, but she wants no part of it. Besides being about the journey to reproduce them, the old PAF's was like a college course in pickup DESIGN. It showed me the reason that ALL vintage guitar pickups will always sound better than copies.
@@SDPickups oh she should get into winding! maybe do a sunday afternoon couple wind special edition: one coil hers and one yours, in a set. its quite often in companies that knowledge in wngineering companies is lost and not transmitted. give one copy of your knowledge to a lawyer who only publishes in case you both actually left the planet. hope thats many winds away!
Your pickups really do capture that late 50’s tone. Much respect for the enormous effort you expended researching the minute details of the classic PAF’s.
I worked in a music store in the late 80s. before the prices of vintage gear started to sky rocket. back then, japanese collecters were buying up all the vintage fender and gibson gear. Fact is, noone NEEDS this old instruments. Brand new guitars are better made, more consistent and have better technology.
That is probably why the Gibson Custom Shop Reissue series is so expensive new. I did pick up a used 2019 R0 for a great price, and I have to say, it is becoming my go to. 8.1lbs too
I'll go you one better. Because Japanese businessmen cash rich in the 80's bought out all the pre CBS Strats, the only ones left were the one's they didn't want were the beat up, chipped off finish, etc. So when the time came to remake them, they had to RELIC them so that they resembled the left overs the japanese didn't want.
Better technology? JUNK MATERIALS ARE WHAT GAVE THE OLD ONES THEIR AMAZING TONES. Its all crappy materials, much of it contaminated with slag and junk contents. Gibsons certainly never got better. You pay huge prices and then have to replace all the parts on them.
@@SDPickupsyou should drop this guy some links so he can be better educated in what you're talking about . Four uncles also discuss this matter in great detail. When it comes to Gibson technology doesn't necessarily equal quality but profit. I bet Gibson doesn't even know how to make the old bridges, saddles, tailpiece like they used to. instead they use pot metals, steel instead of brass which explains the reason why they sound so bright these days instead of that buttery warm tone that only brass can give.
In my mind even worse than someone like Kevin Leary, a billionaire who can scarcely play owning a $600,000 flame top even two of them are people like Rick Nielsen Kurt Hammett, Joe Perry, Slash etcetc who have hundreds of guitars in dark vaults that they just hang onto. It’s criminal. Depriving so many of us have a classic instrument and thereby driving the price up far more than one billionaire collector ever could
I’ve always loved the ‘59 LP Standard myth but $250K to $1M+ for a guitar? And like he said, an overpriced guitar doesn’t automatically make you play better; yeah, it’s still up to you. His pickups really sound good, quite authentic! Thanks for posting! A ‘59 LP ain’t gonna make you play like Jimmy Page!
I saw the Allman Brothers Band at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh , Pa. It was October 15 , 1971 . It cost $ 2.00 to get in . Dicky played a gold top . Duane played slide on an S.G. He played a sunburst on standard tuning . Great players , great gear and great music .
Duane paid a lot of attention to his gear to get those sounds. I have bootlegs of him and his bridge pickup often sounded really HARSH. He used open back speaker cabs and bass speakers of a certain brand. And of course the AMPS.
@@SDPickupsalso JBL …D120s I believe -with a Plexi! I’m sure that could sound harsh with a bridge pickup…and I LOVE JBLs with a good fender. BTW great video and pups. Insta-fan.
Great venue. I saw amazing shows there. I remember one marathon Springsteen show in particular. If I recall, the Decade Club was fairly close to the Syria. I also caught some great shows at the Decade as well as The Stanley. Never saw the original Allmans though I would argue that at that time they were the best live band in the World and I would throw in Ellington, Coltrane, Santana, the Band or Miles as competition. I am envious!
Thanks for the work you do’. There are a lot of great guitars being built today. Some of them are relatively affordable. You’ve shown that great vintage tones can be obtained without breaking the bank. Keep up the great work!
Today there’s so much talk about tone and gear and vintage stuff. People forget that we’re playing music, to express something. I have an old Les Paul SG 1961 with PAF pickups, and it plays very good and sounds great. The reason is that I take care of my instruments. Some years ago there suddenly was a loud crackling sound coming out when I played. It came back again and again when I moved, so I took the guitar to ”my” luthier, but he couldn’t find what was wrong. But, he said, I’ve heard that sound before from old guitars, and it has sometimes been the old soldering that gets worn out. So, he resoldered the cables where they go into the pickups. And… problem solved, no more crackling sound. However, when I told people that the cables were resoldered they went; What, now it’s not all original! Well, perhaps not, but I use my instruments to play music, to express something. Not to brag about how old, original and expensive my guitar is.
Well there is no solder joint on the outside of the baseplate or covers. So he would have had to remove the covers and THAT is a big deal if you ever try to sell them. Sometimes I've seen steel wool fragments stuck to the bottom of PAF's and this makes a cracking noise, you simply blow it off. Good for you for taking care of a valuable piece of history. I've seen guys take the covers off their PAF's hoping to find double whites, LOL. What they don't realize is that if you play it like that, no covers, and one single drop of ACID sweat gets inside the coils, down the line sooner or later you got dead coils, and a rewind of a vintage PAF drops the value down to less than $1000 for a full set.
I had the great fortune to read your article "The Monumentally Misunderstood PAF" it was located in the book Burst Believers II. I love Gibson Les Paul's. Mostly I love the history of the LP and all the terrific music that the players made with their Les Paul's and studio magic!! I can't thank you enough for confirming what I "thought" I knew. which was when you said that the vast majority of us didn't even know what a authentic PAF sounded like, because we had never heard one!! That was ME for sure!! Here we are chasing a "dream tone" and we don't know what in the hell we're really hearing and chasing!!! You made me totally rethink about what I really wanted in a pick up. I thank you. YES, your "reverse engineering" debunked the "myth". Your PAF's to these 65 year old ears sound just as good as the "real deal". Well done!!! Bryan
Man, that was some time ago, Vic invited me to contribute in an early one of those books. There was still more to learn beyond that, but it was clear to me that old PAF's were so misunderstood and so many myths and wrong things in several books out there. Even alot of collectors are clueless about details etc. I saw one of them even say that early PAF's had BRASS COVERS, LOL. Nope, never.
You do have to know how to play well, its NOT in the "fingers" not in pedals either. You have to learn with dynamics to play softly, and to dig in and SCREAM, how to master VIBRATO. As simple as that sounds, I know guys who can make any guitar sound awful no matter what they do or how long they've been playing. This really shows up in demos of these guitars, a bad player can make these guitars sound terrible. I'm not a pro player and never was, so I learned from Peter Green, BB King, Albert King, and all the Blues Heroes going way way back. Fancy licks don't make good tone, simple blues riffs, studied well, is what makes me happy...
Dave you talk a lot of sense. How I look at it is that I would not go to a gig to hear top guitarists because they play a specific guitar, model, pup configuration or a burst this or any guitar that used to be owned by whoever. I go to gigs and buy albums because I listen to the music, the feeling, the motion, the skill etc. I don't care what they are playing through which pedals, cables, amps etc. You are correct it is now a protected market where many people have invested in these things now have to keep the myth going to protect their investment. In the end there will be some pups that just hit the mark and just have a real nice sound , but 'better' ? . Its all subjective. I have a Yamaha SG, Hohner L59, a Greco and a Gibson LP studio. All sound great to me for different things and I would never spend 50 to 100 times the money just to say I have an XYZ from 19XX, can't you hear the difference ? It's 99% Spinal Tap to me. Nice video and good luck with your pups. You could call one of your models 'ST elevens' . Cheers.
Truthfully, the number of guitar players who care about the vintage golden years, I could probably count on 3 toes. Even your average luthier doesn't know the first thing about how to build great sounding harnesses, and there are just NO guitar companies that do either.The guys who really care, well Bonamassa, but jeez, he's made some remarks that tell me he falls for hype just like the rest do. "Magic Centralab" pots? I thought he was nuts when he said that, so I bought some. The only audible differences between them and CTS pots are the measured VALUE of the carbon tracks. 2 of the ones I bought even fell apart :-) My whole deal was using science to buy all those old hardware, caps pots, everything in and ON them, then working with a metallurgist mentor who's high tech lab in the huge steel plant he lived in, told me everything I needed to know. I didn't want to get "close," I wanted all of it. I got 98% and its not possible to get past that, though using 50's wire really gives a big jump UP....
Thanks for subscribing. I have an interesting new video possibly this weekend. Funny story about "snake oil." Back when I was on the forums, I told them I was working on a potting technique that was giving nice warm sounds. They called it my "secret sauce." Well I was half joking but I did find a potting method that did warm the sound. It was shellac if I remember right. The WATER in the shellac interacted electrically with the coils and trimmed some treble. It did sound really good. Wellllllll.....until the shellac over months completely dried out, no more water content. The effect evaporated with it. LOL. They all got mad at me because I didn't tell them what it was, but did months later.....
So true, this 59 thing has been a very successful marketing gimmick by Gibson to keep their industry alive. Also, any good player can make a bad guitar sound good and vice-versa.
If you go on UA-cam and search for 1959 Les Paul, you will find some pretty awful demo's of those vintage guitars, bad players and awful amps and guys with PEDAL BOARDS, LOL.
All the guys that demo gear. Like check this pedal out it sounds great! Everything they play sounds great! Lol. Give that pedal to a beginner, then get back to me!
I felt decadent buying a used LP Classic last year for $1700. It joins my American standard strat and tele I got decades ago for well under a thousand. More than good enough for me. All of them.
Mine is not STOCK. I use the Four Uncles ABR1 replica that I did all the reverse engineering on. BIG difference, but they are expensive. I replaced the thumbwheels and bridge posts for BRASS as the original LP's did. I'm using the Jupiter Condenser TIN foil Bee replicas in it now. Replaced the tailpiece, switch wiring with Gavitt replica braid wire, and it has the X set in it now which vastly brought it all together. It has a really weird neck joint, is pretty resonant despite that. Stock, it was boring and rather harsh. The X put it over the top, which is really needed. They're not terrible guitars, but they're not great either.
I have a guitar pick company here in Nashville TN. I have many friends with '59s. They bring them over and we play them. One of my buddys, a very famous man made the statement about his "All it is Vinni, is the covered, unpotted pickups are on the verge of feeding back. Nothing more". We then brought out my handmade guitar and we both could not tell the difference in tone when walking outside while the other was playing. I think they are way cool, like an old car. However, who the heck is gonna take a guitar like that to a gig or jam session? Also, I don't think they play all that great. Again, just like an old guitar, I would not want to hop in an old T-Bird like Suzanne Summers drove in American Graffiti and drive to California from here. I would feel like I was beat with sticks. Billy Gibbons promised me I could play Pearly Gates here soon. He lives up the street from us. I am looking forward to the experience and thoughts afterwards. Out of all the ones I have played, to me they sound like a Tele on steroids. I agree they are good guitars but have been hyped to the point of ridiculous. Good but not GREAT as we are told. Slash's burst sounded every bit as good and was a copy. I own some LPs that I think sound better than the oldies I have been around. They are like a '43 copper penny. Still just a penny but worth so much because everybody wants one. Walter from Carter Vintage once told me, you really have to listen hard to hear the difference in the real thing and a Gibson Re-Issue. I agree. In most cases, you have to listen hard to hear the difference in a good Epiphone Inspired by Gibson played in the same amp. Just look for some vids, you will see. I just may have to buy a set of your pickups just for the sake of trying them out. Nice job bro.
What muddies the waters are the pedal board guys. You think Peter Green had a pedal board? No, he had great amps. Once. you go the pedal route, you're not hearing the guitar anymore. I can hear the difference with the reissues. In my "The Les Paul That Isn't" four part series, I used a mint '60VOS reissued. It came with Custom Buckers. In part one I demo the Custom Buckers. They didn't sound "bad" but to me they sound bland and lifeless. Fast forward to part Four with the HD59's and ALL the vintage spec parts I made or sourced, the guitar screams and the sustain was so improved it just about levitated me off the ground :-) I'm a hardcore PURIST. Those vintage LP's used materials of THOSE times, and THAT is the biggest "secret" of them all. There are no direct identical materials like those anymore. Its all the same as vintage microphones that sell for thousands of dollars. They were made with magnet wire of the times that does not exist anymore. Each of the models had their own sound, some more desirable than others. PAF's are kind of like a microphone, and if you have air gaps between covers and slug tops, you literally talk thru the pickup. They did NOT need to be potted, the reason being that the old wire insulation recipes have an almost matte kind of finish, so that the wire cannot slip around on itself. I wind a lot with my big collection of vintage wire, and that old stuff GRABS onto felt tensioners. The old coils cannot vibrate. Any squealing that happens comes from air gap between cover top and the top of the slugs. In fact one of the reasons they stopped quickly from using stainless covers is because that material was very THIN, so the cover tops vibrate really easily. The Nickel silver covers are much thicker, and less prone to squealing. But put them in front of a couple 100 watt Marshalls, you will hear some squeals.
Your T-bird comparison is perfect here. Here is the big thing. Are there cars that drive better than an old T-bird. Absolutely pretty much every car out there today drive better and had better everything than an old T-bird. But they will never look like or be that old T-bird. There is a lot of emotion at play here that is being missed in this comparison. Humans are emotional creatures and we are virtual creatures. There is a lot to this discussion.
@@SDPickupsthank you for such an informative post on pickups. When the day comes I can order a reissue burst I plan to custom order it with as authentic electronics I can get as I know that is a flaw in the reissues where they are not the same.
I find the car analogy silly. Sure, a 2023 Charger is faster, more economical, and can be driven across the country today. But it doesn’t look anything like my 1970 Charger. All the ‘59 reissue Gibsons look the part.
I've had a traditional les paul since 2011. It's not a whole lot like a 59 . I rewired it using VIPots a .015 and a .022 and a handmade set of pafs that aren't a zillion percent 'correct'. I've got 3k canadian into it. And it sounds as good as or better than any r9 I've played. I built a bunch of amps in the last couple of years. The holy grail amps that I could never afford. Trainwrecks , plexis , bassmans, etc.. I don't have a real burst to compare to, but I am sure my setup sounds as good as the real thing. If it isn't, well, my ears can't decipher the differences... and if someone else can , well, bravo ! Lol. All that being said, somewhere out there there's a guy with a squier and a katana blowing people away. Also, I'm not saying a set of your puckups wouldn't be an amazing treat to have. I just do t think a burst is nessasary for holy grail tone
Why do you think I did the '59 video? Thats a real '59, the PAF's in the video are real 1959 PAF's. Do mine sound noticeably different than that '59 Les Paul? Nope. In the second half of the video I compared the '59 PAF's to my X set. I first publicly posted those audio comparisons as a BLIND AUDIO POLL. 60% of the respondents thought MINE were the real ones. That says something. Thats why I did the 1959 dealer demo and played the X set right after their video. Did you hear a huge difference? Nope. So are you saying that 1959 LP ISN'T the "Holy Grail?" LOL. Or are you talking Billy Gibbons LP? Do you know that he doubled all his solos on his albums? Thats the secret of his tone, the guitar doesn't sound like that by itself. Its a studio trick and works well. He also used a JTM45 to record with, BUT in live concerts he used a solid state rack mount power amp, so is THAT the "Holy Grail." Esplain pleeze :-)
I've stuck new pots and pickups into a 16 traditional and a 19 60s standard and they sound amazing so yup... you can make a few mods because factory standard is usually crap. I also refret mine and make them super easy to play. And yknow what... they're now exactly as I want. If you're buying to keep and let it appreciate you're buying it for the wrong reasons... and no one really cares. Let's be honest... if a wick player was played Greeny or any other 59 and you didn't know it was a 59... you wouldn't be impressed
@vhsreclaimed1998 the Vipots are supposed to be identical taper to the old centralabs. And the set I bought were all above 550k. The ones I took out of the stock Trad were 230k 240k 430k and 450k. I swapped the pickups at the same time so it's hard to guage the difthe pots made on their own. But all together , they're a 100% improvement.
One more comment, another good quote that perfectly encapsulates what youre talking about is "The physics on my workbench are no different than the physics that Vintage Gibsons and dumbles were made on"
Almost as bad as these greedy dastardly asking 7grand for an overrated klon boost pedal.And WORST OF ALL SCAMS ARE THE DUMBLES amps.250 grand for an amp that stops working during a show.Its all HYPE.Latest scam is the Lollar overdrive.$700.the MXR RANDY Rhodes pedal $125 new people want 600$.Stop being taken.
YEP. Some of the original 60's pedals are really great, I have a few from 1970 I bought back then that I still have. I also bought a couple that Gary Moore used. But for me, they dont really add anything. The best guitar tones come from great amps, not pedal. I watched a video of a guy playing one of Kossoff's Les Pauls, with A PEDALBOARD. He managed to make that guitar sound AWFUL.
Using a klon as a boost is like buying a Porsche to drive to your mailbox. You have to have the gain turned up past 7 to even hear what the pedal does. Also just buy a klone.
The Dumble amps are not a scam. No one has been able to replicate them exactly and they have collectability, something that poor angry assholes online can never understand…
when i first met my luthier as a complete noob in his workshop setup in a dinky shed of an old farm in bavarian forest, he was playing an old les paul thru a vintage plexi. he said, hi wanna try? i did. the difference to my lo studio was shocking. beefy neck acoustically loud, notes jumping out, no mud, clear overtones turning into feedback, growling bark, fast and transparent like a tele on steroids. i pöayed smells like teen spirit. he smirked. great guitar i said, you built it? nah its a real 58 i got in for a fretjob… i still feel that difference in my bones. he built les pauls that could match it. i cherish the artisanship of making pickups. been to guitar summit. thousands of guys hunting that ol lp plexi tone… dont get hung on it… move on, make music and tones guitarists will hunt for in 50years… what would hendrix play TODAY?
All the modern materials right NOW will not change as radically magnet wire and steel and brass did in the 50's and up to early 70's. Those modern technologies are not going to change. During 1960 and a few short years later, the PAF sound DIED. TTops were an attempt to keep it going, but it was that all those MATERIALS that became so modernized, which killed them off. TTops were good for ONE year, 1965 and rapidly worsened until they were quite harsh. There don't seem to be any geniuses at Gibson. I'm not genius but I solved all those lost knowledge questions in 20 years of hellish OCD HARD work. Jimi played guitars of the CBS era and they were GREAT pickups then. The magnet wire in them was still very good wire. I have a roll of wire from '72 I have yet to do a PAF set, I think maybe its time I did that.
I tried to explain to a good friend a few weeks back that Grail Les Pauls are super valuable because they are rare antiques, not because they can't be equaled by modern instruments (with the right stuff) and I don't think he ever got what I was saying.... I'll email this link to him: way better than my explanation ; ) Love these pickups, wow!
Well there are guys with open minds, and a lot of my customers fit that space. There are only 2 builders who make the most authentic true LP replicas. And I'll tell you, my Japanese, Gibson paid for, Elitists with real Brazilian boards on all 7 of them, full maple cap, long tenon neck joints and even more than that, smoke every Gibson LP I've ever played. Of coursed I replaced all the hardware, harness, pickups, tuners....You can still buy these for around $1200, but they are rapidly going up.....
I want an abr 1 bridge. I don’t necessarily need it going into the wood but I do believe the medal has a big difference in sound. I don’t know as much as you for sure. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Its a treasure to have people like you around and not just for guitar wisdoms.
The ABR1's need to go straight into wood. All the vintage ones did. But they also need to be sitting on top of brass thumbwheels and brass posts. You can those with a magnet, if either one sticks to the magnet they are steel and stainless steel and are tone killers, they make harsh sound. Thats why I got the older Classic, because now they using cheap junk Nashville bridges, its a completely different vibe.
They only make the bridges, and the thumbwheels and bridge posts. They were going to try making a tailpiece but don't have the many thousands of dollars to do that yet.
During the 1990s I bought a 1952 Les Paul that had been modified to a stop tail with a ABR tunamatic configuration. It was almost unplayable so I had the neck reset. It went from a wall hanging to a jaw dropping flagship. I ran it straight into a Traynor Bass Master (no pedals) with a 2 x 15" cabinet. That's all I needed to get that Clapton sound. But I digress. I also had a '59 Holy Grail, so I was well equipped to do authentic comparisons. Those P90s on the '52 sounded better every time than the '59, with its PAFs. I currently have a Gibson SG Standard and SG Special, which were both made in 1963. To my ear, nothing has changed. Those P90s still take the prize over the patent sticker number humbuckers, hands down. Just sayin'... And I gigged with boih of them. At one gig there was a young guy scoping out the gear. The '59 was on a stand. When I walked up and stood next to him, all he said was, "Is it real?", to which I said, "It's real.. Why don't you play it for a few minutes?" I was surprised when he declined by shaking his head back & forth... he was afraid to. Thanks for your video. 🙂
Myths are the mycelium from which our collective psyche fruits our most precious jewels. There’s a reason that the epithet “holy grail” has become so common, and it’s because we need these stories and this lore. It’s not just about money. Don’t let your resentment of rich people ruin your enjoyment of culture, just be a clever guy and make your own great instruments.
Well put. I don't hate rich people, but jeez man, they aren't very smart sometimes. They get fooled by counterfeits for sure. These historic instruments are disappearing from public view going into bank vaults. They get them for the bragging rights. It makes them feel superior, but hey, my wife won't buy into that, LOL
My uncle ( Laurence Gaudet) played with Marty Martin (Boxcar Willie) when they were stationed in Stephenville NL as a lead guitarists playing in a band called the String Busters. I never met the man but my aunt showed me the guitar in the 90's.... and it was a black Les Paul...one of the 1st. Boxcar tried for years to get the guitar for his museum and the last that I heard... it was at the museum. I could be wrong as stories get thrown around.... But I do know that guitar was original...I held it in my hands and the last holder of it was his daughter Gloria Jean Gaudet. I do believe it was appraised at about $15k back then.
I would have preferred to have at least seen his HANDS PLAYING the guitar with the PAF-X pickups, otherwise the whole comparison could be BOGUS !!! I'm surprised no one else has said this, however, if it's legit, then like Tony the Tiger would say, THERE GREAT !!!!!
Sounded right for sure, I've played and owned some incredible guitars over the years including likewise with amps etc, my final arrival is breathtaking across several styles/genres I'm into for a living. When anyone finds the one, its game over regardless of the logo or price tag. I can't put it down and get a proper sleep ever since for the last 3 years, it breathes and is a living beast, I know how to use it properly with a thing or two on my signal chain that are rarer than a hen's tooth. 🔥....great vid brother! Some still automatically think that slightly or accidentally fractionally microphonic pickups were a mistake, -depends on the guitar they're on -and the player too for sure.
You can most certainly tell they are of the same linage. Great job Dave. I've learned so very much from all your videos, your knowledge is priceless, a HUGE thanks for sharing it with us.
I was speaking to a vintage dealer in St. Louis and he told me that within the next two years, the going rate for a Burst will be a million. He agreed it’s ridiculous and the Japanese started the fad of buying everything old as investments in the 1980s. He has had quite a few Bursts come through and while unique, their nothing to drop a mil for.
I vividly remember when the Japanese drove up the prices of anything "Americana." Vintage LP's went from about $2-3000 to $40,000 overnight! I saw one in the local paper back then for $250, and I just missed it.
Good to keep the originals expensive... Nobody needs them, but most likely they are cared for and hopefully a few will be left even if humans are gone.
I agree with you 100 percent... one thing I have a hard time finding with PAF clones is they never get the swirly things and top end presence and bite right... the ones I like are bitey and almost sound like its out of phase compared to the dark sounding crap that is passed off as a PAF by many.
The whole "booteek" "winders" out there are mostly kids assembling pickup KITS. They are LEGO pickups. The work I did was pioneering, nobody cared about what I was doing and told me I'm an idiot etc. etc. Its a desert out there and customers get fooled most of the times.
'58's, '59's, '60's where all notoriously different as they were all handmade, right? So how can they all be equally 'great'? Fact is that they are not. Sorry for 'burst'ing some bubbles in here. 😂 I own a 2004 Classic and it's as good as any other Les Paul. Heck... with the 60's neck profile it's even playable. And since they are not labeled 'Standard', they are also way cheaper. Wealthy guitar 'afficionados' just have no clue. You are so right about that. 👌🏻😎
love, Love, LOVE your tasty Blues licks - you sound to me just like Peter Green on either set (to my ears, they both sound superb). And it's so much in the player's Technique ("In The Fingers"), which you so assuredly have. TY ! 😊
I'm not a believer in "fingers," I have small hands and my fretting hand is damaged so I can't play some barre chords at all. Its more that I LISTEN to guys like Peter Green who got HIS licks from BB King. Its more about phrasing for me. Green was really good at that, and Michael Bloomfield is another one I love. He was funny because he used 14 gauge strings, Black Diamonds probably. I could never bend those damn strings, but then SLINKY strings came out in 8 gauge and WOW, easy to bend! Even Page used them. You can hear it. Its interesting that one UA-cam channel did a video on what gauge strings record the best, and 8 gauge strings won hands down :-) thanks for the comment!
Guitar lore does a great deal of work for Gibson. Vintage instruments are now luxury status goods - and Gibson is now a luxury brand. It's very difficult to justify the expense ant other way. Are you going to gig with that 150 k instrument? Just record? Do you actually think it sounds 147k better than a modern instrument with these replacement pickups in it? 147 Grand has tremendous alternate utility for virtually any professional musician who isn't Kirk Hammett. Then there's also the reality did vintage pickups go bad all the time it have to be rewound. Does using new wire kill that magical vintage tone? Larry DiMarzio has a business precisely because people wanted different pickups than what came on their "vintage" instruments (which were just guitars back then). Guitar players love lore!
Yes, rewinding a vintage PAF will noticeable kill much of greatness. In the videos I did on comparing vintage magnets and vintage pole screws to the poles I had made and the Chinese magnets, that was a freebie rewind for the owner (I restore PAF's for free), I rewound it with Canadian magnet wire from 1990. It sounds good, but not like original wire. The supply of vintage magnet PE wire, has pretty much become extinct. I check every day to see if any of surfaces, but no big hits in at least 5 years now, so there's no wire to rewind it to original sounds. That doesn't mean it will sound bad, as you can plainly HEAR. But it won't ever sound original again. Do the PAF's always die a LOT? No. But you got clueless players taking the covers off, exposing the wire to Human ACID SWEAT. They eventually die as the wire it eaten away.
Winnipegger here. The man made fantastic amps. We have a talented pickup maker here at peg city pickups, I have his 59 set, which led me to watch to watch this video. I agree with all your points. Also… I have 5 guitars with sds and love them all. Keep killing it!
Hey Dave, I just found your channel and agree 100%. I've been building and restoring vintage guitars for about 25+ years, but only started building late 50s Gibson Replicas (Explorer, L.P. and V's) about 5 years back. The Stewmac 59 L.P. templates really helped out, but for certain, the Korina Explorer Replica is off the charts, and sound incredible! Haha... I've got about 300 vocational videos, where I have done a very deep dive analysis of wood selection and adhesives, engineered chambering and such. The short is, all I need is about $500 in Tonewoods and $200 in hardware and parts to produce a very vocal and responsive guitar even before I install any electronics or pickups. Anyway, I'm in Alabama, now, but was in Nashville for about 12 years, so will try to get in touch with you for pickups and maybe harnesses. I'm only building about 5 to 10 Guitars per year, and most are going to the West Coast or UK. Thanks, Marc Deja Blu Guitars
I don't sell harnesses anymore, the harnesses I do make are matched to whatever sets they go with. I also don't do discounts for builders, its all same prices for everything. I can tell you where to get all the harness supplies and its all 50's wiring which am sure you know about. Alot of my customers are in the UK as well, they are a little better educated on vintage LP things. I have alot of respect for good builders, did you Bartlett's new video on how he makes his LP type guitars? Steve Hague is great too, but I dont think he makes alot of them these days. Those are two real masters in that department. I flunked wood shop in 1965 at school. Wood and me don't get along, LOL.
Thanks for the quick reply, and are you close to Nashville/ever visit? Anyway, I will try to find your website info. and keep in touch, cause I typically just send my clients to Seymour Duncan or Fralin, or build a guitar around their Holy Grail vintage items (tuners, Bigsby, Pickups, etc.). I'm not looking to try and put a mark up on the electronics or custom hardware. I haven't followed any of Bartlett's work and haven't heard of Hague. Will check them out. All of my early 2000's building was based on the Robert Benedetto, hand-carved Big body Jazz guitars, yet, I was primarily building Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins and 6129 Jet inspired Jazz guitars (All things hollow or chambered and always equipped with PAF or early 60's Filtertrons or Dearmonds, and a vintage bigsby)! Anyway, I'm having to play catch up with regards to the 50's Gibson designs- even working thru/out some of the Holy Grail B.S! Haha... Thanks, Marc
The search for tone is an illusion. Most guitars to day are way better than guitars of the 60s as they are made using CNC machines which work consistently accurate and produce a quality product. In the 60s all the big names always had a Friday piece of junk so a good one always stood out. The Beatles had really poor quality guitars when they first started. What they did have was creativity and enthusiasm. Later they got to buy all the good stuff. Today most guitar players go through effects units which colour the sound in any way they fancy. In the 1970s people went nuts over what type of turntable they were using to play records. Then came what type of speakers and what kind of amplifier to use when playing a record at home. Its all to do with selling stuff and its the same with guitars. However a hand made F hole Jazz guitar produced by a Luthier of talent is a vastly different beast from a mass produced lump of wood and wire masquerading as a Male decorative ornament.
Its only an illusion if you buy factory hyped guitars with fancy advertising claims, like the "reissues" that aren't a reissue of anything real. The 50's Gibsons were better than anything made now, but the materials were really garbage and thus the musicality was better than a robot carved Gibson now. But they didn't make bridge and neck PAF's and the amount of wire wound was inconsistent so you could end up with a really hot PAF in the neck and really weak one in the bridge. Easily fixed, just swap them out. Gibson made some really awful guitars in the early 70's, I had several and got rid of them all. So NOW, they are considered "vintage" and you pay high for them and they are still crap :-) I have 7 Japanese Elitists LP's and one SG. Hands down they are better than anything Gibson makes, its so funny that Gibson had the Elitists MADE in Japan. Of course I changed all the hardware, harness and of course the pickups. They were made by Fujigen company thats known for high quality guitars, and their wood treatment method is miracuous. I bought all mine for no more than $600 before players found out about them. Gibson quit making them there because they put their own guitars to shame. I also had a replica built by Santucci in Italy, FABULOUS GUITAR. He did everything right and I requested a baseball neck like originals had. It was around $2500 and remains my best Les Paul, but the Elistists astound me every time I pick one up to play. The Gibson Classic with the PAF X set I never fell in love with it. Its a decent guitar with all the changes but it wasn't until I put the Four Uncles bridge in it and the X set that now I play it alot. All the Elitist are flawless quality way better QC than Gibsons.
What mediocre "Bedroom Players" never want to face is that "NO GEAR" replaces "Skill and Practice!!" Vintage Guitars belong in the hands of "Players" NOT OLD DUFFERS!!
LOL, I'm going to be 75 in a few weeks. But I learned about 20 years ago, that tone doesn't come out a pile of batteries, LOL. I love Peter Green's tones thru JTM45's and Fender Vibroluxes. Your "fingers" have no tone in them, DYNAMICS and PHRASING, is where its at. If you play all night, pounding on your guitar with all knobs all the way up on the guitar, you bore your audience no end. I watched Robben Ford one night at a live show, he played a half hour solo, and after 15 minutes the audience literally turned off and began chatting and drinking, and completely bored with him. He didn't even notice.
Yes agreed! I’m 22yo and been playing guitar for almost 4 years now and I love vintage stuff too but I ask my self “they don’t feel like they should be more than a house or a car.” Yes I like them and their looks but they should never be $50,000+. I sometimes wonder if this even legal… I love them and they’re cool and all but they don’t FEEL expensive is all I’m trying to say. People scalping them just seems so unnecessary. If it’s related to a big artist sure but if it’s just a regular one passed down it shouldn’t be so much. Plus how do some places, big or small, aquire these “expensive” instruments so easily and have stacks of them? I feel like there’s a money laundering thing going on but idk…
There are counterfeit Les Pauls being sold for huge money. When someone sends their old LP to be worked on, techs can steal parts and pickups without the owners noticing it. So they build a fake, fill it with vintage parts and EASY MONEY. There's only supposed to be around 1500 of them out there and mysteriously more and more of them are "found." This is practically Mafia type stuff going on out there. Scary stuff when huge money is involved.
Of course there is. You really think when people drop cash at these dealers that it all gets reported after? You also wonder why some places like Emerald City post absolutely ridiculous prices on most of their gear at least online? One word. Insurance. At the same time it attracts attention to their store so they can cut rich people « deals » on more normal stuff. Also hopefully for them it gets stolen so the insurance company has to pay them the hyper-inflated price.
What I wonder about is these guys go look for old guys like me who have vintage gear and for SURE they don't what the stuff is worth, so are easy targets to rip off. Dealers are not known for ethics, LOL.
I on a very low budget applied tone upgrade methods You have shared. The results are great. Thanks! I will tell others to check out what You have said and done. "lesser" guitars can achieve tone if not the same as High $ guitars close enough for the not rich guitar player.
Yep. I had an LP made in Viet Nam, big chunky neck HUGE sound once I replaced the harness, still have it and use it as a test guitar sometimes. It was $200 and really fun to play. Same thing later with a really cheap Chinese LP, new harness made it sound great. My search ended when I found the Japanese Elitists Gibson had made. BRAZILIAN FRET BOARDS ON ALL 7 OF THEM AND THE ELITIST SG TOO. Long tenon neck joints, Dumped the pickups, upgraded everything to vintage close materials etc. all them are KILLERS! :-)
Good to see another video, Dave. Nice comparison. You nailed the tone. On another note, I got one of your '51 Tele Bridge pickups off Reverb. Also purchased an '86 Japanese Fender Esquire that it's going into. Can't wait to hear what that sounds like. Still waiting for you to sell off a PAF-X set.
Hi Robert. I'm going to be selling more PAF-X sets very soon. Already have a couple orders for them to fulfill, plus still the old orders hanging over me endlessly. The '51 is the Broadcaster if I remember right, those are really good!
IMHO i think he surpassed the 59 set. If you take away the nostalgia and value of the 59 set and then ask me which set i would want in my Guitar i would pick the X set without hesitation!
@@SDPickups Great! Can't wait to get guitar and get PUP in. The Japanese models from that time are really good. If you'll remember, I bought the vintage wire Broadcaster set from you. Now in a 2020 AVRI Broadcaster reissue.
It does make me laugh all the nerdy (and lucrative) searches for the last tiny increment of tone with pedals and amps. Truth is, when you're on stage with drums, bass, keyboards and a crowd drinking, talking, hollering and dancing nobody is appreciating that overpriced ton of gadgets.
All anyone needs is a guitar cord, a great guitar and a great amp. But whats a great amp? All these PC board amps suck. A great guitar? WHERE? From my perspective in documenting everything about these old pickups is if you want a great guitar you have to buy some affordable and rip out everything on and IN them and go from there. On a cheap Les Paul, some Gibsons used stainless steel bridge posts with steel thumbwheels. SIMPLY replacing those with BRASS parts removes harshness and adds noticeable SUSTAIN. My first demo guitar going back to 2003 was a Chinese Epiphone with cheap nasheville bridge. Simply throwing the harness away and using CTS pots and decent PIO tone and volume pots did wonders for the sound. The sound of a vintage Les Paul generally can be GREAT. There ARE reasons for that, and thats what nearly a third of my life, has been to document WHAT AND WHY. These things can be knowable, but it took 20 years and more, dealing with materials corporations and their laboratories and generous time examining in these old materials and giving me histories of how these materials were made back THEN. I totally agree that gadjets are worthless. The beauty of my journey is that what I discovered about those guitars and everything in and on them, made my guitars SOUND AMAZING. When your guitar sounds 100 times better than a stock overpriced Gibson, you get really inspired to just play. I try to play every day and I use the jam tracks on UA-cam that sound like real bands. I also listen alot to actual live recordings and videos of our guitar heroes most of us love. I lusted for those sounds. Eventually I figured it all out and playing my own work is better than drugs :-) I keep getting ideas for things to try with my work and still do experiments, love doing it but TIME is hard to get.......
You’re right they aren’t worth that much, most vintage guitars need a lot of work new tuners/hardware and frets. New Gibson Les pauls are fine, even the custom shop R9s are overrated, they look cool but is it really worth 10grand for Murphy lab? NO. All those old guys got lucky through experimenting and finding out what worked for them. Go play play it doesn’t need to be even a Gibson. Find one that fits you, and fall in love.
You can take ANY LP type guitar, do the changes I show in my FOUR PART DOCUMENTARY HERE: ua-cam.com/video/85IWlkPdO8A/v-deo.htmlsi=O-wMOEsxC5WoW6VJ You will see and hear the progress being made in each video, using a mint '60 VOS that frankly was mediore at best when stock. Not hard to do....
There were only 1700 rare old Les Paul standard bursts made from 1958-1960, however many survive & got preserved by musicians & collectors who appreciated them, as they trickled down to subsequent generations of musicians & collectors who hoarded them through the decades. & At some point there were more musicians with the means to buy old bursts, then there were guitars floating around available for sale in circulation, resulting in hundreds of indecipherable counterfeit clones and refinished gold tops added to the market, due to the bursts astronomically rising values from the demand, which only increased more & more as they past hands to a series of famous players, many of whom broke off their headstocks. We are in an era where Kirk Hammet has Gary Moore’s burst that was once Peter Green’s. Invariably, there must be some valid tonal reason that Slash favors his Chris Derrig built era correct Les Paul high end replicas, and buys absurdly expensive actual 58’-60’s bursts? When he could get any new Gibson prototype devoloped & built that he wanted free of charge from the custom shop. & Yet Slash favors recording with his high end replica’s and real bursts that were built with toxic materials, outlawed animal glues, with lead in the paint & metal parts & hundreds of years old growth mahogany, where his new custom shop signature models, might only get him maybe 95% in the ballpark, that us mere mortals wouldn’t even notice we were missing out on? These are first world ultra rich people’s investment grade issues that will never effect 99.9% of guitarists, there are enough things to worry about, besides complaining about the ludicrous prices of Les Paul Bursts, from a specific era that were always expensive to begin with, after they were developed to their highest standards in 1958-1960. They always held a higher relative value due to their scarcity, resulting from Gibson’s cost saving changes in their model lines that made them obsolete, as Gibson replaced the Les Paul’s with SG’s to compete with Fenders, until the Les Paul returned to production in 1968 & got built to a noticeably inferior standard, that placed higher values on the rare used 1958 to 1960 custom & standard versions of Les Paul’s Korina V’s & Explorers. Value is inherent & the old adage is true with Gibson - in that “They don’t build them like they used to.”…I’m exclusively a Fender guy, & my 1999 Strat plays & sounds better then my uncles vintage 1962 Strat, if Gibson created any mystique, they can’t re-attain what they created back in the day, before they fumbled it away to cut costs…🎸
Mythology! Exactly, The quality of materials & components, the tolerances, cnc machines these Days, modern guitars are much better than the old ones. It’s all hype, original tube screamer, the klon, they all sound the same in a blind test. Well done sir.
I’ll never understand why folks out there think that guitars are screwdrivers. Ofc you don’t need to spend half a million dollars on a les paul to get the sound you want. That’s obvious. People seem to think that people who buy cool rare guitars do it because they need folks like you to tell them that they don’t need to spend money to sound good. My point is really that- a 59 burst is a celebrity in itself, and that no amount of people saying that an epiphone sounds just as good are gonna un-cool a real burst. I’ll never be able to afford one either. But I’m js- guitars aren’t screwdrivers or mousetraps. They’re inspiration, and if you’re passionate about a real burst- nothing else will ever be that cool.
Of course they are a cool antique toy. But you can get 99% of the sound that history without the huge bucks. Honestly......If I win the lotto big time I may buy one, but I won't keep it. I'll do a documentary on how a real one played by ME with my recording and video gear in comparison to what I'm using now. I have offered to PAY someone who owns one to come here in my tiny little office/studio, so I show the REAL differences in sound. No takers, so thats why I used a clip from a '59 instead. there arent any demos like that out there that with the kind of knowledge I have. It needs to be done as a reality test for SURE.
But to any person with common sense and who actually plays these guitars the inspiration will quickly give way to disappointment and possibly anger when they realize they'd spent $50,000 or whatever on a guitar that is worse than an Indonesian Yamaha Revstar, both in sound and playability.
I agree with you . I've been playing mostly jazz guitar since 1968 and have run across alot of LP models as well as ES models. My friends from those days back in the UK had acquired some great LP guitars. But I can't honestly tell that much difference between a recent 2022 Gibson LP Standard and those old ones...PLUS the frets are in much better shape on a new one LOL I think it's down to snobbery, extortion also to some extent. In the hands of a good player a simple Squier Telecaster can sound amazing. Videos on ytube show us its possible. Thank you!
I can tell the difference. Gibson has failed to make PAF replicas forever. But my ears are educated in what to listen for, so many just might not know the difference. Thats not meant to be insulting either. Real PAF's do certain things that stand out, but you really have to play them over many years to be able to identify the character all of them have. The other thing is if you are using pedals, they obliterate the sound of any guitar and all you are hearing is pedal tone. Recently someone posted a kid playing one of Kossoff's vintage Les Pauls, but he used a pedalboard.....the guitar sounded awful, pedals destroyed that guitar. I used to use pedals 20 years ago, but I noticed all the Portland guitar heroes weren't using them at all. During a jam session, I got called up on stage with no time to set up the pedals and pedal power. After that I never used pedals again. I really need to sell them off, they just gather dust and some have gone up in value over the many years, some are from when I was 20 years old, 1970. I play them once a year and put them back in boxes, because they just dont make anything sound better and I don't need a gain boost, I just turn the amp up all the way and control from the guitar.
@@SDPickups I saw Paul play many times and spoke to him on many occasions since I lived in London for 42 yrs. Great humble guy but always loaded...anyhow, you are right about the pedals shielding the true tone of his guitar. He was using alot of phaser sounds towards the end and you really couldn't tell what guitar he was using.
I love the touch sensitivity of your pick ups the way the distortion is absorbed into your pick up pretty amazing beautiful depth plus clarity and Rich sustain
My Pop was a pro guitarist. He played a REAL D’ Angelico. He said Django Reinhardt probably played a guitar that was a lot cheaper than most. Pops always said a solid body guitar is a block of wood with pick ups. The sound is made mostly from the pick ups. Pops was right. The mega rich buy guitars for hundreds of thousands and put them on their wall cause they are for display.
The pickups are a big part, but junk hardware and junk harnesses kill all that. The first thing I ever did along this journey, back in the beginning I read that replacing harnesses in Chinese guitars would do wonders, well it sure DID. But its much more than just that. It all depends on how far you want to go to get a realistic vintage LP sound. Vintage LP's were made back when all metals and magnet wire were junk by our standards. But THAT is what made them sound so musical.
Absolutely. It keeps the prices high, but that's the American way I guess. I have come full circle. I used to believe in tone wood, etc, then after playing for 45 plus years and playing hundreds of guitars and hundreds of pickups I've decided any decent guitar can sound good and I know what I like. I recently built a strat out of a Mexican body and EMGs with a Warmoth maple neck and fretboard with stainless frets and it sounds great. I'm using three SAs in the pick guard and I love it. I love passives too of all types, but I play mostly hard rock and blues hard rock and those work for me❤.. That LP classic is cool. If you like it and it sounds good to you with your pickups, then enjoy it my friend ❤ You don't have to be rich and have original PAFs. There are bad demos. I'm shocked at the amount of people that can't play that well, or play okay, but have bad timing, etc.. Interesting conversation. I will check out more of your videos sir. ❤ I subscribed sir. Very cool stuff. ❤
Funny story.....I lived in Santa Rosa where EMG is. I was a graphic designer for 35 years, good at my work, self employed. Nobody even in our town had ever heard of them. I found them in the phonebook and called to see if I could show my portfolio to them. I did ad campaigns, logos, book cover design, wine label design, a broad range of design work and won many awards. I met with them, showed my portfolio, went home and never heard back. 9 months later I get a call from Rob who asked if I would come over and look at some free advertising ad designs and give them my opinion.I sat down and looked some horrible scribbled ideas that looked like a toddler had thrown up crayons on a piece of paper. Well, you KNOW ME, I didn't even think about what my mouth was about to say and it was "THIS IS ALL HORRIBLE CRAP." I waited for them to throw me out and tell me his wife or son came up with it. He smiled and said they agreed. My ad design and my photography was a simple black and white shot of the typical black plastic EMG pickup with a black guitar pick and the EMG logo on the pick. The title was "Take your pick."They were quarter page black and white ads, and within days of it appearing in the guitar magazines, the phones began ringing off the hook. They quickly became well known after that. Its what my business was all about. So, along the way they installed all the battery powered stuff in my ibanez Strat. I LOVED the tone controls and noiseless sound. BUT......at a band practice our other guitar player wanted to swap his ordinary Strat with my EMG's. OMG, his guitar sounded wonderful, crisp cutting tones, with HUM and so juicy, I was jealous. I went home and tore out all the EMG stuff and put a set of greay bottom CBS pickups in it and WOW. I never told Rob I did that, LOL. The battery stuff is not for me, give me Hendrix with loudly humming pickups and I'm happy.
some old guitars do sound good because the finish is worn and the guitar is nicely worn in and nice to play the woods are old high quality woods by that they were availble at the time do hate to see guitars brought to keep in the case for there inflated value no one wanted 59s in the 60s are they holy grails like you say vintage are great guitars but they can be replicated ,what surprised me was people trying trying a dozen guitars and picking one the holygrail ,but i have found most guitars can sound the same if they are fret dressed and set up better ,one of the worst sounding guitars i tried turned out to be one of the best i have played and sound after i spent time on it ,thanks for a honest video.
They can fairly closely replicated, but the majority of the hardware has not yet been done. I participated in the Four Uncles ABR1 replicas and did the reverse-engineering work to make sure we did it right, and not just make a cosmetic copy that doesn't sound right. Nobody else has replicated the PAF's as I did in my 22 year project to do so. Those bridges are a key ingredient of the old tones, but not the only thing. Gibson has obviously completely failed at reproducing those guitars. All they are doing is making pretty tops and suckering customers with that alone. Its all about money them, they aren't worth the ridiculous prices they are charging. Historic Makeovers corrects some of it, but not the pickups, not the bridges or tailpieces. This video proves you can get those tones with my work and the basic Classic I used. I don't recommend buying a Classic though, the neck joints are really strange, the finishes aren't nitro, the cheap Indian rosewood is too soft. Honestly my Japanese Elitists that GIBSON HAD MADE, DO have Brazilian fret boards, full maple cap, long tenon neck joints, mahogany backs though they are 2 piece. They ring like a bell. At some point I should put the x set in one of these but thats a big project hassle I have no time for right now.
Meh, all I know is YOU CANT TAKE NONE THOSE overpriced precious guitars with tiny necks and high action with you when you GO! Pff. Joe Perry, Slash, Bonamassa, Kieth Richards and that rich plastic surgeon that can’t play a lick will all fall victim to greatest equalizer in the world, DEATH.
You got it! Look at who owns these guitars now. Guys MY AGE and older. We don't have many years left on this planet. Why buy something thats going to belong to someone else in less than 10 years.
Bonamassa said it best when he compared a “Hendrix rig to a new esquire rig and said it’s not the guitar it’s the driver ,driving the sound. True . I love my newer , in good condition reissue gear. And I would never pay double to have the custom shop relic my gear. I clean my guitars with a microfiber cloth before they go back in the case. I hope my grandkids appreciate them when I’m gone.🎉
Bonamassa is no expert. He once said that Centralab pots are THE "magic" ingredient and THE sound of vintage Les Pauls. Sadlly he has no idea what he's talking about. So, I bought 4 Centralab pots, they were higher values than you find with any pots these days. THAT was the ONLY difference I could actually HEAR. I took one out because the bridge didn't need to be brighter, 2 of the others fell apart. I put back a lower DCR pot in bridge and it sounded way better. The ONLY difference I saw in them is they were made of many pieces and the carbon tracks were a little bit thicker. Joe is using a HUGE freaking pedal board now, and about 8 different amps, he's going back to his Eric Johnson days again. I can't stand Eric John and don't want to hear Joe play that way. He seems to have trouble knowing how to play like HIMSELF.
To be clear, my only dog in this was to make replica PAF's that sounded as good as the originals. Only took 22 freaking years. Would never do another project that long and I won't be alive in 20 years from now.
I recently heard a recording that really gets the PAF sound. It was Albert King 'I'll Play the Blues for You'. -Live Midnight Special Aug. 17th 1973. I thought it might be a Dan Erlewine Flying V. But it's a right handed Gibson. . Nice to see you, it's been awhile.
The V guitars benefit from the minimalist harness inside them. The switch is right at the pots instead of far away up near the neck and only 3 pots. I have the Bonamassa Korina wood Amos replica and rewired it exactly as the originals were before the 60's V. Its similar to the SG harnesses, so there are no long wires so the capacitance the pickups see is noticeably less. I always wanted a V going back to the 60's but I dont play mine very much because they are a bitch to play sitting down, LOL.
Can I move there please? Our country just voted for a dictator monster. I LOVE RED HEAD GIRLS , TOO!!!!! Our family DNA is from Wales/Scotland, right up there. We have red haired people in our ancestry too.
theirs more than one way to acquire true golden age vintage feel and tones. if the right woods are combined with some actual vintage hardware you can get pretty dam close without dropping at least 400K$ on an original. i even saw a 50s lp special converted and topped with a maple cap and re necked to 59 specs, this particular example was a unique way to salvage a badly broken and slightly burnt lp special and it turned out great. i have an epiphone hb pickup that to me sounds closer to a paf than any of the paf clones ive tried. i can't explain how or why but it sounds fantastic! it was the middle pickup in a Korean made 90s 3 pickup eppie lp custom that a buddy wanted replaced for some reason. so i threw it in my back up strat as an experiment and wen i plugged it in i was amazed at how rich it sounded with a lil gain. i liked it so much i used it to replace a SD sh6 distortion that was in my dean flying v. ive tested this pickup vs a handful of other stock eppi humbuckers and even a few diff Gibson pups hoping to find good match but they all sounded muddy in comparison. it reads 7.2k and has a bright rich tone that has ben highly sought after even tho it shouldn't. ahhh that paf tone witch if you ask me varies from pickup to pickup in the originals, to the point wear the tone was not super consistent at all. for the first hand full of years things changed rapidly. my dad tells me that back in the 70s you could get a hold of a few pairs of pafs say 5 pairs and mix and match them up better than Gibson did.
You old Korean pickup sounds good because Korean magnet wire makers were doing everything the old ways in that time. I still have the remains of several 10 pound wire spools I bought back then. I tracked down that company a few years ago but they had modernized everything and the wire wasn't worth buying. They also made good alnico magnets. China does all that stuff now and its all very good. My "WAY" is thru science. You will never find any real information on these subjects in any forums or books etc. etc. I got sucked into this because I'm a technical man, a former graphic designer who had to face the change from analog artwork to total digital when Apple came out with the Mac Plus and grew a world wide empire over time. I can tell you that was a MAJOR change that caught many of us artists offguard. My Dad was Signal Corps and I grew up with soldering irons and Ham radios all over the house :-) EMG Pickups and Shrapnel Records were my clients, I helped EMG become known with my ad campaign work, catalogs, NAMM graphics etc. Shrapnel was all cover art design and production. Didn't like their pickups but it was fun. The science-based study of ALL those real parts, harnesses, hardware, every THING, gave me the BLUEPRINT to FOLLOW. 100% replicas are not possible, but I am able to get probably 98% of it.....
I’m a player that was in a band for about 3 years, I went from being a strat purist to a now enjoying my chibson LPs with humbuckers, I have a bunch of budget guitars,but none come as close to the feel of a real les Paul like my chibsons,which are about as close as you can get to the feel of a real Les Paul in your hands,I also have a black angus young SG with lightening bolt inlays,this guitar is almost exactly like a real one, especially the feel of the neck,I would never be able to afford a real one or would I even consider spending that kind of money on a guitar, don’t have any moral issue with owning these knockoffs,the pickups in all 3 chibsons I own sound really good, I really like epiphone classic 57s but they can be inconsistent in sound quality,not sure if Gibson 57s pickups are any different,as far as wire or magnets,new here so I’m going to check out some of your videos, but I’m always interested in hearing home built pickups, hopefully I can find a new source for PAFs.
Good luck with that. None of the other "winders" I know are doing anything right if you want a true PAF sound. You might try Wolfe, or anyone using automated winders, because hand wound "PAF" style will always give you incredibly muddy neck buckers. Wolfe has a real auto winder, but he's not really into vintage replicas from what little I know about him.
I always thought there was a lot of hype involved in vintage anything. Of course they can sound great, but so can new gear. I played a 1960 Les Paul that I thought was dead. And now my beloved 65 Princeton is gonna cost a small fortune to get running again.
Maybe it WAS dead. My next video is going to be about rotted braided wire. That stuff does not age well. The braide wire oxidizes badly enough that it chokes the AC frequencies. A simple replacement of all the braided wire could really make the guitar sound new. But it could be other things. Send it to me and I'll help you out for free, LOL.
Q.E.D. - I truly love the oomph and all the little ripples of frequencies sliding off those PAF-X's. I know almost nothing - I only have 46 years' playing, never owned a Les Paul.
thanks! I play them almost every day, they are direct technical copies of real PAF's and are a bitch to make, LOL.I started playing in 1965, my grandmother bought me a Harmony Bobcat guitar and the album "play guitar with the Ventures." But NO AMP, LOL. I figured out how to hook into my tube stereo at the volume pot and that sorta worked. The problem was it wasn't grounded, and if I played barefoot on the terrazo floor I'd get a nasty SHOCK! My Dad was so pissed that she bought the guitar for me, like he would ever do that, NOT.
Some think I'm too arrogant. But I'll tell you what, If you do something no body else even thought of and prove what you do works really well, if you don't tell anyone about it and what it took to do it, the hypesters and trolls will roll over you, and even if you do tell the truth and the whole truth, the forum children will try to tear you apart. That said I don't run ads on forums or anywhere on the internet, I only try to describe how I figured things out in a 20 year time span while giving nothing away, and present my work and compare it to the real deal PAF's and I leave it to my audience to judge how effective my work is in the real world. Some of the comments here, I can tell they didn't even watch this video, but just came here to prove their ignorance and childish wasting their lives tearing others down while doing nothing in their own lives that would set them apart from mediocrity and make a positive contribution to the world.
I started playing bass as a kid in the late 70s and I remember $350 Strats and $600 LP customs , the guitars are much better now all my old stuff is gone 😅 . Tne guitar world is all marketing in behalf of ths industry. If were not careful guitar world will go down the Violin , Viola , Cello world where nothing is affordable everything is for the rich😮
The old Les Pauls were better then. The woods and metals of those times were real crap, and that's WHY the stuff sounded BETTER. Gibson has completely FORGOTTEN ITS HISTORY. The good builders at Gibson stayed in Kalamazoo, they didn't go to Nasheville. Thats who Heritage is and people who buy their LOVE those guitars. Most people buy guitars because of how pretty they are, not how they sound. At EMG when I did all their advertising ads and art for about 12 years, Rob Turner showed me how to pick a good guitar. Sit down, jam the wood of the guitar against your ear and play. If it sounds rather dead, never buy it. All the hardware, wood and finish are where the heart and soul of the guitar IS. Simple.
Great video. When I can afford it I will be custom ordering a replica burst from Gibson. Now here is the thing. Are there better built guitars out there from other builders? Yes absolutely no question about it. But unless someone builds an exact replica that is impossible to tell the difference visually from a Gibson it is not the same. The look of those Les Paul’s, the shape, the colour, the woods. That is as much of the attraction as the sound is. If I just wanted a guitar that sounded like an old Les Paul well there are options for days. That’s the problem when people say other guitars are just as good or better, yeah they are but they don’t look the same. If I buy a fender telecaster for example it’s because I want a fender telecaster both in appearance and sound. If the body shape and headstock is different than it’s not the same, I may as well buy something unique at the point.
Steve Hague and Tom Bartlett can do what you want. For a lot less money too, but not cheap. Gibson does a good job of making pretty tops, and thats what sells. But Bartlett and Hague can give you vintage woods and Brazilian fretboards when Gibson legally can not and theirs fail to sound authentic. I had a replica made by Santucci with everything authentic I wanted. I hate flamey guitars so we did a plain top and I asked for a baseball neck, which are much more easy to play, and adds more warmth from the extra wood. It was around $2500, and I did all the hardware, harness and pickups which saved me money (in trade for pickups). The Gibson may hold its value better, but look at the CC guitars they made. Guys bought them hoping they would gain in value, when the opposite happened because they made too many of them.
@ value doesn’t bother me. I don’t buy things to sell or as investments. Authenticity matters to me though that includes shape of the body, shape of the headstock, pots, pickups everything. That’s why I plan to custom order it because you can have them made to order from Gibson with the parts that you want to have used. I am still awaiting info on the Brazilian rosewood fretboard. But they haven’t said it can’t be done. They did recently do a limited run of Brazilian rosewood fretboard bursts.
When you get down to it, it's like the Mona Lisa, the art world has decided that is the most valuable painting in the world. 1959 Les Paul's have been decided by the guitar world that is the Mona Lisa of guitars. If you could afford one your bragging rights know no ends. What the guitar sounds like and plays like are almost irrelevant.
LOL, you got that right. The thing, though, is that at my age I dont have years left in my life and I would do a documentary '59 versus what I can do, then I would SELL IT. I would not want the responsibility of having something so valuable that a single scratch on it would be horrifying. I've collected different things in my life, and when I croak, most likely my wife will throw all of it in a dumpster.
Knowledge isn't ice cream. Facts are facts. I don't want to be a social media star and dance for you :-) I'm 75 and I don't like people who talk real fast and say nothing. Use the speed control on youtube if you want speed talk :-) This subject is a thousand miles deep and took 22 years of hard hard hard WORK. I'm a technician and no details escape me and my endless curiosity LOL
another great video dave, totally agree that you dont have to buy a burst to sound like a burst, your videos made me get a true ABR-1 les paul classic, and actually its one of my favorite guitars
Well I changed everything in mine. It was a dog, harsh sounding, had good sustain, but weird neck joint, I never used it much. Our Four Uncles ABR1 replica I did helped alot, but it was still missing something. The X set fit it perfectly. But overall my Gibson Japanese made Elitists beat the Classic hands down. All my guitars I did this work on them, watch all FOUR episodes so you see the guitar stock then watch it shoot flames in episode 4. ua-cam.com/video/85IWlkPdO8A/v-deo.htmlsi=ThPsgCCferoWZIGF
Doubters & naysayers: Dave’s gear has helped considerably with my quest. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it (& compared it to the originals…). Step 1: get hold of it… 😎🤘🎃
Great video, I love your honest appraisal and you pick ups. When some punk says, "get over yourself" well, you know on the internet you should beware when you "cast not your pearls before swine".
YOU GOT IT, LOL! Last year some guy ranted about me not being able to play guitar at ALL. :-) So I went to his channel to see how good a player he said he was. He was playing drop tuning heavy metal, couldn't do a solo to save his life and his sound was pretty ugly, LOL
Yes some of the 59 owners can't play, but they are often a nice people. And we as a listeners appreciate old material master of puppets, and justice for all etc
@ Now that everybody has a keyboard (typing) people feel compelled to chime in with what they think passes for wit. I’m guilty there but I’m trying to show restraint. Lol
The tone people want is the combo of everything. A 59 going into Marshall plexi cranked to the max (which is completely absurd, even back then I just don’t get it) with like a tone bender and an echoplex or something. It’s all those things together that get that sound. You could get good copies of any of that gear, put them together and have the equipment set up right and you’re right there. Without 400k
An echoplex and tone bender don't make your tone better. A cranked Marshall and a guitar cord will get you there, but not with any modern Gibson. The JTM45's that Peter Green and Clapton played in the beginning are only 40 watts, and Greenbacks is all you really need. But he also played Fender Vibroluxes, same 40 watts and sounded terrific. I did a video with my '73 Vibrlouxe, blackfaced and get those same tones. My office is so crapped up with amps, I can't even get it in here anymore, I need to seriously get it back in here to do some videos with, but it shakes the entire house when turned up :-)
@ I think you missed the entire point of my post. I’m agreeing with you. People are chasing tones they don’t even know where they come from. Examples: Zeppelin 1 being telecaster into supro combo, Van Halen biasing amp to the variac voltage, etc. Like you said in the video, you can do all of this cheaper with better build quality with tons of gear made right now. I was just using tone bender and echoplex to make a point, hence the “with like a” as in the added things. Blackmore used that tape recorder as a preamp, Brian May, Rory Gallagher and Toni Iommi all used treble boosters. You can’t count that out as not making the tone better, it’s part of the sound. And Page used an effects unit, he talks about it in a huge documentary and is well established as being one of the first in England to have a fuzz and use it. Like I said I like the video and agree with you. Good PAF copies in any decent copy of any of the old amps and effects is gonna get you there.
@@sweptinblack Sorry, the trolls are all sliming their way here and its hard to tell who are and who aren't. Apologies. I have a DVD of Page at an early concert in a school gym. He used his pedal and his amp started CLIPPING, horrible horrible sound. It must have been right when he got his LP and thought the pedal work the same way as his Telecaster. YEP, most still think Communication Breakdown was a Les Paul. LOL! I was a Rory Gallegher fan back when no one knew of him in the USA. A German kid here in the USA let me play his album. WOW, he was a force of nature. We never saw those treble boosters over here, never saw one. The only booster I ever saw and bought was the LPB1 booster that plugged right into the guitar's jack. It was kind of useless overall. Finally I don't use any effect other than the amp's real spring small reverb in the MANN. No gain channels, straight into the amp, turn it up all the way and control from the guitar, same as all our heroes from then did. Thanks for the support. I'm dumping all the trolls now, they are incredibly dumb, hurting people feeds their little egos, LOL. Intelligent conversations is way out of their league.
I’ve been playing for 30 years (‘young’ gen x!) and if there is one basic concept that is true it is that it is *dramatically* easier to chase tone and gear than it is to practice and learn how to play and improve In fact, thanks to UA-cam and the incessant infomercials that are produced many guitarists entire ‘guitar lives’ are spent lusting after gear and twiddling settings It is quite the contradiction to see some guys put down digital and talk about holy grail tube amp tone when their sound consists of numerous pedals into a tube amp lol
The worst I saw was a kid who got to play Kossosff's LP........THROUGH A PEDAL BOARD. It sounded like someone put the guitar in a garbage can full of water. He thought it sounded great, LOL. There are more bad videos out there of vintage LP than there are good ones. As for digital amps, NONE of the impressed me. They sound good up to a point, but all those micro chips and PC boards leave the high treble sounding harsh and it can't be EQ's out. Like the Katana SS amps, they sound pretty good, but I hear the same things in all of them that I can't stand. The modeling amps are the worst too. That stuff is fine for children and beginners, but over time your ears get educated and then you get rid of that stuff sooner than later, and it all ends up on the Goodwill website for really cheap.
I think your right. I've suspected the whole vintage market is just a con tbh. There's that many guitars in existence now that if the old ones didn't increase in value the new models wouldn't sell at all. And they too would not be as expensive. Vintage keys and organs are genuinely different and definitely better than sampled sounds of modern keyboards. Only if their serviced and functional of course. Guitar brands have tried to seek into that class of instrument and its BS
Maybe im wrong but i think the reason that Late 50's les pauls are so expensive is because theres only about 1,700 in existence, and thanks to guys like Jimmy Page, interest in the Gibson Les Paul exploded in the 70s . Same with Dumble amps, there were only about 300 or so made and were played by guys like Robben Ford, so you're going to have a lot of hype about the gear that talented guitarists use.
Its funny that my comparison to the 1959 with the guy playing the Dumble, my CHEAP $450 Garnet MANN sounds as good as the Dumb to me. But my amp has no gain controls, you just turn it up and PLAY, controlling it from the guitar.
Like they say in the "Storage Wars" show...the person with the most money in their pocket can own it. Yes, it means lots of really fine instruments get side lined and put in collections and hardly (if ever) played by great guitarists.... this is why I cheer for Joe Bonamassa... he collects and plays his vintage guitars... should prices come down...absolutely.... the market is artificially inflated by EGO and "good ole boys" club mentality. And the supply and demand is false. I prefer my brand new PRS guitars for around a grand to ANY Gibson or Fender. I would put my Blueridge acoustic above a Martin or Guild in tone and playability... hands down. I have been playing since 1970, and I have owned them all...
I've been playing since 1965. Yeah I like Joe, but he has a few weird ideas. Remember, owning a vintage guitar does not make you a vintage guitar expert. He once said that Centralab pots were THE SOUND OF VINTAGE LP'S. What a crock. I bought a set of them and the ONLY thing different was they were mostly high values like 560K and up. They don't sound any different than a modern 560K pot. Not only that, 3 of them fell apart!
All you have to do is watch Keith Richards play one through a Tweed and you'll hear what they should sound like when in the hands of someone who knows what they should sound like( even though he's rich, he did earn it).
When I was 16 my Mom bought me a 58 or 59 Les Paul. I don't know which it was. I just know that the neck was huge and a bit hard to play with the strings available at that time(late 50's early 60's). My friends all had Strats, which were great, and I really didn't like the Les Paul. I sold it for a few hundred plus a new Pbass. The Les Pauls weren't worth much at the time and I was surprised when Gibson started making them again in 68. I was playing a 60's SG at the time which I thought was far better than the Les Paul I'd had. I wasn't looking at the guitar as an investment just as a tool to get a job done. In hindsight I should have kept but at the time it sucked. I had a player in my studio recently with a real 59. He let me play it and it was ok. It didn't record particularly well and just sounded like a good Les Paul. I damn sure wouldn't have paid 250,000 or whatever for it.
Man I love the fat necks and had one on my replica done. Its the same kind of story with me, I bought a 50's Strat, big fat neck in 68 for $200, was hard to play and the Black Diamond strings made it just really hard to play, and it got me kicked out of the kiddie band I was in, because I couldn't bend the strings. THESE DAYS, it too would be called a "Holy Grail" guitar; who knows, maybe even SRV ended up with it, for all I know. This whole BS greed thing is just out of hand, and the Gibsons just never figured anything out other than paint them pretty and they'll sell. There WAS one old LP back then I played that destroyed my HEART. It was a 50's LP Special with 2 P90's. My amp at the time was one of the very last Blackface Deluxe Reverbs. I HATED THAT AMP. It was biased really cold, and was super shrill. So at a band practice this guy drops by and let me play it. It pushed that little amp into monster overdrive tones. I begged the guy to sell it to me, I offered him the motorcycle I drove in on and he refused. They had to PRY it out of my hands, I wanted it so bad. Pretty funny. I had several LP thru the years, they all sucked really bad, and YES I also bought that LP Deluxe, it was garbage quality, plywood, awful minibuckers real tinny. I ordered some buckers for it from Gibson put them in and it sounded even worse. Got rid of it real fast thinking I'd be stuck with it.
@@SDPickupsthat’s odd. I’ve played several LP Deluxe, and they sound great, and is definitely not « plywood » I ended up trading a es-335 for one Yes it’s a pancake body but still solid pieces. My older friend regrets having sold his back in the 90s
@@SDPickups I did say mine was an original. I’ve tried and seen many and they are all pancake bodies. Solid but multi pieces. Nothing wrong with them, even though different than the 50s sound.
All those "vintage" classic rock sounds from the 60s were made on near enough brand new guitars, or 2nd hand Les Pauls which would have been less than 10 years old at the time. Same with the amps. Is anyone buying up 60 year old strings?
That is true, but ANY guitar or pickups made in the 50's to early 60's are going to sound better than anything modern. But Gibson didn't make bridge and neck PAF's, they just wound them and thew them into boxes. So you end up with a LP that has a really harsh weak PAF in bridge and an overwound powerful PAF in the neck. That guitar is never going to get much love unless the PAF's are switched. It doesnt mean its a bad guitar; why no one ever even mentions that FACT is because the level of intelligence out there is uhhhhh......Those crappy materials are what gave us the "musicality" of crude magnet wire thats full of impurities in the copper, the open hearth Bessemer steel mills that used de-ox minerals that ended up IN the steel. Its the exact same thing with new amps from those days. All carbon comp resistors, mustard caps, Sprague Bee caps. And don't forget the TUBES. Vintage tubes beat the heck out of any being made now and get high prices for NOS. All my amps use vintage power tubes, they last forever and make my amps do things no modern amps can do. Transformers sounded better because of the same reasons. Actually yes, if search around and if you can even find any, vintage guitar strings also had the same crude ingredients and methods of manufacturing. Vinttage transformers bring high dollars as well. I really wish I could do a huge data/document dump to show everyone what I discovered, during 20+ years of actual reverse-engineering which clearly show in laboratory data how different everything in materials back then is vastly different now. But its all the blueprints of how I make my replicas. And even then I can't get about 98% of the same thing, using processes and tricks I developed thru the years of constant nonstop prototypes and experiments. A small example---the slugs themselves, nobody sells actual reproductions of those anywhere. They are heavily beveled and the wrong lengths. Any time I had an idea or theory, I wouldn't go look on some "fauxRum" I would test my ideas by actually MAKING things to test. One idea that led nowhere was to wonder what would happen if I made slugs that were hour glass shape. This would drastically remove the MASS and weight of them, and you wouldn't be able to see that once installed in the bobbins. It did drop alot of the mass, but the results of playing the replica PAF with these slugs, pretty much nothing useful happened. You read so many boozy theories and bad information on forums, there's really no technical information there at all. I love to experiment and love making things myself and even the goofy ideas bring more real life knowledge to add to the bible of my writings I've done thats nearly 200 pages, and will probably never been seen unless I can figure out how to make sure it gets read by everyone after I pass away, in the not too distant future.
I believe out of all the 59 Les Pauls , a whole lot of them are not . Because ... What ? There is an endless supply of them ? And if you can afford one , you can have one ? OK ... Can I order one on line ?
I have offered to PAY someone to bringe a vintage LP HERE, so I can do just a similar video. No takers. Those dealers sure don't want a video showing that what I do can compete with a vintage LP and do it without spending a trillion dollars. It would be pretty embarrassing :-)
If some wants to bring a vintage LP to my house and sit here while I demo my work against an original, I WILL DO JUST THAT. I'll PAY them to come here. No takers so far.
It's like buying a $50,000 watch or an antique car. It isn't about unobtainable performance. It's about the historic significance and collectability. A $100 quartz Casio watch will arguably provide more accurate time than a $50,000 Patek Phillipe watch. A 2024 Toyota Camry will absolutely SMOKE a 1957 Porsche. Of COURSE you don't need to spend that kind of money if all you want is a tool for making music. It's not about that.
I agree with you with most everything. The fact of the matter is whether it’s a guitar or a painting or a house or a piece of property or a Lamborghini, only wealthy people with money can afford those, that is just life from the beginning of history. That is one of the reasons we buy reissues and replicas. You can put the same set of Pickups in two different guitars, and they’re going to sound differently. There’s also, what tone are you looking for?, an A2, A3, A4, A5, magnet, etc. I would put my collectors choice Mick Ralphs with my PAF’s in it up against any original burst, and or my replica build with my pickups in it. And yes, you have to have some great amplification to go with it. So yes, all of these original vintage tones can be copied and replicated. If I owned an original Burst would I brag about it and talk it up as the greatest guitar that can’t be duplicated?, probably. People who buy and or invest in these pieces want them to retain their value so there’s always that and the mystique built around it that keeps the value up.
There is no standard for magnet recipes. Thru the years I've bought from many different magnet companies, and each grade sounds different depending on who MADE it. All alnico magnets back in the early 2000's came from KOREA, and virtually all pickup parts from there too. China ended their monopoly and sold alnico mags practically at COST, so the Korean companies went out of business. Too bad because they made really good magnets, but Chinese make great magnets too. I have dark sounding A5 for instance, same with all grades and where they were made. There's a limit to how close PAF's can be copied. There's that 1-2% high treble that modern ingredients can't match. Some guys think all you do is hire a metallurgy lab, hand them a vintage part thats all you have to do. NOPE. One has to be extremely analytical and know the right questions to ask the materials manufacturers. You get the lab results and the computer spits out a generic "similar" data. Does NOT work. You also have to analyze the modern equivalent then compare the two results. The only thing you can buy thats close enough to vintage are the baseplates. NONE of the other parts are correct. Thats when I ponied up the money to get a mill and a metal lathe to make my own parts in the closest alloys, carefully tested and chosen. Things STICK OUT. Here's a good solid comparison video I did, using a real PAF from '57-8. Its coils were destroyed and only a machine guided rewind could get it working again. The set was here for months waiting for me to find time to make it functional again. So I decided to see if I could hear differences between modern sand cast alnico bars and the original magnets in them. I bought back sand cast alnico bucker bars around 2006 or so. I asked two magnet companies to see if they could make them, going on a theory that sand cast might be less dense and might have a more airier sound. Well that theory was wrong, but now all the Chinese companies copied what I had done, LOL. Also compared the alloy pole screws I had MADE in 3 of the known alloys I found with my metallurgist mentor. There were actually FOUR alloys used, going back to the 1940's P90's, but they were nearly pure IRON and fastener companies can't get that kind of stock. Nobody makes PAF replica pole screws that are correct, the ones most of them buy are so skinny they often fall out of the pickups. I had mine done the same diameter and big heads copied from the originals. Also the original screws were threaded by PRESSURE dies. They were not CUT like now. So take a listen through studio headphones or good monitors and see what you can hear. Most won't hear the differences, but there's that tiny 2% or less high treble thats not identical to the original magnets and alloy pole screws. Its something that can't be duplicated, but the diffs are so small few notice it. The other thing is that just using data from a simple chem test does not work at all. My first prototype using that data was alot closer than the many different magnetic alloys I tried on my own, but the real sound wasn't there, and I had a real PAF I still own as a reality check to whether I was getting closer or not. Years later I was able to duplicate as much as humanly possible... ua-cam.com/video/afhcMaA5j-o/v-deo.htmlsi=mLG6_UUYVEp7IE6P
To be fair, I think there is also an association bias. You have Clapton, Taylor in the Bluesbreakers, Page, Green, Bloomfield, Gibbons, Walsh et al. all cutting the early recordings that kicked off the whole Blues/Rock guitar craze. Those cats using bursts and the amazing tones are still driving the fetishisation of now vintage gear. That and Blues Dentists ;)
No kidding, LOL. I made alot of original pickup designs years ago, really good sounding pickups using things I learned from many different and weird vintage pickups. They all sound real good, but I learned real FAST that guitar players won't use any pickups that Page or others played. Talk about a CONSERVATIVE group of people. Did you know Gibson made a PAF Minibucker, with a real PAF decal and using all the same materials used in real PAF's. NOPE. They are fantastic pickups, but no one even knows that. If I do a sound demonstration and I tell people one of them is a real PAF, RIGHT AWAY their mind will gravitate to that pickup and hear it differently thinking its a super expensive valuable object. Thats why the X set I did a BLIND audio poll, and most thought the X's were the real ones. I KNEW that if I wrote which ones were which, they would gravitate to the NAMED PAF as being the real ones. 60% of the viewers swore the X set was the real PAF's. In THIS video I named them so you know which are which and already I can tell who's going by whats written instead of what they actually HEAR :-)
@@SDPickups Thanks for the reply and for sharing your expertise. There's a lot of variables in getting "that sound" too. Those tones we all love were actually picked up by certain mics in certain places and routed through great old analogue desks and studio compressors, reverb etc. Great to hear you help players cut through some of that old BS. Cheers.
Thank YOU! I am from a military family, the ARMY. Dad was a combat photographer in WWII. We moved almost 22 times in all the years with Dad. I hate moving, but we had no choice. Never had any lifetime friends and no place I call "Home" really. It had its benefits, but much of it was traumatizing.
Why knock the Classic? I own several from the 90s along with custom shop les Paul's from 2000s to present. And I find myself playing my Classics more often. I, of course, rewired them and put pafs in. That paf x sounds as good as any other name brand clone. You sell these?
The problem with the Classics is all the hardware is junk, the neck joint ins't long tenon like the Elitists are, they are pretty resonant but nothing like the Elitist LP's Gibson had made in Japan. I have 7 of them and they make the Classic look like a toy. I put our Four Uncles bridge in it which helped alot, replaced all the other hardware, but it still just didn't do it for me, its not a great guitar. The X set is the only thing that saved me from dumping it. Nowdays Gibson puts junk Nasheville bridges on them that are Chibson quality. Pretty much ANY Gibson LP, no matter. how expensive they are need all the hardware and harness and pickups replaced. My Elitists smoke any Gibsons hands down. I have several customers who bought from ALL the name "winders." They tell me none of them get what I can get. And there's a reason for that. They all buy their parts from AllParts, StewMac, Philadelphia Luthiery etc. etc. But NONE of those parts have any relation to whats in the real PAF's. Many of them HAND wind which guarantees failure to get anywhere close. There is not one single person out there that did all the science-based reverse-engineering I did, and without that they are just shooting blanks into the wind. They were somewhat simple pickups but what made them so musical is all the crap materials of those times, and without the exact knowledge of ALL of that, one is never going to get there. My work went over ALL the parts, the wire, the magnets, all of it, so I have the blueprint of them from every year they were made. I built my own CNC traverse to be able to perfectly match ANY winding pattern including my own hand winding patterns. You have to get every tiny thing right or it doesn't work. ua-cam.com/video/85IWlkPdO8A/v-deo.htmlsi=ZnlierzZuuilxaEQ
"Pro" player has way too much gain dialled into his amp. Defeats the purpose of his demo really. Your clean lead lines however sound beautiful and musical - makes you wanna really try your set-up. Well done!
Someone said its a Dumble. I have no idea if it has a gain channel or what. It was just the closest to my Garnets, which have no gain channels. I just turn it up all the way and thats the only gain I get. The secret of great tube amps is that the circuits are very simple. Garnet was the KING of simple circuitry. Inside my Garnets there's very sparse components, it looks like there's hardly anything there. I have a '65 Traynor too, and its the same simplicity. Garnet made amps for many other companies, thats why those are called various company names. Mine were made for the MANN company, there are many others under different names but all made by Garnet. The ones that use 6L6 power tubes like mine are the ones to try to find. Mostly you have to search Canadian websites as they are not too common in the USA, and one reason they are still very affordable. I have two and both were priced around $450+shipping.
Thanks!, I get to play them every day, LOL. I listen to them a lot to see how they age over time. There was one set, the HD Lite that didn't age well and got too bright, so those got eliminated over time. Then some models depended on a single roll of magnet wire thats no longer made, by AWC, so those are off the list too. These are all my PASSION in life!
Your pickups sound great! Am I allowed to say that nice pickups in a nicely-set-up solid body guitar is the 90% that really matters? It's so simple, people overcomplicate the last 10% instead of just getting the 90% figured out. The body and neck don't know what country or year they were made in. They are like a nice "stage" for the pickups and the strings. That's it. Just give the pickups and strings a decent platform to sing on and it's gonna sound good
Not really. Pretty much ALL guitars come with crap harnesses. Must replace with correct Gavitt braide wire on all 3 switch leads. Replace cheap pots with CTS, replace tone caps with Jupiter Condenser Bee replicas, aluminum foil or tin foil. Tin has more "sag." I refused to have my PAF replicas included in amateur "shootouts", because their guitars have crap harnesses in them that are tone killers in themselves.
Folks just do whatever you want to do. The high prices on all of that old vintage gear is just business. If it makes sense to some people, then that's their business. If you're not into that kind of thing then just ignore it. Make your own decisions. If you have the money and you buy one and you can double your money in 5 years then why not? That's my point. To each his own. I'm not a big fan of these crazy high prices but at the same time I kind of understand why they have become collector items. They are the original guitars and there's a limited number out there. The crazy high prices reminds me of real estate. My parents bought a beautiful house in Montreal in the 1950s for $27,000. I live in a condominium in Vancouver that now is valued at $900,000. None of this makes any sense. It's just the way the world is. Don't let it get to you too much. Don't let it get in the way of your creativity. Don't get bitter about all the stuff. Focus your time and energy on creation. Music. The love of the craft.
I think you're missing the point of this video. Dealers will always tell you their old guitar can't ever be matched in tones. I proved that wrong in this video and many others and more to come. They are selling lies. The same lies that Gibson reissues or Murphys with BB gun holes in the top can, either. Its all literally propaganda to protect their absurd pricing in both vintage and "reissue" guitars. The older Classic I used in this video is nothing like any vintage Les Paul, but through hard gained knowledge I'm able to get just as close and this video proves it. Of course all advertising is all lies, on TV, forums, and Gibson especially. I'm seeing comments on this video that clearly shows they did not even WATCH or listen to what I presented. But then there's the guys who listen on cheap Androids where the audio is complete garbage. I've had several professional audio engineers listen and actually watch the entire videos instead of the trolls living at home in their Mom's basements in middle school :-) I come from an advertising background as a graphic designer, where our job was to make crap look like exotic high priced products. I tell you I got so sick of doing that for 35 years, I fired my Shrapnel Records account, walked away from EMG pickups company. I did this video to expose the BS lie that ONLY a near million dollar guitar can deliver. This really hit a nerve as you can see among the comments and the astonishing 19,000 VIEWS and still climbing. Definitely attracted the little troll boys in their basements. I get annoyed by lies and hyped manipulated videos and the blatant GREED, that has turned old guitars into a religion that we dare not ever question, their off the charts misdirection to make you think owning an old guitar is going to make you famous or play better. All the worst stuff of Capitalism. Part of my job is to debunk the lies and tell anyone with ANY kind of LP type guitar how to make them sound like a million dollar guitar depending on how deep you want to go. We are facing a president who crashed the economy in his first term, left us huge debt, he will do it again, and those guitars in bank vaults may soon be worth alot less that anyone can afford.The vintage guitar market CRASHED not all that long ago. Those guitars are eventually going to stop working. I see so many vintage PAF's that just died from AGE and environment, and players sweating acid sweat killing the coils forever. So, I GET what you are saying, but greed is greed and lies are lies, and by the reaction of this video, MANY agree with me. I've been sent many Gibsons to do installs, and not one of them were any better than some Chibsons, BUT if you do the things I showed in the Four Episode videos "The Les Paul That Isn't" can make a $300 guitar sound so so much BETTER and more vintage than any guitar company will ever be able to do without following the real materials and designed parts to the last tiny ingredient. Authenticity is not cheap, but you pay a ton of money to Gibson only to get something mediocre at best. Yeah, I'm alone in the forest railing against the MACHINE. Appreantly I'm not alone in this at all....Thanks for your comment.
I’ve played many les Paul guitars I’ve never played a 1959 but a bunch of great ones and I have $180 Ibanez I bought 15 years ago it sounds just as good and plays better than every single one of them
I have been playing for 30 years, my grandfather who raised me had been playing guitar 50 years before I started playing and so therefore I have played all of those vintage guitars because he owned them. Nothing to write home about. at this point in my life I have probably played thousands of guitars and nothing about those vintage guitars makes me want to go back to them, especially not at that price range. I have $200 guitars that I have upgraded the electronics and hardware on to play awesome I have $2000 guitars that play awesome there is nothing about a 1959 Gibson that is worth $250,000 or even $25,000. in my head, I have a cap on the price that I am willing to spend on any guitar and that is around $3500 the end. And it better be a really nice guitar even in that price range. it doesn't matter if I were the richest doctor in the country, no way on God's green earth would I spend that type of money on a guitar. those dudes are smoking crack. I have seen guys play cheap Epiphone and Squires through an equally as cheap fender blues Junior and make that shit sound amazing. in my humble opinion, if you think you need an instrument that expensive to sound good then you need to learn how to play better. now if I were some type of antique collector and was not interested in music at all I may invest in some of those guitars but that's about it. and then there is the fact that Gibson especially was going through a lot of trial and error in those years and most of those guitars weren't even right anyways. the design of the instrument was great the execution of it sometimes not so much lol.
There are some older LP's like the Greco's and others that can be fantastic and even have some of the older hardware that can be better then modern junk Gibson stuff. Even not that long ago SAMIC is what the old Korean Les Pauls were. Korean Les Pauls had long tenon neck joints too. They can be a real bargain and really good guitars for very little money. I have a 335 Epi made in Korea and its as good as any modern Gibsons are. Of course they really benefit from hardware and harness work to match the 50's stuff. Gibson sure went off track when Henry ran it into the ground with those horrible robot tuners :-) Gibson has become a victim of its own corporate greed. They know that some people won't buy a guitar unless it has a Gibson logo on the headstock, but there are so much better LP versions out there from Japan like Edwards and others, not to forget the ORIGINAL builders at Heritage, who don't make ridiculous "reissue" claims and skyrocket pricing. The vintage Les Paul DOES need to be kept alive like the replica builders do, who build them the way they WERE built, but then you get the best of the best Les Pauls that Gibson can't compete with. I'm glad Gibson is still alive, just wish they'd get off the corporate hype machine and making "investment" guitars that actually don't hold their value, and aren't professional axes that you'd gig with for fear of getting a SCRATCH on it. :-)
@@SDPickups yes, unfortunately with Gibson it's either junk or a $10,000+ investment. I primarily play Ibanez RG models these days because I really like the neck and it seems like any guitar you purchased from them is playable and you may have to upgrade the electronics or maybe the tuning machines but outside of that it's a pretty good guitar. You can pick up a Japanese made used version from the early 90s $600/$900 with great hardware and DiMarzios all day but if I want a Gibson it's another story. You either have to go on Reverb or Guitar Center and purchase a used Gibson marked way the hell up beyond ridiculous because it has the Gibson logo on it or purchase a vintage instrument or a custom shop instrument that is going to cost you an arm and a leg. some of them are very nice, but when you can literally go out there and find other instruments that are just as nice for literally in some cases 1/10 of the price it's kind of hard to fork over that money for Gibson. got a question for you, since you manufacture pick ups you may have a little bit more insight on this then me and I would like some advice. Who makes good pots with a full usable sweep? or how do I figure out what resistance I need? I realize the common theory is 500K for humbuckers and 250K for single coils, but then I see other manufacturers like Gibson using odd numbers that do not correspond with that and I remember the old vintage LPs had a full usable volume control and tone control that did not drop off and every guitar I pick up these days seems to do that. Why? I realize the old 1950s pots were MIL grade and such but I also read that the values were different from your standard 500K but what is really going on there? I can sort of see how the tone pot value could affect its usable range being that vintage humbuckers definitely sound more mid range heavy then modern windings and designs, but I want a usable volume control as I like to do volume swells and simply turn down my volume to clean up instead of switching channels or using some type of overdrive. The only Guitars that I have found that do not seem to have this problem are guitars with active electronics.
@@SDPickups I want to pick your brain, you have reverse engineered a good portion of the old Gibson guitars and there is something that I would like to know. how in the heck do I get my volume pot to have a full usable sweep? all of the old vintage guitars that I played had a usable volume pot. Most of them these days do not. Why? I have went hunting down the answer on groups and forums and I have been told many things such as it's the value of the pot, 1950s pots were mil grade etc. even though I am not a Gibson player mostly I would like to get a usable volume in my other guitars with more modern pups, even though I play higher gain stuff I still like to roll my volume back to clean up my signal and I like volume swells. also, it seems that active electronics suffer from this problem much less than passive electronics and I was also curious about that. I realize how the circuit works for the most part but definitely have some voids that need to be filled in. would like to know if there's anything I can do to mitigate this problem by either changing values or purchasing better pots etc or is there something else I'm missing?
@@9th_note I hope you get this reply, I am seeing comments that don't appear under my video and don't know where they are coming from, like this one of yours. What Gibson does is use LINEAR pots. They are NOT AUDIO pots. Audio pots have a small treble drop off when you turn the volume pot back a little bit.Doesn't bother me and is actually more useful. Go buy some CTS Linear pots and try them in the volume pots position. But the Centralabs were NOT linear pots. So I stick with what was used. Audio pots are more "musical" sounding. I use the audio pots from CTS that StewMac sells, I like their taper and they are easy to modify to. higher readings by shaving the carbon tracks, which is a pain in the azz to do, but works well....Hope you get this....
@@SDPickups thank you for the information I will try those for sure. Regarding the comment not appearing under the video, this comment was a reply to another comment that I made so I'm thinking the problem may be that it's appearing in a different place for some reason. I'm not sure I'm not a UA-cam genius or anything because I'm old and this is a little confusing for me as well lol. by some chance do you sell modified pots? You mentioned shaving them, would you be willing to do that for someone else? I have a guitar that just needs a single volume pot it has no tone control, I am currently in the process of putting it together from parts and it's mostly done but the electronics are the last thing that need to be completed. I want to put some type of a boutique gum such as yours or something similar in the bridge position. This guitar is going to get used for 1980s hair metal and blues so I do not want a super high output pup, something in the medium range. it will just have a single pup a single volume and a Killswitch. and lastly, do you make a pup that fits this criteria? Like what would you recommend for that? Also if it's easier for me to contact you in a different place that is a little bit easier for you to use or for us to communicate let me know I can do that instead.
Well said. A good old myth… and the current one is about needing a Murphy Lab Paul… not a common or garden custom shop anymore… and poor you if you play a standard or… oh no… an Epiphone. Haha. I think your tones were similar enough. Let’s remember, in a mix, they will sound even closer… and if playing live, most people listening won’t even care. I have a standard from 2000 and it sounds pretty nice thank you very much. And I’m lucky to have that. I try to leave the cork sniffing to Joe B.
There's one simple thing. you can do. Take a magnet and see if it sticks to the thumbwheels and bridge posts. For some time they used steel wheels and stainless steel ABR1 posts. This kills sustain and sounds harsh. To this in reality and demo video recording watch all FOUR videos in this series. The Gibson bridges are just awful, these days they are putting cheap Nasheville bridges in everything unles you're buying one of their 75,000 dollar Les Paul, ha ha. Great way to get cheap chinese tones. I spent two years with the Four Uncles guys, reverse engineering my vintage bridges to copy all the REAL materials and design enough that now guys with "Burst" are buying them to replace worn out old bridges with toasted saddles. ua-cam.com/video/85IWlkPdO8A/v-deo.htmlsi=xYq1nJMc16wbg10m
I think it is impossible for any person to be objective on a divisive topic such as this, as we all have our own inherent biases and agendas that shape our opinions. What I can say from my experience is that a great guitar is a great guitar, period, regardless of when it was made. I can also say that in my experience the chances of picking up a guitar and having it be great seem to be higher with vintage guitars. I can also say that I own a recent R9, and a ‘64 335 with its original PAT pickups. I haven’t tried SD pickups, but the R9 has a set of JM Rolph’s, another high quality builder and I can say that both guitars sound excellent and neither is clearly better than the other. The one thing I can say from the comparison is that the PAFs sound more microphonic and wanting to run away into feedback. Depending on your style this may be a good or bad thing. Thanks for the interning and informative video.
the FACTS that the vintage LP's use all vintage metals, vintage magnet wire etc. etc. are much more musical than any modern equivalent. This is not opinion, its science and you can hear it. You might want to watch this four part series, watch all FOUR or you wont get it. You will see a Gibson '60 VOS be transformed by changing to closest vintage materials, turn from a boring guitar with no character into a screaming weapon! Then the opinions about dealers is not really an opinion, the facts are that they will do anything to sell a guitar, so they use amps no one can afford and hire professional session guys to do the playing. If you read through all the comments you will see many guys who owned the vintage LP's before they became religious artifacts and rich man toys, alot of them HATED those guitars. Working in the advertising field for 35 years as a professional graphic designer (clients like EMG Pickups, and Shrapnel Records), hype gives me a sour taste in my mouth, its so over done. You can find demos of guys who can't really play well with these guitars and they don't sound so wonderful like a professional dealer demo. You could end up buying one thats never going to sound like a pro studio player did. ua-cam.com/video/85IWlkPdO8A/v-deo.htmlsi=ZnlierzZuuilxaEQ
Good video, thanks Dave. The real PAFs sound to me like they have a slightly lower peak mid freq, and tapered high end when compared to your pups. They are close otherwise in every other way.
Thanks, but........You're not taking into account that the X set is NOT a CLONE of the 1959 PAF set. It was never supposed to be an attempt to copy any SPECIFIC set. It was made to hear some wire I acquired using my favorite recipe for my HD59 set and the vintage Belden sets. High wind bridge and low wind in the neck for piercing clarity. Both '59 PAF's in the video are only 7.6K, the X PAF is 8.8K, so they're not a match and not meant to be a match. Thats why the real '59's have more treble because there's much less wire on them. Between the '59's and the X set I like the X set better personally, and in the blind poll 60% preferred the X bridge over the real PAF's for the same reason mine have a bit more warmth. 60% also swore the X bridge was the real PAF :-) NOW, at one time I DID make a head to head attempt to CLONE a SPECIFIC SET OF DOUBLE WHITE 1959 PAF.S So watch this link below here. I dont use that rig anymore because it was just too edgy.....Now with THIS video, its a completely different amplifier and speaker and microphones. The speaker was a Celestion Alnico 12 inch speaker, that is blisteringly bright. I got rid of it eventually and now use Greenbacks. The amp was my 1973 Silverface/blackfaced Vibroluxe, which is a pretty bright amp itself. I really should have used its own speakers, but this was years ago. The microphones were one condenser mic and one SM57 on the cab, no room mics. The Clone set is the same amount of winds as the the PAF's, both neck and bridge. I didn't have our Four Uncles bridges back then so bridge is a Faber bridge which is similar on the hight notes but too bassy compared to originals. So, THIS experiment was a controlled experiment to see how close can my methods and knowledge can get to the most valuable pickup set you can buy in the world. These sold for $12,000 after I repaired one small coil break at the surface of the coil. Even though the audio is too bright for me it greatly lets you hear the tiniest details of both sets. My current rig I am really loving it now with the vintage Garnet and Greenbacks and the JTM45. I hope you understand that if you want to darken a pickup you wind it with MORE wire. Coils self-choke themselves the more wire you use, hitting the entire frequency spectrum in different ways depending on what wire you're using. Let me know if you don't understand this stuff. ua-cam.com/video/r17XQ3Vj02Q/v-deo.htmlsi=tZkwbKbN5JxBY-qP
In the double white clone Black Beauty set, listening now, I can hear a definite difference in the modern wire Black Beauty set. Especially in the neck bucker. I have wire closer to that, but have used most of it up and some AWC seems to be falling apart, the insulation is flaking off. The vintage wire was lowerer annealing and thicker than now. Thicker insulation opens up the sound a LOT. We dont have much choices in magnet wire now. They banned benzene around 2004 or so and we lost all the good wire makers because of that, like Essex and others, they just quit making it. Worst day ever.....
Totally agree with your angle here. "Tone" might be one of the most nebulous concepts out there. A pickup is a primative electrical device that is EASILY replicated. There is no magic, there is no mojo. There's only good vs rubbish playing and know-how of the instruments and gear. all the rest is human effort/emotion/craft. That's where tone comes from. Even a Stradivarious sounds like a joke in the hands of a bad player.
You've gone completely off track here. "Easily replicated?" A vintage PAF IS A TECHNICAL DEVICE. A microphone is a technical device. Many vintage microphones sell for thousands of dollars. Why? Because they "hear" in ways that modern microphones can't duplicate. Like PAF's they were made of materials that don't exist anymore. A guitar amplifier is a technical device. A 1959 Bassman will cost you thousands of dollars. Why? Because ALL the components, even the metal chassis, is made of materials that don't exist anymore. You can try to copy one, but you'll never duplicate. There is a book written by an engineer on the '59 Bassman, who analyzed ALL the components, including the metal chassis, the speakers, every tiny techincal detail. His conclusion was that they cannot be duplicated because none of that stuff exists in OUR times. Doesn't matter if a crappy player can make it sound "bad" or not. He also explained that every component in the amp affected every other component, you cannot isolate one single thing that made those amps sound so great. Its the same thing with vintage PAF's. NONE of those ingredients exist in OUR TIME. You can't isolate out any single thing thats responsible for the "voice" of those pickups. I looked at it ALL, with the help of materials experts who manufacture those materials in our time. Nothing is identical. I'm the ONLY person who spent near a quarter of my life, using materials SCIENCE to identify every little tiny thing in their makeup to IDENTIFY the REALITY of what they are. This isn't some junk I read on some forum, I have stacks of documents from their laboratories of the many kinds of tests that were done. To protect my work I don't disclose hardly any of that information because it took an insane amount of time to understand WHY those materials react the way they do as an entire unit. Data numbers don't tell you how it SOUNDS. That part involved a zillion prototypes played for months to hear it, and to gauge how they sound over TIME, the reason being that a brand new pickup goes through a settling process that can take months for all the parts to settle into a cohesive whole. With modern materials this takes about 4 months, if I use vintage magnet wire it takes around 6 months. There's a similar thing going on when you replace a capacitor in your harness, you won't hear how it really sounds until you play the guitar for several days. You can't just judge how a tone cap really sounds immediately, because it WILL change. I spend my days listening and listening and listening, your average guitar player probably won't notice it, especially if they are pedal babies :-) My ears are highly educated from more than two decades of mastering my craft. "Tone" CAN be quantified, because I did it. You need to get yourself a network frequency analysis digital device to use with a computer and look at the frequency chart. You use a frequency generator to see how guitar frequencies work in the real world. You need to own an LCR meter to look at inductance and capacitance readings. After awhile you don't need that stuff anymore because you know how it all SOUNDS. The gear for me was as a teacher of what happens when you do this or that in a guitar pickup. The only use my LCR meter gets anymore is to measure capacitors. People always want to think this stuff is stupid simple, and you can bet most amateurs don't even know what I'm talking about. Winding patterns was another thing I researched myself. You're not ever going to find any engineering books on winding patterns and its effects on audio frequencies. I built a CNC traverse controlled by an old PC. It gave me the ability to precisely wind any pattern I could dream up, that would precisely be identical to every coil I wound. I did just that with probably around 20 patterns over a couple months. So now I know what patterns can do. The vintage PAF winding patterns were stupid by-the-book formula. The earliest PAF's used the same patterns as P90's for a short time then changed to one single pattern the rest of the years. Likely it was a different machine. Those old winding machines used GEARS to change the pattern. They weren't sloppy machines, but precision devices. None of this stuff is simple, amateurs WANT it to be simple, its just an excuse to avoid doing any work to master the craft. Even the Fender ladies who hand wound their single coils were taught a METHOD of hand winding, it wasn't random as most seem to think. I agree with you that amateur guitar players can make anything sound bad, its NOT in the fingers, its HOW you use your fingers. If you just keep your guitar knobs all the way up all the time, you miss an entire world of sound control. End of rant :-)
Thanks everyone for watching. Comments are turned back on. Off topic comments will be removed. The ONLY purpose of this video was to show that you don't need to spend 100's of thousands of dollars to get these tones. You don't even need a Gibson. My demo guitar here is an unremarkable Gibson Classic, thats been heavily updated to the closest vintage replica parts, and I'm NOT talking about parts that only LOOK vintage, but the MATERIALS I learned directly from vintage Gibson parts from real vintage Les Pauls. The Four Uncles ABR! replica that I did all the reverse engineering on the REAL zinc alloy, not the junk the commercial companies use, thats just way way wrong. I don't tell anyone what I found, and you would have to spend a LOT on money in metallurgy labs to find out whats real. I had a Senior alloys engineer work with me for 6 YEARS or so, and gave me a deep education so I understood the material and thru direct experimentation with real vintage parts, figured out HOW those materials affect the sound, not only in hardware, but the 22 years now, of the work I did with PAF's from every single year they were made, as well as ALL the pickups Gibson made in a FOURTY YEAR TIME SPAN. There is NO MAGIC HERE. Its pure physics and there are no engineering books on how material affect MAGNETIC AUDIO COILS that can tell you these things. I sourced the closest modern materials to see how they compare with the very LOW QUALITY materials used that far back. This involved years of experiments and ways to make modern materials sound more like vintage materials. The comparison to the 1959 Les Paul in this video prove my methods are very effective, and no, I don't share any of this information with anyone. Go do your own work and take a coupe decades it takes to even get into that headspace using SCIENCE. I'm 75 now and I covered all of it in this insane OCD long trip, where I knew nothing at the start, and nobody knew anything. Most of them will never figure out or even try, they all copy each other, and use the same wrong materials parts from StewMac and others. NO ONE WAS EVEN INTERESTED IN THIS STUFF BACK THEN. AS I discoved more and more things directly from PAF's themselves, I bought ALL the buckers claiming to be PAF copies, and ALL of them were Allparts, StewMac and Korean parts, and none were even close to true PAF character and sound. It burned me out, but I finally got THERE at the end. ENJOY!
When I see people raving about how much better the old guitars were, I always remember a quote from a Fender executive (whose name escapes me at the moment) who worked for the company back in their Glory Days. He said "Even we didn't make them as good as we used to".
Yeah thats true. But you know Strats also sufffered from the changes in steel making. The heavy tremolo block and its modern version don't sound the same, same for the metal saddles and plate. The old ones has baseball bat necks which gives a lot more warmth than skinny necks do.
Exactly to everything you said. It drives me crazy when someone says "Hey, let's listen to how this guitar sounds." Then they plug it into a pedal board and a amp stack. Then they crank the volume all the way up on the guitar. What exactly are we supposed to be listening too? All I hear is the effects on the pedal board or the overdrive on the amp. A guitar doesn't make the tone. It's great players who understand what tone is. It certainly isn't those endless number of hacks with a youtube channel. By the way it's doctors, lawyers and dentists driving the overpriced guitar market. They used to buy airplanes and portray the weekend pilot. Then they discovered people can end up dead. So then they turned to Harleys and put on those weekend colours and bandanas only to discover they could still get hurt. So the next step was to take two weeks of guitar lessons and show up at a shop, seeming to know everything about guitars, and pay for whatever the over valued sticker price on the axe of their dreams was.
I gave up on pedals 15 years ago. The only guy I know that did good use with them, and that was Gary Moore. So I have 3 pedals that he used over time. But you go look up his settings and all he did was use them as a clean boost. I should sell off all my pedals, they dont add anything and some them are worth more than I paid for them now.
Family doctor here :-). And drummer and guitar player since boyhood. My brothers are also musicians, but one of them says the same stuff but is more serious. I see the humour in your comment and appreciate the sentiments, being someone who is not going to be able to afford a vintage LP of this type, but loves a good guitar regardless of the year it was made. As you get older (62) and can buy something that's not a 'beginner" guitar or can buy something other than the $150 - $300 or so area, where you can find tons of really good guitars, but at about $3,000 to $5000 Canadian it must be said, you can find some instruments that you might not have ever hoped to play, but you can afford one or two, as you are now late 50s, early 60's to 75 plus and have saved enough and put your kids through everything thing they needed and things are taken care of through a life lived within one's means and anything extra is saved, yeah look into it and enjoy something of a reward for a life well lived.
@@arifq123 I have no savings, my life is hand to mouth self employment. High stress. Now we have a criminal president, he is bent on killing the ACA, so a lot of poorer Americans are going to lose the only healthcare that Obama foughtso hard to get us. Its a real bad scene here and the country is aimed directly going into Depression economy under really awful "leadership."They also want to kill Social Security and that could easily make us homeless. We'd love to escape to Canada, but they don't want old people coming in. People are terrified of whats coming.....
It's always funny to see guitar players hating on strangers for having nice things. Lawyers can have a passion for guitar too. Would you prefer to live in a world without PRS Custom shops etc? No. Of course not. Expensive guitars have a market. If I was rich you better believe I'd own $10k guitars.
@@SDPickups As a born and raised Canadian you and your loved ones are welcome here imo. It's definitely easier said than done though. I'll never understand Americans views on healthcare but this is a guitar video...
PLEASE DON'T COMMENT WITHOUT WATCHING THE ENTIRE VIDEO. THE PAF COMPARISONS START AT 13:30. You won't understand anything unless you watch full video. I had to remove a couple comments for this reason. The real PAF comparison of real PAF's to the X set at the end of this video, was originally done as a BLIND AUDIO POLL. comparison. 60% of viewers on FB and UA-cam swore that the X set were the REAL PAF's. They were not told which was the real set until the poll ended and I tabulated the results. In this video I wrote exactly which were the real PAF's and which were the X set. What happens if I do an audio demo and I say "these are real '59 PAF's, anyone watching and listening are right away going to think they ARE. Its a mind trick that your mind will immediately think thats what they are because it is written. I also DID say that the PAF's are both 7.6K, bridge and neck. And that the X bridge is 8.8K. So obviously the real PAF's are going to sound noticeably BRIGHTER but not really obviously. So because I wrote that, a couple guys right away are saying that the real PAF's are "magical" and they can hear that completely. LOL. Talk about "magical thinking," many of these same type guys are the ones who couldn't tell the actual PAF's from the X set in the original BLIND audio poll. So suddenly they are "experts" and can easily tell which are which? I don't think SO......Not only that, but nowhere did I claim the X set is a clone of the real PAF's or any specific PAF's at all. They are simply a demonstration of all the combination of ALL knowledge i have learned directly FROM all the PAF's from every year into one set that in many ways replaces all of my other set designs from years past. Stay tuned for my next video showing how rotted braided wire may be why some old LP's don't sound great because rotted braide wire kills capaitance and more than that......subscribe to view it when its done.....thanks everyone for great comments!
Not every player can be a first call, session musician, and not every first call session guitarist can be a stock broker, dentist, hedge fund manager or divorce lawyer. Let's be honest, it's the later group that can afford to buy these vintage guitars. And if they're happy getting together with their "weekend warrior" buds, playing 3 chord classic rock, more power to them.
Buying an extremely expensive vintage guitar is mostly a vanity purchase in my opinion. I'm a skilled player having done it all (sessions, touring, producing etc), and have compared my reissue Les Pauls, 335s, SGs, Strats & Teles, and they have more than held their own against the supposed "real McCoys" of yesteryear. Once an ensemble starts rocking, who cares if the guitarist is using vintage PAFs or reissues.
I care :-) The better your guitar sounds, the more inspired you'll be to play your best. I get that comment alot from customers. Why do I care? Because I was told over and over----"ITS IMPOSSIBLE, YOU CAN'T DO THAT, YOU'RE KRAZY." I watched every youtube video ever made of these guitars and the SOUND, is something nobody could get. I wanted to know WHY. Thats where it started. I really dislike hype and the vintage LP subject is infected with that kind of thing. Dishonesty. Corporate dishonesty. One man can do what an entire corporate empire is incapable of because no employer is going to tell you "Hey, spend 20 years trying to figure out why these sound better than everything that came later. A LOT of my customers are "Boomers" like me, they grew up when these things were made. They want that sound again. Some customers of mine sold their real PAF's because they could get what they wanted in my work, and they'd rather have the money. All I wanted was to find the truth, and to be able to make all my guitars sound like the old ones. It only took 20 years out of my life and I love what I do. Its not really a profitable businesses, not the way I do things. Everything is done the way it was done back then, but had to invent methods and machine all my own parts or it doesn't work at all.....
@@SDPickupswow
@@SDPickupsgreat answer. I care too, man. I would imagine if the UA-cam algorithm sent someone to your channel, they most likely spend a non-zero amount of time watching content all about “the sound” they’re searching for.
Because while I agree to an extent with the original comment that it is harder to tell within a mix, it’s about how it feels to the player. If I think it sounds good and excites me, I’m gonna feel better->play better->sound better, despite whether it’s perceived by others or not as sounding better.
Man 500 doller
Other brand lps can compete with new lp no problem
It’s going to be so freaking SAD when we lose the best, honest speaking people that know what music and gear is truly about.
I ain't dead yet, but am hitting 75 in a few weeks. Believe me, I can see the Grim Reaper out there on the horizon, LOL. I have written down every single thing about vintage PAF's that I've verified the last 20 years, but it remains to be seen how I can make sure all that stuff is publicly exposed when I pass. My wife thinks no one would be interested in it, she could make a nice side income by selling it, but she wants no part of it. Besides being about the journey to reproduce them, the old PAF's was like a college course in pickup DESIGN. It showed me the reason that ALL vintage guitar pickups will always sound better than copies.
This video is dead-on in speaking the truth about how guitar collectors, investors, enthusiasts, scalpers, and such drive the prices into orbit.
@@SDPickups oh she should get into winding! maybe do a sunday afternoon couple wind special edition: one coil hers and one yours, in a set. its quite often in companies that knowledge in wngineering companies is lost and not transmitted. give one copy of your knowledge to a lawyer who only publishes in case you both actually left the planet. hope thats many winds away!
LOL, my wife hates guitars players, we talk too much about guitars and play too loud. LOL
Your pickups really do capture that late 50’s tone. Much respect for the enormous effort you expended researching the minute details of the classic PAF’s.
thanks for understanding what I'm doing, many just don't...
I worked in a music store in the late 80s. before the prices of vintage gear started to sky rocket. back then, japanese collecters were buying up all the vintage fender and gibson gear. Fact is, noone NEEDS this old instruments. Brand new guitars are better made, more consistent and have better technology.
That is probably why the Gibson Custom Shop Reissue series is so expensive new. I did pick up a used 2019 R0 for a great price, and I have to say, it is becoming my go to. 8.1lbs too
I'll go you one better. Because Japanese businessmen cash rich in the 80's bought out all the pre CBS Strats, the only ones left were the one's they didn't want were the beat up, chipped off finish, etc. So when the time came to remake them, they had to RELIC them so that they resembled the left overs the japanese didn't want.
Better technology? JUNK MATERIALS ARE WHAT GAVE THE OLD ONES THEIR AMAZING TONES. Its all crappy materials, much of it contaminated with slag and junk contents. Gibsons certainly never got better. You pay huge prices and then have to replace all the parts on them.
@@SDPickupsyou should drop this guy some links so he can be better educated in what you're talking about . Four uncles also discuss this matter in great detail. When it comes to Gibson technology doesn't necessarily equal quality but profit. I bet Gibson doesn't even know how to make the old bridges, saddles, tailpiece like they used to. instead they use pot metals, steel instead of brass which explains the reason why they sound so bright these days instead of that buttery warm tone that only brass can give.
In my mind even worse than someone like Kevin Leary, a billionaire who can scarcely play owning a $600,000 flame top even two of them are people like Rick Nielsen Kurt Hammett, Joe Perry, Slash etcetc who have hundreds of guitars in dark vaults that they just hang onto. It’s criminal.
Depriving so many of us have a classic instrument and thereby driving the price up far more than one billionaire collector ever could
I’ve always loved the ‘59 LP Standard myth but $250K to $1M+ for a guitar?
And like he said, an overpriced guitar doesn’t automatically make you play better; yeah, it’s still up to you.
His pickups really sound good, quite authentic!
Thanks for posting!
A ‘59 LP ain’t gonna make you play like Jimmy Page!
Thanks, friend!
I saw the Allman Brothers Band at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh , Pa. It was October 15 , 1971 . It cost $ 2.00 to get in . Dicky played a gold top . Duane played slide on an S.G. He played a sunburst on standard tuning . Great players , great gear and great music .
@@halbertking2683 Dicky had that Gold Top refinished in a see through red ( cherry ? ) not realizing how valuable it was.
Duane paid a lot of attention to his gear to get those sounds. I have bootlegs of him and his bridge pickup often sounded really HARSH. He used open back speaker cabs and bass speakers of a certain brand. And of course the AMPS.
That’s all there was back then. There is better stuff out there now.
@@SDPickupsalso JBL …D120s I believe -with a Plexi! I’m sure that could sound harsh with a bridge pickup…and I LOVE JBLs with a good fender. BTW great video and pups. Insta-fan.
Great venue. I saw amazing shows there. I remember one marathon Springsteen show in particular. If I recall, the Decade Club was fairly close to the Syria. I also caught some great shows at the Decade as well as The Stanley. Never saw the original Allmans though I would argue that at that time they were the best live band in the World and I would throw in Ellington, Coltrane, Santana, the Band or Miles as competition. I am envious!
Thanks for the work you do’. There are a lot of great guitars being built today. Some of them are relatively affordable. You’ve shown that great vintage tones can be obtained without breaking the bank. Keep up the great work!
Today there’s so much talk about tone and gear and vintage stuff. People forget that we’re playing music, to express something. I have an old Les Paul SG 1961 with PAF pickups, and it plays very good and sounds great. The reason is that I take care of my instruments. Some years ago there suddenly was a loud crackling sound coming out when I played. It came back again and again when I moved, so I took the guitar to ”my” luthier, but he couldn’t find what was wrong. But, he said, I’ve heard that sound before from old guitars, and it has sometimes been the old soldering that gets worn out. So, he resoldered the cables where they go into the pickups. And… problem solved, no more crackling sound. However, when I told people that the cables were resoldered they went; What, now it’s not all original! Well, perhaps not, but I use my instruments to play music, to express something. Not to brag about how old, original and expensive my guitar is.
Well there is no solder joint on the outside of the baseplate or covers. So he would have had to remove the covers and THAT is a big deal if you ever try to sell them. Sometimes I've seen steel wool fragments stuck to the bottom of PAF's and this makes a cracking noise, you simply blow it off. Good for you for taking care of a valuable piece of history. I've seen guys take the covers off their PAF's hoping to find double whites, LOL. What they don't realize is that if you play it like that, no covers, and one single drop of ACID sweat gets inside the coils, down the line sooner or later you got dead coils, and a rewind of a vintage PAF drops the value down to less than $1000 for a full set.
I had the great fortune to read your article "The Monumentally Misunderstood PAF" it was located in the book Burst Believers II. I love Gibson Les Paul's. Mostly I love the history of the LP and all the terrific music that the players made with their Les Paul's and studio magic!! I can't thank you enough for confirming what I "thought" I knew. which was when you said that the vast majority of us didn't even know what a authentic PAF sounded like, because we had never heard one!! That was ME for sure!! Here we are chasing a "dream tone" and we don't know what in the hell we're really hearing and chasing!!! You made me totally rethink about what I really wanted in a pick up. I thank you. YES, your "reverse engineering" debunked the "myth". Your PAF's to these 65 year old ears sound just as good as the "real deal". Well done!!! Bryan
Man, that was some time ago, Vic invited me to contribute in an early one of those books. There was still more to learn beyond that, but it was clear to me that old PAF's were so misunderstood and so many myths and wrong things in several books out there. Even alot of collectors are clueless about details etc. I saw one of them even say that early PAF's had BRASS COVERS, LOL. Nope, never.
The 1959 Les Paul is a part of world history. Its like a classic car. You dont have to be an expert driver to enjoy and cherish them.
You do have to know how to play well, its NOT in the "fingers" not in pedals either. You have to learn with dynamics to play softly, and to dig in and SCREAM, how to master VIBRATO. As simple as that sounds, I know guys who can make any guitar sound awful no matter what they do or how long they've been playing. This really shows up in demos of these guitars, a bad player can make these guitars sound terrible. I'm not a pro player and never was, so I learned from Peter Green, BB King, Albert King, and all the Blues Heroes going way way back. Fancy licks don't make good tone, simple blues riffs, studied well, is what makes me happy...
Dave you talk a lot of sense. How I look at it is that I would not go to a gig to hear top guitarists because they play a specific guitar, model, pup configuration or a burst this or any guitar that used to be owned by whoever. I go to gigs and buy albums because I listen to the music, the feeling, the motion, the skill etc.
I don't care what they are playing through which pedals, cables, amps etc. You are correct it is now a protected market where many people have invested in these things now have to keep the myth going to protect their investment. In the end there will be some pups that just hit the mark and just have a real nice sound , but 'better' ? . Its all subjective. I have a Yamaha SG, Hohner L59, a Greco and a Gibson LP studio. All sound great to me for different things and I would never spend 50 to 100 times the money just to say I have an XYZ from 19XX, can't you hear the difference ? It's 99% Spinal Tap to me. Nice video and good luck with your pups. You could call one of your models 'ST elevens' . Cheers.
Truthfully, the number of guitar players who care about the vintage golden years, I could probably count on 3 toes. Even your average luthier doesn't know the first thing about how to build great sounding harnesses, and there are just NO guitar companies that do either.The guys who really care, well Bonamassa, but jeez, he's made some remarks that tell me he falls for hype just like the rest do. "Magic Centralab" pots? I thought he was nuts when he said that, so I bought some. The only audible differences between them and CTS pots are the measured VALUE of the carbon tracks. 2 of the ones I bought even fell apart :-) My whole deal was using science to buy all those old hardware, caps pots, everything in and ON them, then working with a metallurgist mentor who's high tech lab in the huge steel plant he lived in, told me everything I needed to know. I didn't want to get "close," I wanted all of it. I got 98% and its not possible to get past that, though using 50's wire really gives a big jump UP....
@@SDPickups maybe it was the snake oil used to seal the coils.............subscribed for more of your wisdom.
Thanks for subscribing. I have an interesting new video possibly this weekend. Funny story about "snake oil." Back when I was on the forums, I told them I was working on a potting technique that was giving nice warm sounds. They called it my "secret sauce." Well I was half joking but I did find a potting method that did warm the sound. It was shellac if I remember right. The WATER in the shellac interacted electrically with the coils and trimmed some treble. It did sound really good. Wellllllll.....until the shellac over months completely dried out, no more water content. The effect evaporated with it. LOL. They all got mad at me because I didn't tell them what it was, but did months later.....
So true, this 59 thing has been a very successful marketing gimmick by Gibson to keep their industry alive. Also, any good player can make a bad guitar sound good and vice-versa.
If you go on UA-cam and search for 1959 Les Paul, you will find some pretty awful demo's of those vintage guitars, bad players and awful amps and guys with PEDAL BOARDS, LOL.
All the guys that demo gear. Like check this pedal out it sounds great! Everything they play sounds great! Lol. Give that pedal to a beginner, then get back to me!
@@SDPickups So true. It's a load of nonsense.
I felt decadent buying a used LP Classic last year for $1700. It joins my American standard strat and tele I got decades ago for well under a thousand.
More than good enough for me.
All of them.
Mine is not STOCK. I use the Four Uncles ABR1 replica that I did all the reverse engineering on. BIG difference, but they are expensive. I replaced the thumbwheels and bridge posts for BRASS as the original LP's did. I'm using the Jupiter Condenser TIN foil Bee replicas in it now. Replaced the tailpiece, switch wiring with Gavitt replica braid wire, and it has the X set in it now which vastly brought it all together. It has a really weird neck joint, is pretty resonant despite that. Stock, it was boring and rather harsh. The X put it over the top, which is really needed. They're not terrible guitars, but they're not great either.
I have a guitar pick company here in Nashville TN. I have many friends with '59s. They bring them over and we play them. One of my buddys, a very famous man made the statement about his "All it is Vinni, is the covered, unpotted pickups are on the verge of feeding back. Nothing more". We then brought out my handmade guitar and we both could not tell the difference in tone when walking outside while the other was playing. I think they are way cool, like an old car. However, who the heck is gonna take a guitar like that to a gig or jam session? Also, I don't think they play all that great. Again, just like an old guitar, I would not want to hop in an old T-Bird like Suzanne Summers drove in American Graffiti and drive to California from here. I would feel like I was beat with sticks. Billy Gibbons promised me I could play Pearly Gates here soon. He lives up the street from us. I am looking forward to the experience and thoughts afterwards. Out of all the ones I have played, to me they sound like a Tele on steroids. I agree they are good guitars but have been hyped to the point of ridiculous. Good but not GREAT as we are told. Slash's burst sounded every bit as good and was a copy. I own some LPs that I think sound better than the oldies I have been around. They are like a '43 copper penny. Still just a penny but worth so much because everybody wants one. Walter from Carter Vintage once told me, you really have to listen hard to hear the difference in the real thing and a Gibson Re-Issue. I agree. In most cases, you have to listen hard to hear the difference in a good Epiphone Inspired by Gibson played in the same amp. Just look for some vids, you will see. I just may have to buy a set of your pickups just for the sake of trying them out. Nice job bro.
What muddies the waters are the pedal board guys. You think Peter Green had a pedal board? No, he had great amps. Once. you go the pedal route, you're not hearing the guitar anymore. I can hear the difference with the reissues. In my "The Les Paul That Isn't" four part series, I used a mint '60VOS reissued. It came with Custom Buckers. In part one I demo the Custom Buckers. They didn't sound "bad" but to me they sound bland and lifeless. Fast forward to part Four with the HD59's and ALL the vintage spec parts I made or sourced, the guitar screams and the sustain was so improved it just about levitated me off the ground :-) I'm a hardcore PURIST. Those vintage LP's used materials of THOSE times, and THAT is the biggest "secret" of them all. There are no direct identical materials like those anymore. Its all the same as vintage microphones that sell for thousands of dollars. They were made with magnet wire of the times that does not exist anymore. Each of the models had their own sound, some more desirable than others. PAF's are kind of like a microphone, and if you have air gaps between covers and slug tops, you literally talk thru the pickup. They did NOT need to be potted, the reason being that the old wire insulation recipes have an almost matte kind of finish, so that the wire cannot slip around on itself. I wind a lot with my big collection of vintage wire, and that old stuff GRABS onto felt tensioners. The old coils cannot vibrate. Any squealing that happens comes from air gap between cover top and the top of the slugs. In fact one of the reasons they stopped quickly from using stainless covers is because that material was very THIN, so the cover tops vibrate really easily. The Nickel silver covers are much thicker, and less prone to squealing. But put them in front of a couple 100 watt Marshalls, you will hear some squeals.
Your T-bird comparison is perfect here. Here is the big thing. Are there cars that drive better than an old T-bird. Absolutely pretty much every car out there today drive better and had better everything than an old T-bird. But they will never look like or be that old T-bird.
There is a lot of emotion at play here that is being missed in this comparison. Humans are emotional creatures and we are virtual creatures. There is a lot to this discussion.
@@SDPickupsthank you for such an informative post on pickups. When the day comes I can order a reissue burst I plan to custom order it with as authentic electronics I can get as I know that is a flaw in the reissues where they are not the same.
@@WilliamPayneNZ I could not have said it better, my friend
I find the car analogy silly. Sure, a 2023 Charger is faster, more economical, and can be driven across the country today. But it doesn’t look anything like my 1970 Charger. All the ‘59 reissue Gibsons look the part.
Another job well done, Dave!! Really appreciate your continued input on these topics.
Thanks. I'm going to be 75 next few weeks, not going to be around many more years.....
I've had a traditional les paul since 2011. It's not a whole lot like a 59 . I rewired it using VIPots a .015 and a .022 and a handmade set of pafs that aren't a zillion percent 'correct'. I've got 3k canadian into it. And it sounds as good as or better than any r9 I've played.
I built a bunch of amps in the last couple of years. The holy grail amps that I could never afford. Trainwrecks , plexis , bassmans, etc..
I don't have a real burst to compare to, but I am sure my setup sounds as good as the real thing. If it isn't, well, my ears can't decipher the differences... and if someone else can , well, bravo ! Lol.
All that being said, somewhere out there there's a guy with a squier and a katana blowing people away. Also, I'm not saying a set of your puckups wouldn't be an amazing treat to have. I just do t think a burst is nessasary for holy grail tone
Why do you think I did the '59 video? Thats a real '59, the PAF's in the video are real 1959 PAF's. Do mine sound noticeably different than that '59 Les Paul? Nope. In the second half of the video I compared the '59 PAF's to my X set. I first publicly posted those audio comparisons as a BLIND AUDIO POLL. 60% of the respondents thought MINE were the real ones. That says something. Thats why I did the 1959 dealer demo and played the X set right after their video. Did you hear a huge difference? Nope. So are you saying that 1959 LP ISN'T the "Holy Grail?" LOL. Or are you talking Billy Gibbons LP? Do you know that he doubled all his solos on his albums? Thats the secret of his tone, the guitar doesn't sound like that by itself. Its a studio trick and works well. He also used a JTM45 to record with, BUT in live concerts he used a solid state rack mount power amp, so is THAT the "Holy Grail." Esplain pleeze :-)
@SDPickups I'm not arguing with you bud. I'm not sure why you think that?
I've stuck new pots and pickups into a 16 traditional and a 19 60s standard and they sound amazing so yup... you can make a few mods because factory standard is usually crap. I also refret mine and make them super easy to play. And yknow what... they're now exactly as I want. If you're buying to keep and let it appreciate you're buying it for the wrong reasons... and no one really cares. Let's be honest... if a wick player was played Greeny or any other 59 and you didn't know it was a 59... you wouldn't be impressed
@vhsreclaimed1998 the Vipots are supposed to be identical taper to the old centralabs. And the set I bought were all above 550k. The ones I took out of the stock Trad were 230k 240k 430k and 450k. I swapped the pickups at the same time so it's hard to guage the difthe pots made on their own. But all together , they're a 100% improvement.
@@soapboxearth2 Gibson uses real low values because their pickups are harsh.
One more comment, another good quote that perfectly encapsulates what youre talking about is
"The physics on my workbench are no different than the physics that Vintage Gibsons and dumbles were made on"
Almost as bad as these greedy dastardly asking 7grand for an overrated klon boost pedal.And WORST OF ALL SCAMS ARE THE DUMBLES amps.250 grand for an amp that stops working during a show.Its all HYPE.Latest scam is the Lollar overdrive.$700.the MXR RANDY Rhodes pedal $125 new people want 600$.Stop being taken.
YEP. Some of the original 60's pedals are really great, I have a few from 1970 I bought back then that I still have. I also bought a couple that Gary Moore used. But for me, they dont really add anything. The best guitar tones come from great amps, not pedal. I watched a video of a guy playing one of Kossoff's Les Pauls, with A PEDALBOARD. He managed to make that guitar sound AWFUL.
Using a klon as a boost is like buying a Porsche to drive to your mailbox. You have to have the gain turned up past 7 to even hear what the pedal does. Also just buy a klone.
The Dumble amps are not a scam. No one has been able to replicate them exactly and they have collectability, something that poor angry assholes online can never understand…
@@mohamedtlass3842 including yourself too I assume?
@@fancykarlmarx im not angry
My uncle just bought a ‘59 LP he sold a house for it. Sounds great!
Do a video and share....
when i first met my luthier as a complete noob in his workshop setup in a dinky shed of an old farm in bavarian forest, he was playing an old les paul thru a vintage plexi. he said, hi wanna try? i did. the difference to my lo studio was shocking. beefy neck acoustically loud, notes jumping out, no mud, clear overtones turning into feedback, growling bark, fast and transparent like a tele on steroids. i pöayed smells like teen spirit. he smirked. great guitar i said, you built it? nah its a real 58 i got in for a fretjob…
i still feel that difference in my bones. he built les pauls that could match it. i cherish the artisanship of making pickups. been to guitar summit. thousands of guys hunting that ol lp plexi tone… dont get hung on it… move on, make music and tones guitarists will hunt for in 50years… what would hendrix play TODAY?
All the modern materials right NOW will not change as radically magnet wire and steel and brass did in the 50's and up to early 70's. Those modern technologies are not going to change. During 1960 and a few short years later, the PAF sound DIED. TTops were an attempt to keep it going, but it was that all those MATERIALS that became so modernized, which killed them off. TTops were good for ONE year, 1965 and rapidly worsened until they were quite harsh. There don't seem to be any geniuses at Gibson. I'm not genius but I solved all those lost knowledge questions in 20 years of hellish OCD HARD work. Jimi played guitars of the CBS era and they were GREAT pickups then. The magnet wire in them was still very good wire. I have a roll of wire from '72 I have yet to do a PAF set, I think maybe its time I did that.
I tried to explain to a good friend a few weeks back that Grail Les Pauls are super valuable because they are rare antiques, not because they can't be equaled by modern instruments (with the right stuff) and I don't think he ever got what I was saying.... I'll email this link to him: way better than my explanation ; ) Love these pickups, wow!
Thanks, get him to subscribe if you can :-)
You can’t argue with the vintage guys. They have it in their heads that the old stuff can’t be replicated. They’ll die with that notion.
Well there are guys with open minds, and a lot of my customers fit that space. There are only 2 builders who make the most authentic true LP replicas. And I'll tell you, my Japanese, Gibson paid for, Elitists with real Brazilian boards on all 7 of them, full maple cap, long tenon neck joints and even more than that, smoke every Gibson LP I've ever played. Of coursed I replaced all the hardware, harness, pickups, tuners....You can still buy these for around $1200, but they are rapidly going up.....
I want an abr 1 bridge. I don’t necessarily need it going into the wood but I do believe the medal has a big difference in sound. I don’t know as much as you for sure. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Its a treasure to have people like you around and not just for guitar wisdoms.
The ABR1's need to go straight into wood. All the vintage ones did. But they also need to be sitting on top of brass thumbwheels and brass posts. You can those with a magnet, if either one sticks to the magnet they are steel and stainless steel and are tone killers, they make harsh sound. Thats why I got the older Classic, because now they using cheap junk Nashville bridges, its a completely different vibe.
Hi Dave, are the 4 uncles bridges still available? @@SDPickups
@@daniellaudman8580 YES, they are back now. You can buy directly off Facebook:
facebook.com/profile.php?id=100071770557105
Is there a stoptail and studs that are on par with the 4 uncles bridge, wheels and studs for the bridge, Dave?
They only make the bridges, and the thumbwheels and bridge posts. They were going to try making a tailpiece but don't have the many thousands of dollars to do that yet.
During the 1990s I bought a 1952 Les Paul that had been modified to a stop tail with a ABR tunamatic configuration. It was almost unplayable so I had the neck reset. It went from a wall hanging to a jaw dropping flagship. I ran it straight into a Traynor Bass Master (no pedals) with a 2 x 15" cabinet. That's all I needed to get that Clapton sound. But I digress. I also had a '59 Holy Grail, so I was well equipped to do authentic comparisons. Those P90s on the '52 sounded better every time than the '59, with its PAFs. I currently have a Gibson SG Standard and SG Special, which were both made in 1963. To my ear, nothing has changed. Those P90s still take the prize over the patent sticker number humbuckers, hands down. Just sayin'... And I gigged with boih of them. At one gig there was a young guy scoping out the gear. The '59 was on a stand. When I walked up and stood next to him, all he said was, "Is it real?", to which I said, "It's real.. Why don't you play it for a few minutes?" I was surprised when he declined by shaking his head back & forth... he was afraid to. Thanks for your video. 🙂
Myths are the mycelium from which our collective psyche fruits our most precious jewels.
There’s a reason that the epithet “holy grail” has become so common, and it’s because we need these stories and this lore. It’s not just about money. Don’t let your resentment of rich people ruin your enjoyment of culture, just be a clever guy and make your own great instruments.
Well put. I don't hate rich people, but jeez man, they aren't very smart sometimes. They get fooled by counterfeits for sure. These historic instruments are disappearing from public view going into bank vaults. They get them for the bragging rights. It makes them feel superior, but hey, my wife won't buy into that, LOL
My uncle ( Laurence Gaudet) played with Marty Martin (Boxcar Willie) when they were stationed in Stephenville NL as a lead guitarists playing in a band called the String Busters. I never met the man but my aunt showed me the guitar in the 90's.... and it was a black Les Paul...one of the 1st. Boxcar tried for years to get the guitar for his museum and the last that I heard... it was at the museum. I could be wrong as stories get thrown around.... But I do know that guitar was original...I held it in my hands and the last holder of it was his daughter Gloria Jean Gaudet. I do believe it was appraised at about $15k back then.
I would have preferred to have at least seen his HANDS PLAYING the guitar with the PAF-X pickups, otherwise the whole comparison could be BOGUS !!! I'm surprised no one else has said this, however, if it's legit, then like Tony the Tiger would say, THERE GREAT !!!!!
Sounded right for sure, I've played and owned some incredible guitars over the years including likewise with amps etc, my final arrival is breathtaking across several styles/genres I'm into for a living.
When anyone finds the one, its game over regardless of the logo or price tag.
I can't put it down and get a proper sleep ever since for the last 3 years, it breathes and is a living beast, I know how to use it properly with a thing or two on my signal chain that are rarer than a hen's tooth. 🔥....great vid brother!
Some still automatically think that slightly or accidentally fractionally microphonic pickups were a mistake, -depends on the guitar they're on -and the player too for sure.
You can most certainly tell they are of the same linage.
Great job Dave.
I've learned so very much from all your videos, your knowledge is priceless, a HUGE thanks for sharing it with us.
Thank YOU for watching and understanding.....
I was speaking to a vintage dealer in St. Louis and he told me that within the next two years, the going rate for a Burst will be a million. He agreed it’s ridiculous and the Japanese started the fad of buying everything old as investments in the 1980s. He has had quite a few Bursts come through and while unique, their nothing to drop a mil for.
I vividly remember when the Japanese drove up the prices of anything "Americana." Vintage LP's went from about $2-3000 to $40,000 overnight! I saw one in the local paper back then for $250, and I just missed it.
Good to keep the originals expensive... Nobody needs them, but most likely they are cared for and hopefully a few will be left even if humans are gone.
I agree with you 100 percent... one thing I have a hard time finding with PAF clones is they never get the swirly things and top end presence and bite right... the ones I like are bitey and almost sound like its out of phase compared to the dark sounding crap that is passed off as a PAF by many.
The whole "booteek" "winders" out there are mostly kids assembling pickup KITS. They are LEGO pickups. The work I did was pioneering, nobody cared about what I was doing and told me I'm an idiot etc. etc. Its a desert out there and customers get fooled most of the times.
'58's, '59's, '60's where all notoriously different as they were all handmade, right? So how can they all be equally 'great'? Fact is that they are not. Sorry for 'burst'ing some bubbles in here. 😂
I own a 2004 Classic and it's as good as any other Les Paul. Heck... with the 60's neck profile it's even playable. And since they are not labeled 'Standard', they are also way cheaper. Wealthy guitar 'afficionados' just have no clue. You are so right about that. 👌🏻😎
love, Love, LOVE your tasty Blues licks - you sound to me just like Peter Green on either set (to my ears, they both sound superb). And it's so much in the player's Technique ("In The Fingers"), which you so assuredly have. TY ! 😊
I'm not a believer in "fingers," I have small hands and my fretting hand is damaged so I can't play some barre chords at all. Its more that I LISTEN to guys like Peter Green who got HIS licks from BB King. Its more about phrasing for me. Green was really good at that, and Michael Bloomfield is another one I love. He was funny because he used 14 gauge strings, Black Diamonds probably. I could never bend those damn strings, but then SLINKY strings came out in 8 gauge and WOW, easy to bend! Even Page used them. You can hear it. Its interesting that one UA-cam channel did a video on what gauge strings record the best, and 8 gauge strings won hands down :-) thanks for the comment!
Guitar lore does a great deal of work for Gibson. Vintage instruments are now luxury status goods - and Gibson is now a luxury brand. It's very difficult to justify the expense ant other way. Are you going to gig with that 150 k instrument? Just record? Do you actually think it sounds 147k better than a modern instrument with these replacement pickups in it? 147 Grand has tremendous alternate utility for virtually any professional musician who isn't Kirk Hammett.
Then there's also the reality did vintage pickups go bad all the time it have to be rewound. Does using new wire kill that magical vintage tone? Larry DiMarzio has a business precisely because people wanted different pickups than what came on their "vintage" instruments (which were just guitars back then).
Guitar players love lore!
Yes, rewinding a vintage PAF will noticeable kill much of greatness. In the videos I did on comparing vintage magnets and vintage pole screws to the poles I had made and the Chinese magnets, that was a freebie rewind for the owner (I restore PAF's for free), I rewound it with Canadian magnet wire from 1990. It sounds good, but not like original wire. The supply of vintage magnet PE wire, has pretty much become extinct. I check every day to see if any of surfaces, but no big hits in at least 5 years now, so there's no wire to rewind it to original sounds. That doesn't mean it will sound bad, as you can plainly HEAR. But it won't ever sound original again. Do the PAF's always die a LOT? No. But you got clueless players taking the covers off, exposing the wire to Human ACID SWEAT. They eventually die as the wire it eaten away.
Love the shoutout to Canada’s own Garnet amps!
He was a genius.
Winnipegger here. The man made fantastic amps. We have a talented pickup maker here at peg city pickups, I have his 59 set, which led me to watch to watch this video. I agree with all your points.
Also… I have 5 guitars with sds and love them all. Keep killing it!
I will til I die. But at my age it could be anytime sooner than later.
Hey Dave,
I just found your channel and agree 100%. I've been building and restoring vintage guitars for about 25+ years, but only started building late 50s Gibson Replicas (Explorer, L.P. and V's) about 5 years back. The Stewmac 59 L.P. templates really helped out, but for certain, the Korina Explorer Replica is off the charts, and sound incredible! Haha...
I've got about 300 vocational videos, where I have done a very deep dive analysis of wood selection and adhesives, engineered chambering and such. The short is, all I need is about $500 in Tonewoods and $200 in hardware and parts to produce a very vocal and responsive guitar even before I install any electronics or pickups.
Anyway, I'm in Alabama, now, but was in Nashville for about 12 years, so will try to get in touch with you for pickups and maybe harnesses. I'm only building about 5 to 10 Guitars per year, and most are going to the West Coast or UK.
Thanks,
Marc
Deja Blu Guitars
I don't sell harnesses anymore, the harnesses I do make are matched to whatever sets they go with. I also don't do discounts for builders, its all same prices for everything. I can tell you where to get all the harness supplies and its all 50's wiring which am sure you know about. Alot of my customers are in the UK as well, they are a little better educated on vintage LP things. I have alot of respect for good builders, did you Bartlett's new video on how he makes his LP type guitars? Steve Hague is great too, but I dont think he makes alot of them these days. Those are two real masters in that department. I flunked wood shop in 1965 at school. Wood and me don't get along, LOL.
Thanks for the quick reply, and are you close to Nashville/ever visit? Anyway, I will try to find your website info. and keep in touch, cause I typically just send my clients to Seymour Duncan or Fralin, or build a guitar around their Holy Grail vintage items (tuners, Bigsby, Pickups, etc.). I'm not looking to try and put a mark up on the electronics or custom hardware.
I haven't followed any of Bartlett's work and haven't heard of Hague. Will check them out. All of my early 2000's building was based on the Robert Benedetto, hand-carved Big body Jazz guitars, yet, I was primarily building Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins and 6129 Jet inspired Jazz guitars (All things hollow or chambered and always equipped with PAF or early 60's Filtertrons or Dearmonds, and a vintage bigsby)!
Anyway, I'm having to play catch up with regards to the 50's Gibson designs- even working thru/out some of the Holy Grail B.S! Haha...
Thanks,
Marc
Steve is going under the name of Steve Michael on Facebook, his page is here
facebook.com/profile.php?id=100025364400026
The search for tone is an illusion. Most guitars to day are way better than guitars of the 60s as they are made using CNC machines which work consistently accurate and produce a quality product. In the 60s all the big names always had a Friday piece of junk so a good one always stood out. The Beatles had really poor quality guitars when they first started. What they did have was creativity and enthusiasm. Later they got to buy all the good stuff. Today most guitar players go through effects units which colour the sound in any way they fancy. In the 1970s people went nuts over what type of turntable they were using to play records. Then came what type of speakers and what kind of amplifier to use when playing a record at home. Its all to do with selling stuff and its the same with guitars. However a hand made F hole Jazz guitar produced by a Luthier of talent is a vastly different beast from a mass produced lump of wood and wire masquerading as a Male decorative ornament.
Its only an illusion if you buy factory hyped guitars with fancy advertising claims, like the "reissues" that aren't a reissue of anything real. The 50's Gibsons were better than anything made now, but the materials were really garbage and thus the musicality was better than a robot carved Gibson now. But they didn't make bridge and neck PAF's and the amount of wire wound was inconsistent so you could end up with a really hot PAF in the neck and really weak one in the bridge. Easily fixed, just swap them out. Gibson made some really awful guitars in the early 70's, I had several and got rid of them all. So NOW, they are considered "vintage" and you pay high for them and they are still crap :-) I have 7 Japanese Elitists LP's and one SG. Hands down they are better than anything Gibson makes, its so funny that Gibson had the Elitists MADE in Japan. Of course I changed all the hardware, harness and of course the pickups. They were made by Fujigen company thats known for high quality guitars, and their wood treatment method is miracuous. I bought all mine for no more than $600 before players found out about them. Gibson quit making them there because they put their own guitars to shame. I also had a replica built by Santucci in Italy, FABULOUS GUITAR. He did everything right and I requested a baseball neck like originals had. It was around $2500 and remains my best Les Paul, but the Elistists astound me every time I pick one up to play. The Gibson Classic with the PAF X set I never fell in love with it. Its a decent guitar with all the changes but it wasn't until I put the Four Uncles bridge in it and the X set that now I play it alot. All the Elitist are flawless quality way better QC than Gibsons.
What mediocre "Bedroom Players" never want to face is that "NO GEAR" replaces "Skill and Practice!!" Vintage Guitars belong in the hands of "Players" NOT OLD DUFFERS!!
LOL, I'm going to be 75 in a few weeks. But I learned about 20 years ago, that tone doesn't come out a pile of batteries, LOL. I love Peter Green's tones thru JTM45's and Fender Vibroluxes. Your "fingers" have no tone in them, DYNAMICS and PHRASING, is where its at. If you play all night, pounding on your guitar with all knobs all the way up on the guitar, you bore your audience no end. I watched Robben Ford one night at a live show, he played a half hour solo, and after 15 minutes the audience literally turned off and began chatting and drinking, and completely bored with him. He didn't even notice.
Yes agreed! I’m 22yo and been playing guitar for almost 4 years now and I love vintage stuff too but I ask my self “they don’t feel like they should be more than a house or a car.” Yes I like them and their looks but they should never be $50,000+. I sometimes wonder if this even legal… I love them and they’re cool and all but they don’t FEEL expensive is all I’m trying to say. People scalping them just seems so unnecessary. If it’s related to a big artist sure but if it’s just a regular one passed down it shouldn’t be so much. Plus how do some places, big or small, aquire these “expensive” instruments so easily and have stacks of them? I feel like there’s a money laundering thing going on but idk…
There are counterfeit Les Pauls being sold for huge money. When someone sends their old LP to be worked on, techs can steal parts and pickups without the owners noticing it. So they build a fake, fill it with vintage parts and EASY MONEY. There's only supposed to be around 1500 of them out there and mysteriously more and more of them are "found." This is practically Mafia type stuff going on out there. Scary stuff when huge money is involved.
Of course there is. You really think when people drop cash at these dealers that it all gets reported after?
You also wonder why some places like Emerald City post absolutely ridiculous prices on most of their gear at least online?
One word. Insurance.
At the same time it attracts attention to their store so they can cut rich people « deals » on more normal stuff.
Also hopefully for them it gets stolen so the insurance company has to pay them the hyper-inflated price.
Then after the statute of limitations expires etc, it can be « recovered », sold for even more etc!
What I wonder about is these guys go look for old guys like me who have vintage gear and for SURE they don't what the stuff is worth, so are easy targets to rip off. Dealers are not known for ethics, LOL.
I on a very low budget applied tone upgrade methods You have shared. The results are great. Thanks! I will tell others to check out what You have said and done. "lesser" guitars can achieve tone if not the same as High $ guitars close enough for the not rich guitar player.
Yep. I had an LP made in Viet Nam, big chunky neck HUGE sound once I replaced the harness, still have it and use it as a test guitar sometimes. It was $200 and really fun to play. Same thing later with a really cheap Chinese LP, new harness made it sound great. My search ended when I found the Japanese Elitists Gibson had made. BRAZILIAN FRET BOARDS ON ALL 7 OF THEM AND THE ELITIST SG TOO. Long tenon neck joints, Dumped the pickups, upgraded everything to vintage close materials etc. all them are KILLERS! :-)
Good to see another video, Dave. Nice comparison. You nailed the tone. On another note, I got one of your '51 Tele Bridge pickups off Reverb. Also purchased an '86 Japanese Fender Esquire that it's going into. Can't wait to hear what that sounds like. Still waiting for you to sell off a PAF-X set.
Hi Robert. I'm going to be selling more PAF-X sets very soon. Already have a couple orders for them to fulfill, plus still the old orders hanging over me endlessly. The '51 is the Broadcaster if I remember right, those are really good!
IMHO i think he surpassed the 59 set. If you take away the nostalgia and value of the 59 set and then ask me which set i would want in my
Guitar i would pick the X set without hesitation!
@@SDPickups Great! Can't wait to get guitar and get PUP in. The Japanese models from that time are really good. If you'll remember, I bought the vintage wire Broadcaster set from you. Now in a 2020 AVRI Broadcaster reissue.
It does make me laugh all the nerdy (and lucrative) searches for the last tiny increment of tone with pedals and amps. Truth is, when you're on stage with drums, bass, keyboards and a crowd drinking, talking, hollering and dancing nobody is appreciating that overpriced ton of gadgets.
All anyone needs is a guitar cord, a great guitar and a great amp. But whats a great amp? All these PC board amps suck. A great guitar? WHERE? From my perspective in documenting everything about these old pickups is if you want a great guitar you have to buy some affordable and rip out everything on and IN them and go from there. On a cheap Les Paul, some Gibsons used stainless steel bridge posts with steel thumbwheels. SIMPLY replacing those with BRASS parts removes harshness and adds noticeable SUSTAIN. My first demo guitar going back to 2003 was a Chinese Epiphone with cheap nasheville bridge. Simply throwing the harness away and using CTS pots and decent PIO tone and volume pots did wonders for the sound. The sound of a vintage Les Paul generally can be GREAT. There ARE reasons for that, and thats what nearly a third of my life, has been to document WHAT AND WHY. These things can be knowable, but it took 20 years and more, dealing with materials corporations and their laboratories and generous time examining in these old materials and giving me histories of how these materials were made back THEN. I totally agree that gadjets are worthless. The beauty of my journey is that what I discovered about those guitars and everything in and on them, made my guitars SOUND AMAZING. When your guitar sounds 100 times better than a stock overpriced Gibson, you get really inspired to just play. I try to play every day and I use the jam tracks on UA-cam that sound like real bands. I also listen alot to actual live recordings and videos of our guitar heroes most of us love. I lusted for those sounds. Eventually I figured it all out and playing my own work is better than drugs :-) I keep getting ideas for things to try with my work and still do experiments, love doing it but TIME is hard to get.......
your pickups sound "full".....with a nice attack. None of the usual mud I expect with many humbuckers. Great video.
Thanks, appreciate that!
You’re right they aren’t worth that much, most vintage guitars need a lot of work new tuners/hardware and frets. New Gibson Les pauls are fine, even the custom shop R9s are overrated, they look cool but is it really worth 10grand for Murphy lab? NO. All those old guys got lucky through experimenting and finding out what worked for them. Go play play it doesn’t need to be even a Gibson. Find one that fits you, and fall in love.
You can take ANY LP type guitar, do the changes I show in my FOUR PART DOCUMENTARY HERE:
ua-cam.com/video/85IWlkPdO8A/v-deo.htmlsi=O-wMOEsxC5WoW6VJ
You will see and hear the progress being made in each video, using a mint '60 VOS that frankly was mediore at best when stock.
Not hard to do....
There were only 1700 rare old Les Paul standard bursts made from 1958-1960, however many survive & got preserved by musicians & collectors who appreciated them, as they trickled down to subsequent generations of musicians & collectors who hoarded them through the decades. & At some point there were more musicians with the means to buy old bursts, then there were guitars floating around available for sale in circulation, resulting in hundreds of indecipherable counterfeit clones and refinished gold tops added to the market, due to the bursts astronomically rising values from the demand, which only increased more & more as they past hands to a series of famous players, many of whom broke off their headstocks. We are in an era where Kirk Hammet has Gary Moore’s burst that was once Peter Green’s. Invariably, there must be some valid tonal reason that Slash favors his Chris Derrig built era correct Les Paul high end replicas, and buys absurdly expensive actual 58’-60’s bursts? When he could get any new Gibson prototype devoloped & built that he wanted free of charge from the custom shop. & Yet Slash favors recording with his high end replica’s and real bursts that were built with toxic materials, outlawed animal glues, with lead in the paint & metal parts & hundreds of years old growth mahogany, where his new custom shop signature models, might only get him maybe 95% in the ballpark, that us mere mortals wouldn’t even notice we were missing out on? These are first world ultra rich people’s investment grade issues that will never effect 99.9% of guitarists, there are enough things to worry about, besides complaining about the ludicrous prices of Les Paul Bursts, from a specific era that were always expensive to begin with, after they were developed to their highest standards in 1958-1960. They always held a higher relative value due to their scarcity, resulting from Gibson’s cost saving changes in their model lines that made them obsolete, as Gibson replaced the Les Paul’s with SG’s to compete with Fenders, until the Les Paul returned to production in 1968 & got built to a noticeably inferior standard, that placed higher values on the rare used 1958 to 1960 custom & standard versions of Les Paul’s Korina V’s & Explorers. Value is inherent & the old adage is true with Gibson - in that “They don’t build them like they used to.”…I’m exclusively a Fender guy, & my 1999 Strat plays & sounds better then my uncles vintage 1962 Strat, if Gibson created any mystique, they can’t re-attain what they created back in the day, before they fumbled it away to cut costs…🎸
Mythology! Exactly,
The quality of materials & components, the tolerances, cnc machines these Days, modern guitars are much better than the old ones.
It’s all hype, original tube screamer, the klon, they all sound the same in a blind test.
Well done sir.
I’ll never understand why folks out there think that guitars are screwdrivers.
Ofc you don’t need to spend half a million dollars on a les paul to get the sound you want. That’s obvious.
People seem to think that people who buy cool rare guitars do it because they need folks like you to tell them that they don’t need to spend money to sound good.
My point is really that- a 59 burst is a celebrity in itself, and that no amount of people saying that an epiphone sounds just as good are gonna un-cool a real burst. I’ll never be able to afford one either. But I’m js- guitars aren’t screwdrivers or mousetraps. They’re inspiration, and if you’re passionate about a real burst- nothing else will ever be that cool.
Of course they are a cool antique toy. But you can get 99% of the sound that history without the huge bucks. Honestly......If I win the lotto big time I may buy one, but I won't keep it. I'll do a documentary on how a real one played by ME with my recording and video gear in comparison to what I'm using now. I have offered to PAY someone who owns one to come here in my tiny little office/studio, so I show the REAL differences in sound. No takers, so thats why I used a clip from a '59 instead. there arent any demos like that out there that with the kind of knowledge I have. It needs to be done as a reality test for SURE.
But to any person with common sense and who actually plays these guitars the inspiration will quickly give way to disappointment and possibly anger when they realize they'd spent $50,000 or whatever on a guitar that is worse than an Indonesian Yamaha Revstar, both in sound and playability.
I agree with you . I've been playing mostly jazz guitar since 1968 and have run across alot of LP models as well as ES models. My friends from those days back in the UK had acquired some great LP guitars. But I can't honestly tell that much difference between a recent 2022 Gibson LP Standard and those old ones...PLUS the frets are in much better shape on a new one LOL I think it's down to snobbery, extortion also to some extent. In the hands of a good player a simple Squier Telecaster can sound amazing. Videos on ytube show us its possible. Thank you!
I can tell the difference. Gibson has failed to make PAF replicas forever. But my ears are educated in what to listen for, so many just might not know the difference. Thats not meant to be insulting either. Real PAF's do certain things that stand out, but you really have to play them over many years to be able to identify the character all of them have. The other thing is if you are using pedals, they obliterate the sound of any guitar and all you are hearing is pedal tone. Recently someone posted a kid playing one of Kossoff's vintage Les Pauls, but he used a pedalboard.....the guitar sounded awful, pedals destroyed that guitar. I used to use pedals 20 years ago, but I noticed all the Portland guitar heroes weren't using them at all. During a jam session, I got called up on stage with no time to set up the pedals and pedal power. After that I never used pedals again. I really need to sell them off, they just gather dust and some have gone up in value over the many years, some are from when I was 20 years old, 1970. I play them once a year and put them back in boxes, because they just dont make anything sound better and I don't need a gain boost, I just turn the amp up all the way and control from the guitar.
@@SDPickups I saw Paul play many times and spoke to him on many occasions since I lived in London for 42 yrs. Great humble guy but always loaded...anyhow, you are right about the pedals shielding the true tone of his guitar. He was using alot of phaser sounds towards the end and you really couldn't tell what guitar he was using.
I love the touch sensitivity of your pick ups the way the distortion is absorbed into your pick up pretty amazing beautiful depth plus clarity and Rich sustain
Thanks very MUCH! Touch sensitivity is an important thing, hardly anyone ever mentions that.
My Pop was a pro guitarist. He played a REAL D’ Angelico. He said Django Reinhardt probably played a guitar that was a lot cheaper than most. Pops always said a solid body guitar is a block of wood with pick ups. The sound is made mostly from the pick ups. Pops was right. The mega rich buy guitars for hundreds of thousands and put them on their wall cause they are for display.
The pickups are a big part, but junk hardware and junk harnesses kill all that. The first thing I ever did along this journey, back in the beginning I read that replacing harnesses in Chinese guitars would do wonders, well it sure DID. But its much more than just that. It all depends on how far you want to go to get a realistic vintage LP sound. Vintage LP's were made back when all metals and magnet wire were junk by our standards. But THAT is what made them sound so musical.
Absolutely. It keeps the prices high, but that's the American way I guess.
I have come full circle. I used to believe in tone wood, etc, then after playing for 45 plus years and playing hundreds of guitars and hundreds of pickups I've decided any decent guitar can sound good and I know what I like. I recently built a strat out of a Mexican body and EMGs with a Warmoth maple neck and fretboard with stainless frets and it sounds great. I'm using three SAs in the pick guard and I love it. I love passives too of all types, but I play mostly hard rock and blues hard rock and those work for me❤.. That LP classic is cool. If you like it and it sounds good to you with your pickups, then enjoy it my friend ❤
You don't have to be rich and have original PAFs.
There are bad demos. I'm shocked at the amount of people that can't play that well, or play okay, but have bad timing, etc..
Interesting conversation.
I will check out more of your videos sir. ❤
I subscribed sir. Very cool stuff. ❤
Funny story.....I lived in Santa Rosa where EMG is. I was a graphic designer for 35 years, good at my work, self employed. Nobody even in our town had ever heard of them. I found them in the phonebook and called to see if I could show my portfolio to them. I did ad campaigns, logos, book cover design, wine label design, a broad range of design work and won many awards. I met with them, showed my portfolio, went home and never heard back. 9 months later I get a call from Rob who asked if I would come over and look at some free advertising ad designs and give them my opinion.I sat down and looked some horrible scribbled ideas that looked like a toddler had thrown up crayons on a piece of paper. Well, you KNOW ME, I didn't even think about what my mouth was about to say and it was
"THIS IS ALL HORRIBLE CRAP." I waited for them to throw me out and tell me his wife or son came up with it. He smiled and said they agreed. My ad design and my photography was a simple black and white shot of the typical black plastic EMG pickup with a black guitar pick and the EMG logo on the pick. The title was "Take your pick."They were quarter page black and white ads, and within days of it appearing in the guitar magazines, the phones began ringing off the hook. They quickly became well known after that. Its what my business was all about. So, along the way they installed all the battery powered stuff in my ibanez Strat. I LOVED the tone controls and noiseless sound. BUT......at a band practice our other guitar player wanted to swap his ordinary Strat with my EMG's. OMG, his guitar sounded wonderful, crisp cutting tones, with HUM and so juicy, I was jealous. I went home and tore out all the EMG stuff and put a set of greay bottom CBS pickups in it and WOW. I never told Rob I did that, LOL. The battery stuff is not for me, give me Hendrix with loudly humming pickups and I'm happy.
some old guitars do sound good because the finish is worn and the guitar is nicely worn in and nice to play the woods are old high quality woods by that they were availble at the time do hate to see guitars brought to keep in the case for there inflated value no one wanted 59s in the 60s are they holy grails like you say vintage are great guitars but they can be replicated ,what surprised me was people trying trying a dozen guitars and picking one the holygrail ,but i have found most guitars can sound the same if they are fret dressed and set up better ,one of the worst sounding guitars i tried turned out to be one of the best i have played and sound after i spent time on it ,thanks for a honest video.
They can fairly closely replicated, but the majority of the hardware has not yet been done. I participated in the Four Uncles ABR1 replicas and did the reverse-engineering work to make sure we did it right, and not just make a cosmetic copy that doesn't sound right. Nobody else has replicated the PAF's as I did in my 22 year project to do so. Those bridges are a key ingredient of the old tones, but not the only thing. Gibson has obviously completely failed at reproducing those guitars. All they are doing is making pretty tops and suckering customers with that alone. Its all about money them, they aren't worth the ridiculous prices they are charging. Historic Makeovers corrects some of it, but not the pickups, not the bridges or tailpieces. This video proves you can get those tones with my work and the basic Classic I used. I don't recommend buying a Classic though, the neck joints are really strange, the finishes aren't nitro, the cheap Indian rosewood is too soft. Honestly my Japanese Elitists that GIBSON HAD MADE, DO have Brazilian fret boards, full maple cap, long tenon neck joints, mahogany backs though they are 2 piece. They ring like a bell. At some point I should put the x set in one of these but thats a big project hassle I have no time for right now.
Meh, all I know is YOU CANT TAKE NONE THOSE overpriced precious guitars with tiny necks and high action with you when you GO! Pff. Joe Perry, Slash, Bonamassa, Kieth Richards and that rich plastic surgeon that can’t play a lick will all fall victim to greatest equalizer in the world, DEATH.
You got it! Look at who owns these guitars now. Guys MY AGE and older. We don't have many years left on this planet. Why buy something thats going to belong to someone else in less than 10 years.
Bonamassa said it best when he compared a “Hendrix rig to a new esquire rig and said it’s not the guitar it’s the driver ,driving the sound. True . I love my newer , in good condition reissue gear.
And I would never pay double to have the custom shop relic my gear. I clean my guitars with a microfiber cloth before they go back in the case. I hope my grandkids appreciate them when I’m gone.🎉
Bonamassa is no expert. He once said that Centralab pots are THE "magic" ingredient and THE sound of vintage Les Pauls. Sadlly he has no idea what he's talking about. So, I bought 4 Centralab pots, they were higher values than you find with any pots these days. THAT was the ONLY difference I could actually HEAR. I took one out because the bridge didn't need to be brighter, 2 of the others fell apart. I put back a lower DCR pot in bridge and it sounded way better. The ONLY difference I saw in them is they were made of many pieces and the carbon tracks were a little bit thicker. Joe is using a HUGE freaking pedal board now, and about 8 different amps, he's going back to his Eric Johnson days again. I can't stand Eric John and don't want to hear Joe play that way. He seems to have trouble knowing how to play like HIMSELF.
I am at the opposite end of the spectrum- I play the cheapest guitar through the oddest amps....
To be clear, my only dog in this was to make replica PAF's that sounded as good as the originals. Only took 22 freaking years. Would never do another project that long and I won't be alive in 20 years from now.
I recently heard a recording that really gets the PAF sound. It was Albert King 'I'll Play the Blues for You'. -Live Midnight Special Aug. 17th 1973. I thought it might be a Dan Erlewine Flying V. But it's a right handed Gibson. . Nice to see you, it's been awhile.
The V guitars benefit from the minimalist harness inside them. The switch is right at the pots instead of far away up near the neck and only 3 pots. I have the Bonamassa Korina wood Amos replica and rewired it exactly as the originals were before the 60's V. Its similar to the SG harnesses, so there are no long wires so the capacitance the pickups see is noticeably less. I always wanted a V going back to the 60's but I dont play mine very much because they are a bitch to play sitting down, LOL.
@@SDPickups Cool, I never thought about the shorter wires, very good. Cheers from Ireland
Can I move there please? Our country just voted for a dictator monster. I LOVE RED HEAD GIRLS , TOO!!!!! Our family DNA is from Wales/Scotland, right up there. We have red haired people in our ancestry too.
theirs more than one way to acquire true golden age vintage feel and tones. if the right woods are combined with some actual vintage hardware you can get pretty dam close without dropping at least 400K$ on an original. i even saw a 50s lp special converted and topped with a maple cap and re necked to 59 specs, this particular example was a unique way to salvage a badly broken and slightly burnt lp special and it turned out great. i have an epiphone hb pickup that to me sounds closer to a paf than any of the paf clones ive tried. i can't explain how or why but it sounds fantastic! it was the middle pickup in a Korean made 90s 3 pickup eppie lp custom that a buddy wanted replaced for some reason. so i threw it in my back up strat as an experiment and wen i plugged it in i was amazed at how rich it sounded with a lil gain. i liked it so much i used it to replace a SD sh6 distortion that was in my dean flying v. ive tested this pickup vs a handful of other stock eppi humbuckers and even a few diff Gibson pups hoping to find good match but they all sounded muddy in comparison. it reads 7.2k and has a bright rich tone that has ben highly sought after even tho it shouldn't. ahhh that paf tone witch if you ask me varies from pickup to pickup in the originals, to the point wear the tone was not super consistent at all. for the first hand full of years things changed rapidly. my dad tells me that back in the 70s you could get a hold of a few pairs of pafs say 5 pairs and mix and match them up better than Gibson did.
You old Korean pickup sounds good because Korean magnet wire makers were doing everything the old ways in that time. I still have the remains of several 10 pound wire spools I bought back then. I tracked down that company a few years ago but they had modernized everything and the wire wasn't worth buying. They also made good alnico magnets. China does all that stuff now and its all very good. My "WAY" is thru science. You will never find any real information on these subjects in any forums or books etc. etc. I got sucked into this because I'm a technical man, a former graphic designer who had to face the change from analog artwork to total digital when Apple came out with the Mac Plus and grew a world wide empire over time. I can tell you that was a MAJOR change that caught many of us artists offguard. My Dad was Signal Corps and I grew up with soldering irons and Ham radios all over the house :-) EMG Pickups and Shrapnel Records were my clients, I helped EMG become known with my ad campaign work, catalogs, NAMM graphics etc. Shrapnel was all cover art design and production. Didn't like their pickups but it was fun. The science-based study of ALL those real parts, harnesses, hardware, every THING, gave me the BLUEPRINT to FOLLOW. 100% replicas are not possible, but I am able to get probably 98% of it.....
I’m a player that was in a band for about 3 years, I went from being a strat purist to a now enjoying my chibson LPs with humbuckers, I have a bunch of budget guitars,but none come as close to the feel of a real les Paul like my chibsons,which are about as close as you can get to the feel of a real Les Paul in your hands,I also have a black angus young SG with lightening bolt inlays,this guitar is almost exactly like a real one, especially the feel of the neck,I would never be able to afford a real one or would I even consider spending that kind of money on a guitar, don’t have any moral issue with owning these knockoffs,the pickups in all 3 chibsons I own sound really good, I really like epiphone classic 57s but they can be inconsistent in sound quality,not sure if Gibson 57s pickups are any different,as far as wire or magnets,new here so I’m going to check out some of your videos, but I’m always interested in hearing home built pickups, hopefully I can find a new source for PAFs.
Good luck with that. None of the other "winders" I know are doing anything right if you want a true PAF sound. You might try Wolfe, or anyone using automated winders, because hand wound "PAF" style will always give you incredibly muddy neck buckers. Wolfe has a real auto winder, but he's not really into vintage replicas from what little I know about him.
I agree with everything you said 100%
I always thought there was a lot of hype involved in vintage anything. Of course they can sound great, but so can new gear. I played a 1960 Les Paul that I thought was dead. And now my beloved 65 Princeton is gonna cost a small fortune to get running again.
Maybe it WAS dead. My next video is going to be about rotted braided wire. That stuff does not age well. The braide wire oxidizes badly enough that it chokes the AC frequencies. A simple replacement of all the braided wire could really make the guitar sound new. But it could be other things. Send it to me and I'll help you out for free, LOL.
Q.E.D. - I truly love the oomph and all the little ripples of frequencies sliding off those PAF-X's. I know almost nothing - I only have 46 years' playing, never owned a Les Paul.
thanks! I play them almost every day, they are direct technical copies of real PAF's and are a bitch to make, LOL.I started playing in 1965, my grandmother bought me a Harmony Bobcat guitar and the album "play guitar with the Ventures." But NO AMP, LOL. I figured out how to hook into my tube stereo at the volume pot and that sorta worked. The problem was it wasn't grounded, and if I played barefoot on the terrazo floor I'd get a nasty SHOCK! My Dad was so pissed that she bought the guitar for me, like he would ever do that, NOT.
Just stumbled upon your channel. I liked and subscribed in just under 2 seconds. Love your insights and your guitar playing. EXCELLENT. Thank You.
Thanks for the nice comment. I can play fairlly good for about 4 minutes, then it all falls apart, LOL.
You are much too humble. You are an EXCELLENT guitarist. I truly enjoy your videos and your playing. Looking forward to more.
Some think I'm too arrogant. But I'll tell you what, If you do something no body else even thought of and prove what you do works really well, if you don't tell anyone about it and what it took to do it, the hypesters and trolls will roll over you, and even if you do tell the truth and the whole truth, the forum children will try to tear you apart. That said I don't run ads on forums or anywhere on the internet, I only try to describe how I figured things out in a 20 year time span while giving nothing away, and present my work and compare it to the real deal PAF's and I leave it to my audience to judge how effective my work is in the real world. Some of the comments here, I can tell they didn't even watch this video, but just came here to prove their ignorance and childish wasting their lives tearing others down while doing nothing in their own lives that would set them apart from mediocrity and make a positive contribution to the world.
I started playing bass as a kid in the late 70s and I remember $350 Strats and $600 LP customs , the guitars are much better now all my old stuff is gone 😅 . Tne guitar world is all marketing in behalf of ths industry.
If were not careful guitar world will go down the Violin , Viola , Cello world where nothing is affordable everything is for the rich😮
The old Les Pauls were better then. The woods and metals of those times were real crap, and that's WHY the stuff sounded BETTER. Gibson has completely FORGOTTEN ITS HISTORY. The good builders at Gibson stayed in Kalamazoo, they didn't go to Nasheville. Thats who Heritage is and people who buy their LOVE those guitars. Most people buy guitars because of how pretty they are, not how they sound. At EMG when I did all their advertising ads and art for about 12 years, Rob Turner showed me how to pick a good guitar. Sit down, jam the wood of the guitar against your ear and play. If it sounds rather dead, never buy it. All the hardware, wood and finish are where the heart and soul of the guitar IS. Simple.
Great video. When I can afford it I will be custom ordering a replica burst from Gibson. Now here is the thing. Are there better built guitars out there from other builders? Yes absolutely no question about it. But unless someone builds an exact replica that is impossible to tell the difference visually from a Gibson it is not the same. The look of those Les Paul’s, the shape, the colour, the woods. That is as much of the attraction as the sound is.
If I just wanted a guitar that sounded like an old Les Paul well there are options for days.
That’s the problem when people say other guitars are just as good or better, yeah they are but they don’t look the same.
If I buy a fender telecaster for example it’s because I want a fender telecaster both in appearance and sound.
If the body shape and headstock is different than it’s not the same, I may as well buy something unique at the point.
Steve Hague and Tom Bartlett can do what you want. For a lot less money too, but not cheap. Gibson does a good job of making pretty tops, and thats what sells. But Bartlett and Hague can give you vintage woods and Brazilian fretboards when Gibson legally can not and theirs fail to sound authentic. I had a replica made by Santucci with everything authentic I wanted. I hate flamey guitars so we did a plain top and I asked for a baseball neck, which are much more easy to play, and adds more warmth from the extra wood. It was around $2500, and I did all the hardware, harness and pickups which saved me money (in trade for pickups). The Gibson may hold its value better, but look at the CC guitars they made. Guys bought them hoping they would gain in value, when the opposite happened because they made too many of them.
@ value doesn’t bother me. I don’t buy things to sell or as investments. Authenticity matters to me though that includes shape of the body, shape of the headstock, pots, pickups everything. That’s why I plan to custom order it because you can have them made to order from Gibson with the parts that you want to have used. I am still awaiting info on the Brazilian rosewood fretboard. But they haven’t said it can’t be done. They did recently do a limited run of Brazilian rosewood fretboard bursts.
@@SDPickups I’ll have to check out the two builders you mentioned. Sounds interesting.
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When you get down to it, it's like the Mona Lisa, the art world has decided that is the most valuable painting in the world. 1959 Les Paul's have been decided by the guitar world that is the Mona Lisa of guitars. If you could afford one your bragging rights know no ends. What the guitar sounds like and plays like are almost irrelevant.
LOL, you got that right. The thing, though, is that at my age I dont have years left in my life and I would do a documentary '59 versus what I can do, then I would SELL IT. I would not want the responsibility of having something so valuable that a single scratch on it would be horrifying. I've collected different things in my life, and when I croak, most likely my wife will throw all of it in a dumpster.
Tedious video, man
Knowledge isn't ice cream. Facts are facts. I don't want to be a social media star and dance for you :-) I'm 75 and I don't like people who talk real fast and say nothing. Use the speed control on youtube if you want speed talk :-) This subject is a thousand miles deep and took 22 years of hard hard hard WORK. I'm a technician and no details escape me and my endless curiosity LOL
another great video dave, totally agree that you dont have to buy a burst to sound like a burst, your videos made me get a true ABR-1 les paul classic, and actually its one of my favorite guitars
Well I changed everything in mine. It was a dog, harsh sounding, had good sustain, but weird neck joint, I never used it much. Our Four Uncles ABR1 replica I did helped alot, but it was still missing something. The X set fit it perfectly. But overall my Gibson Japanese made Elitists beat the Classic hands down.
All my guitars I did this work on them, watch all FOUR episodes so you see the guitar stock then watch it shoot flames in episode 4.
ua-cam.com/video/85IWlkPdO8A/v-deo.htmlsi=ThPsgCCferoWZIGF
Doubters & naysayers: Dave’s gear has helped considerably with my quest. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it (& compared it to the originals…). Step 1: get hold of it… 😎🤘🎃
Nice to see you here, thanks!
Great video, I love your honest appraisal and you pick ups. When some punk says, "get over yourself" well, you know on the internet you should beware when you "cast not your pearls before swine".
YOU GOT IT, LOL! Last year some guy ranted about me not being able to play guitar at ALL. :-) So I went to his channel to see how good a player he said he was. He was playing drop tuning heavy metal, couldn't do a solo to save his life and his sound was pretty ugly, LOL
Yes some of the 59 owners can't play, but they are often a nice people. And we as a listeners appreciate old material master of puppets, and justice for all etc
True!
I have a buddy who spends multiple thousands on custom shop Gibsons. None of them have sounded better than the Heritage H150 I paid a grand for.
Heritage are the ORIGINAL Gibson guitar builders. I hear nothing but good things about their work!
3:54 I would never send you a crappy comment. You are totally right!
Thanks. Man, I got some zingers I had to delete. One guy watched about 3 minutes and said how come I dont play guitar, LOL. He missed it all....
@ Now that everybody has a keyboard (typing) people feel compelled to chime in with what they think passes for wit. I’m guilty there but I’m trying to show restraint. Lol
The tone people want is the combo of everything. A 59 going into Marshall plexi cranked to the max (which is completely absurd, even back then I just don’t get it) with like a tone bender and an echoplex or something. It’s all those things together that get that sound. You could get good copies of any of that gear, put them together and have the equipment set up right and you’re right there. Without 400k
An echoplex and tone bender don't make your tone better. A cranked Marshall and a guitar cord will get you there, but not with any modern Gibson. The JTM45's that Peter Green and Clapton played in the beginning are only 40 watts, and Greenbacks is all you really need. But he also played Fender Vibroluxes, same 40 watts and sounded terrific. I did a video with my '73 Vibrlouxe, blackfaced and get those same tones. My office is so crapped up with amps, I can't even get it in here anymore, I need to seriously get it back in here to do some videos with, but it shakes the entire house when turned up :-)
@ I think you missed the entire point of my post. I’m agreeing with you. People are chasing tones they don’t even know where they come from. Examples: Zeppelin 1 being telecaster into supro combo, Van Halen biasing amp to the variac voltage, etc. Like you said in the video, you can do all of this cheaper with better build quality with tons of gear made right now. I was just using tone bender and echoplex to make a point, hence the “with like a” as in the added things. Blackmore used that tape recorder as a preamp, Brian May, Rory Gallagher and Toni Iommi all used treble boosters. You can’t count that out as not making the tone better, it’s part of the sound. And Page used an effects unit, he talks about it in a huge documentary and is well established as being one of the first in England to have a fuzz and use it. Like I said I like the video and agree with you. Good PAF copies in any decent copy of any of the old amps and effects is gonna get you there.
@@sweptinblack Sorry, the trolls are all sliming their way here and its hard to tell who are and who aren't. Apologies. I have a DVD of Page at an early concert in a school gym. He used his pedal and his amp started CLIPPING, horrible horrible sound. It must have been right when he got his LP and thought the pedal work the same way as his Telecaster. YEP, most still think Communication Breakdown was a Les Paul. LOL! I was a Rory Gallegher fan back when no one knew of him in the USA. A German kid here in the USA let me play his album. WOW, he was a force of nature. We never saw those treble boosters over here, never saw one. The only booster I ever saw and bought was the LPB1 booster that plugged right into the guitar's jack. It was kind of useless overall. Finally I don't use any effect other than the amp's real spring small reverb in the MANN. No gain channels, straight into the amp, turn it up all the way and control from the guitar, same as all our heroes from then did. Thanks for the support. I'm dumping all the trolls now, they are incredibly dumb, hurting people feeds their little egos, LOL. Intelligent conversations is way out of their league.
I’ve been playing for 30 years (‘young’ gen x!) and if there is one basic concept that is true it is that it is *dramatically* easier to chase tone and gear than it is to practice and learn how to play and improve
In fact, thanks to UA-cam and the incessant infomercials that are produced many guitarists entire ‘guitar lives’ are spent lusting after gear and twiddling settings
It is quite the contradiction to see some guys put down digital and talk about holy grail tube amp tone when their sound consists of numerous pedals into a tube amp lol
The worst I saw was a kid who got to play Kossosff's LP........THROUGH A PEDAL BOARD. It sounded like someone put the guitar in a garbage can full of water. He thought it sounded great, LOL. There are more bad videos out there of vintage LP than there are good ones. As for digital amps, NONE of the impressed me. They sound good up to a point, but all those micro chips and PC boards leave the high treble sounding harsh and it can't be EQ's out. Like the Katana SS amps, they sound pretty good, but I hear the same things in all of them that I can't stand. The modeling amps are the worst too. That stuff is fine for children and beginners, but over time your ears get educated and then you get rid of that stuff sooner than later, and it all ends up on the Goodwill website for really cheap.
I think your right. I've suspected the whole vintage market is just a con tbh.
There's that many guitars in existence now that if the old ones didn't increase in value the new models wouldn't sell at all. And they too would not be as expensive.
Vintage keys and organs are genuinely different and definitely better than sampled sounds of modern keyboards.
Only if their serviced and functional of course.
Guitar brands have tried to seek into that class of instrument and its BS
Vintage organs all have vintage amplifiers in them. You can sometimes find those old amps for sale.
Maybe im wrong but i think the reason that Late 50's les pauls are so expensive is because theres only about 1,700 in existence, and thanks to guys like Jimmy Page, interest in the Gibson Les Paul exploded in the 70s . Same with Dumble amps, there were only about 300 or so made and were played by guys like Robben Ford, so you're going to have a lot of hype about the gear that talented guitarists use.
Its funny that my comparison to the 1959 with the guy playing the Dumble, my CHEAP $450 Garnet MANN sounds as good as the Dumb to me. But my amp has no gain controls, you just turn it up and PLAY, controlling it from the guitar.
Like they say in the "Storage Wars" show...the person with the most money in their pocket can own it. Yes, it means lots of really fine instruments get side lined and put in collections and hardly (if ever) played by great guitarists.... this is why I cheer for Joe Bonamassa... he collects and plays his vintage guitars... should prices come down...absolutely.... the market is artificially inflated by EGO and "good ole boys" club mentality. And the supply and demand is false. I prefer my brand new PRS guitars for around a grand to ANY Gibson or Fender. I would put my Blueridge acoustic above a Martin or Guild in tone and playability... hands down. I have been playing since 1970, and I have owned them all...
I've been playing since 1965. Yeah I like Joe, but he has a few weird ideas. Remember, owning a vintage guitar does not make you a vintage guitar expert. He once said that Centralab pots were THE SOUND OF VINTAGE LP'S. What a crock. I bought a set of them and the ONLY thing different was they were mostly high values like 560K and up. They don't sound any different than a modern 560K pot. Not only that, 3 of them fell apart!
All you have to do is watch Keith Richards play one through a Tweed and you'll hear what they should sound like when in the hands of someone who knows what they should sound like( even though he's rich, he did earn it).
When I was 16 my Mom bought me a 58 or 59 Les Paul. I don't know which it was. I just know that the neck was huge and a bit hard to play with the strings available at that time(late 50's early 60's). My friends all had Strats, which were great, and I really didn't like the Les Paul. I sold it for a few hundred plus a new Pbass. The Les Pauls weren't worth much at the time and I was surprised when Gibson started making them again in 68. I was playing a 60's SG at the time which I thought was far better than the Les Paul I'd had. I wasn't looking at the guitar as an investment just as a tool to get a job done. In hindsight I should have kept but at the time it sucked. I had a player in my studio recently with a real 59. He let me play it and it was ok. It didn't record particularly well and just sounded like a good Les Paul. I damn sure wouldn't have paid 250,000 or whatever for it.
Man I love the fat necks and had one on my replica done. Its the same kind of story with me, I bought a 50's Strat, big fat neck in 68 for $200, was hard to play and the Black Diamond strings made it just really hard to play, and it got me kicked out of the kiddie band I was in, because I couldn't bend the strings. THESE DAYS, it too would be called a "Holy Grail" guitar; who knows, maybe even SRV ended up with it, for all I know. This whole BS greed thing is just out of hand, and the Gibsons just never figured anything out other than paint them pretty and they'll sell.
There WAS one old LP back then I played that destroyed my HEART. It was a 50's LP Special with 2 P90's. My amp at the time was one of the very last Blackface Deluxe Reverbs. I HATED THAT AMP. It was biased really cold, and was super shrill. So at a band practice this guy drops by and let me play it. It pushed that little amp into monster overdrive tones. I begged the guy to sell it to me, I offered him the motorcycle I drove in on and he refused. They had to PRY it out of my hands, I wanted it so bad. Pretty funny. I had several LP thru the years, they all sucked really bad, and YES I also bought that LP Deluxe, it was garbage quality, plywood, awful minibuckers real tinny. I ordered some buckers for it from Gibson put them in and it sounded even worse. Got rid of it real fast thinking I'd be stuck with it.
@@SDPickupsthat’s odd. I’ve played several LP Deluxe, and they sound great, and is definitely not « plywood »
I ended up trading a es-335 for one
Yes it’s a pancake body but still solid pieces.
My older friend regrets having sold his back in the 90s
They weren't solid wood as I recall, but yours you said wasn't an original, I bought mine brand new in 1970.
@@SDPickups I did say mine was an original. I’ve tried and seen many and they are all pancake bodies. Solid but multi pieces. Nothing wrong with them, even though different than the 50s sound.
All those "vintage" classic rock sounds from the 60s were made on near enough brand new guitars, or 2nd hand Les Pauls which would have been less than 10 years old at the time. Same with the amps. Is anyone buying up 60 year old strings?
That is true, but ANY guitar or pickups made in the 50's to early 60's are going to sound better than anything modern. But Gibson didn't make bridge and neck PAF's, they just wound them and thew them into boxes. So you end up with a LP that has a really harsh weak PAF in bridge and an overwound powerful PAF in the neck. That guitar is never going to get much love unless the PAF's are switched. It doesnt mean its a bad guitar; why no one ever even mentions that FACT is because the level of intelligence out there is uhhhhh......Those crappy materials are what gave us the "musicality" of crude magnet wire thats full of impurities in the copper, the open hearth Bessemer steel mills that used de-ox minerals that ended up IN the steel. Its the exact same thing with new amps from those days. All carbon comp resistors, mustard caps, Sprague Bee caps. And don't forget the TUBES. Vintage tubes beat the heck out of any being made now and get high prices for NOS. All my amps use vintage power tubes, they last forever and make my amps do things no modern amps can do. Transformers sounded better because of the same reasons. Actually yes, if search around and if you can even find any, vintage guitar strings also had the same crude ingredients and methods of manufacturing. Vinttage transformers bring high dollars as well. I really wish I could do a huge data/document dump to show everyone what I discovered, during 20+ years of actual reverse-engineering which clearly show in laboratory data how different everything in materials back then is vastly different now. But its all the blueprints of how I make my replicas. And even then I can't get about 98% of the same thing, using processes and tricks I developed thru the years of constant nonstop prototypes and experiments. A small example---the slugs themselves, nobody sells actual reproductions of those anywhere. They are heavily beveled and the wrong lengths. Any time I had an idea or theory, I wouldn't go look on some "fauxRum" I would test my ideas by actually MAKING things to test. One idea that led nowhere was to wonder what would happen if I made slugs that were hour glass shape. This would drastically remove the MASS and weight of them, and you wouldn't be able to see that once installed in the bobbins. It did drop alot of the mass, but the results of playing the replica PAF with these slugs, pretty much nothing useful happened. You read so many boozy theories and bad information on forums, there's really no technical information there at all. I love to experiment and love making things myself and even the goofy ideas bring more real life knowledge to add to the bible of my writings I've done thats nearly 200 pages, and will probably never been seen unless I can figure out how to make sure it gets read by everyone after I pass away, in the not too distant future.
Your pickups stand right next to the originals and sound just as good
Thank you!
I believe out of all the 59 Les Pauls , a whole lot of them are not . Because ... What ? There is an endless supply of them ? And if you can afford one , you can have one ? OK ... Can I order one on line ?
One thing I’ve never seen is a 59 Les Paul up against a brand new off the shelf unmodified Les Paul standard. Why not
I have offered to PAY someone to bringe a vintage LP HERE, so I can do just a similar video. No takers. Those dealers sure don't want a video showing that what I do can compete with a vintage LP and do it without spending a trillion dollars. It would be pretty embarrassing :-)
Exactly what I want to do.....
If some wants to bring a vintage LP to my house and sit here while I demo my work against an original, I WILL DO JUST THAT. I'll PAY them to come here. No takers so far.
It's like buying a $50,000 watch or an antique car. It isn't about unobtainable performance. It's about the historic significance and collectability. A $100 quartz Casio watch will arguably provide more accurate time than a $50,000 Patek Phillipe watch. A 2024 Toyota Camry will absolutely SMOKE a 1957 Porsche. Of COURSE you don't need to spend that kind of money if all you want is a tool for making music. It's not about that.
I agree with you with most everything. The fact of the matter is whether it’s a guitar or a painting or a house or a piece of property or a Lamborghini, only wealthy people with money can afford those, that is just life from the beginning of history. That is one of the reasons we buy reissues and replicas. You can put the same set of Pickups in two different guitars, and they’re going to sound differently. There’s also, what tone are you looking for?, an A2, A3, A4, A5, magnet, etc. I would put my collectors choice Mick Ralphs with my PAF’s in it up against any original burst, and or my replica build with my pickups in it. And yes, you have to have some great amplification to go with it. So yes, all of these original vintage tones can be copied and replicated. If I owned an original Burst would I brag about it and talk it up as the greatest guitar that can’t be duplicated?, probably. People who buy and or invest in these pieces want them to retain their value so there’s always that and the mystique built around it that keeps the value up.
There is no standard for magnet recipes. Thru the years I've bought from many different magnet companies, and each grade sounds different depending on who MADE it. All alnico magnets back in the early 2000's came from KOREA, and virtually all pickup parts from there too. China ended their monopoly and sold alnico mags practically at COST, so the Korean companies went out of business. Too bad because they made really good magnets, but Chinese make great magnets too. I have dark sounding A5 for instance, same with all grades and where they were made. There's a limit to how close PAF's can be copied. There's that 1-2% high treble that modern ingredients can't match. Some guys think all you do is hire a metallurgy lab, hand them a vintage part thats all you have to do. NOPE. One has to be extremely analytical and know the right questions to ask the materials manufacturers. You get the lab results and the computer spits out a generic "similar" data. Does NOT work. You also have to analyze the modern equivalent then compare the two results. The only thing you can buy thats close enough to vintage are the baseplates. NONE of the other parts are correct. Thats when I ponied up the money to get a mill and a metal lathe to make my own parts in the closest alloys, carefully tested and chosen. Things STICK OUT. Here's a good solid comparison video I did, using a real PAF from '57-8. Its coils were destroyed and only a machine guided rewind could get it working again. The set was here for months waiting for me to find time to make it functional again. So I decided to see if I could hear differences between modern sand cast alnico bars and the original magnets in them. I bought back sand cast alnico bucker bars around 2006 or so. I asked two magnet companies to see if they could make them, going on a theory that sand cast might be less dense and might have a more airier sound. Well that theory was wrong, but now all the Chinese companies copied what I had done, LOL. Also compared the alloy pole screws I had MADE in 3 of the known alloys I found with my metallurgist mentor. There were actually FOUR alloys used, going back to the 1940's P90's, but they were nearly pure IRON and fastener companies can't get that kind of stock. Nobody makes PAF replica pole screws that are correct, the ones most of them buy are so skinny they often fall out of the pickups. I had mine done the same diameter and big heads copied from the originals. Also the original screws were threaded by PRESSURE dies. They were not CUT like now. So take a listen through studio headphones or good monitors and see what you can hear. Most won't hear the differences, but there's that tiny 2% or less high treble thats not identical to the original magnets and alloy pole screws. Its something that can't be duplicated, but the diffs are so small few notice it. The other thing is that just using data from a simple chem test does not work at all. My first prototype using that data was alot closer than the many different magnetic alloys I tried on my own, but the real sound wasn't there, and I had a real PAF I still own as a reality check to whether I was getting closer or not. Years later I was able to duplicate as much as humanly possible...
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To be fair, I think there is also an association bias. You have Clapton, Taylor in the Bluesbreakers, Page, Green, Bloomfield, Gibbons, Walsh et al. all cutting the early recordings that kicked off the whole Blues/Rock guitar craze. Those cats using bursts and the amazing tones are still driving the fetishisation of now vintage gear. That and Blues Dentists ;)
No kidding, LOL. I made alot of original pickup designs years ago, really good sounding pickups using things I learned from many different and weird vintage pickups. They all sound real good, but I learned real FAST that guitar players won't use any pickups that Page or others played. Talk about a CONSERVATIVE group of people. Did you know Gibson made a PAF Minibucker, with a real PAF decal and using all the same materials used in real PAF's. NOPE. They are fantastic pickups, but no one even knows that. If I do a sound demonstration and I tell people one of them is a real PAF, RIGHT AWAY their mind will gravitate to that pickup and hear it differently thinking its a super expensive valuable object. Thats why the X set I did a BLIND audio poll, and most thought the X's were the real ones. I KNEW that if I wrote which ones were which, they would gravitate to the NAMED PAF as being the real ones. 60% of the viewers swore the X set was the real PAF's. In THIS video I named them so you know which are which and already I can tell who's going by whats written instead of what they actually HEAR :-)
@@SDPickups Thanks for the reply and for sharing your expertise. There's a lot of variables in getting "that sound" too. Those tones we all love were actually picked up by certain mics in certain places and routed through great old analogue desks and studio compressors, reverb etc. Great to hear you help players cut through some of that old BS. Cheers.
What a fantastic video to be honest have a wonderful day and also happy v5 veterans day also today is remembrance day in Canada ❤😢
Thank YOU! I am from a military family, the ARMY. Dad was a combat photographer in WWII. We moved almost 22 times in all the years with Dad. I hate moving, but we had no choice. Never had any lifetime friends and no place I call "Home" really. It had its benefits, but much of it was traumatizing.
Why knock the Classic?
I own several from the 90s along with custom shop les Paul's from 2000s to present. And I find myself playing my Classics more often.
I, of course, rewired them and put pafs in.
That paf x sounds as good as any other name brand clone.
You sell these?
The problem with the Classics is all the hardware is junk, the neck joint ins't long tenon like the Elitists are, they are pretty resonant but nothing like the Elitist LP's Gibson had made in Japan. I have 7 of them and they make the Classic look like a toy. I put our Four Uncles bridge in it which helped alot, replaced all the other hardware, but it still just didn't do it for me, its not a great guitar. The X set is the only thing that saved me from dumping it. Nowdays Gibson puts junk Nasheville bridges on them that are Chibson quality. Pretty much ANY Gibson LP, no matter. how expensive they are need all the hardware and harness and pickups replaced. My Elitists smoke any Gibsons hands down. I have several customers who bought from ALL the name "winders." They tell me none of them get what I can get. And there's a reason for that. They all buy their parts from AllParts, StewMac, Philadelphia Luthiery etc. etc. But NONE of those parts have any relation to whats in the real PAF's. Many of them HAND wind which guarantees failure to get anywhere close. There is not one single person out there that did all the science-based reverse-engineering I did, and without that they are just shooting blanks into the wind. They were somewhat simple pickups but what made them so musical is all the crap materials of those times, and without the exact knowledge of ALL of that, one is never going to get there. My work went over ALL the parts, the wire, the magnets, all of it, so I have the blueprint of them from every year they were made. I built my own CNC traverse to be able to perfectly match ANY winding pattern including my own hand winding patterns. You have to get every tiny thing right or it doesn't work.
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"Pro" player has way too much gain dialled into his amp. Defeats the purpose of his demo really. Your clean lead lines however sound beautiful and musical - makes you wanna really try your set-up. Well done!
Someone said its a Dumble. I have no idea if it has a gain channel or what. It was just the closest to my Garnets, which have no gain channels. I just turn it up all the way and thats the only gain I get. The secret of great tube amps is that the circuits are very simple. Garnet was the KING of simple circuitry. Inside my Garnets there's very sparse components, it looks like there's hardly anything there. I have a '65 Traynor too, and its the same simplicity. Garnet made amps for many other companies, thats why those are called various company names. Mine were made for the MANN company, there are many others under different names but all made by Garnet. The ones that use 6L6 power tubes like mine are the ones to try to find. Mostly you have to search Canadian websites as they are not too common in the USA, and one reason they are still very affordable. I have two and both were priced around $450+shipping.
@@SDPickups His amp looked like a Two-Rock boutique deal. But thanks for the info on your own amps...sounds like you have a couple of gems there!
Your pickups sound great, depth,clarity, with lovely warmth and tone.
Thanks!, I get to play them every day, LOL. I listen to them a lot to see how they age over time. There was one set, the HD Lite that didn't age well and got too bright, so those got eliminated over time. Then some models depended on a single roll of magnet wire thats no longer made, by AWC, so those are off the list too. These are all my PASSION in life!
Your pickups sound great! Am I allowed to say that nice pickups in a nicely-set-up solid body guitar is the 90% that really matters? It's so simple, people overcomplicate the last 10% instead of just getting the 90% figured out. The body and neck don't know what country or year they were made in. They are like a nice "stage" for the pickups and the strings. That's it. Just give the pickups and strings a decent platform to sing on and it's gonna sound good
Not really. Pretty much ALL guitars come with crap harnesses. Must replace with correct Gavitt braide wire on all 3 switch leads. Replace cheap pots with CTS, replace tone caps with Jupiter Condenser Bee replicas, aluminum foil or tin foil. Tin has more "sag." I refused to have my PAF replicas included in amateur "shootouts", because their guitars have crap harnesses in them that are tone killers in themselves.
Folks just do whatever you want to do. The high prices on all of that old vintage gear is just business. If it makes sense to some people, then that's their business. If you're not into that kind of thing then just ignore it. Make your own decisions. If you have the money and you buy one and you can double your money in 5 years then why not? That's my point. To each his own. I'm not a big fan of these crazy high prices but at the same time I kind of understand why they have become collector items. They are the original guitars and there's a limited number out there. The crazy high prices reminds me of real estate. My parents bought a beautiful house in Montreal in the 1950s for $27,000. I live in a condominium in Vancouver that now is valued at $900,000. None of this makes any sense. It's just the way the world is. Don't let it get to you too much. Don't let it get in the way of your creativity. Don't get bitter about all the stuff. Focus your time and energy on creation. Music. The love of the craft.
I think you're missing the point of this video. Dealers will always tell you their old guitar can't ever be matched in tones. I proved that wrong in this video and many others and more to come. They are selling lies. The same lies that Gibson reissues or Murphys with BB gun holes in the top can, either. Its all literally propaganda to protect their absurd pricing in both vintage and "reissue" guitars. The older Classic I used in this video is nothing like any vintage Les Paul, but through hard gained knowledge I'm able to get just as close and this video proves it. Of course all advertising is all lies, on TV, forums, and Gibson especially. I'm seeing comments on this video that clearly shows they did not even WATCH or listen to what I presented. But then there's the guys who listen on cheap Androids where the audio is complete garbage. I've had several professional audio engineers listen and actually watch the entire videos instead of the trolls living at home in their Mom's basements in middle school :-) I come from an advertising background as a graphic designer, where our job was to make crap look like exotic high priced products. I tell you I got so sick of doing that for 35 years, I fired my Shrapnel Records account, walked away from EMG pickups company. I did this video to expose the BS lie that ONLY a near million dollar guitar can deliver. This really hit a nerve as you can see among the comments and the astonishing 19,000 VIEWS and still climbing. Definitely attracted the little troll boys in their basements. I get annoyed by lies and hyped manipulated videos and the blatant GREED, that has turned old guitars into a religion that we dare not ever question, their off the charts misdirection to make you think owning an old guitar is going to make you famous or play better. All the worst stuff of Capitalism. Part of my job is to debunk the lies and tell anyone with ANY kind of LP type guitar how to make them sound like a million dollar guitar depending on how deep you want to go. We are facing a president who crashed the economy in his first term, left us huge debt, he will do it again, and those guitars in bank vaults may soon be worth alot less that anyone can afford.The vintage guitar market CRASHED not all that long ago. Those guitars are eventually going to stop working. I see so many vintage PAF's that just died from AGE and environment, and players sweating acid sweat killing the coils forever. So, I GET what you are saying, but greed is greed and lies are lies, and by the reaction of this video, MANY agree with me. I've been sent many Gibsons to do installs, and not one of them were any better than some Chibsons, BUT if you do the things I showed in the Four Episode videos "The Les Paul That Isn't" can make a $300 guitar sound so so much BETTER and more vintage than any guitar company will ever be able to do without following the real materials and designed parts to the last tiny ingredient. Authenticity is not cheap, but you pay a ton of money to Gibson only to get something mediocre at best. Yeah, I'm alone in the forest railing against the MACHINE. Appreantly I'm not alone in this at all....Thanks for your comment.
I’ve played many les Paul guitars I’ve never played a 1959 but a bunch of great ones and I have $180 Ibanez I bought 15 years ago it sounds just as good and plays better than every single one of them
Yep, Gibson quality control has always a big problem....
I have been playing for 30 years, my grandfather who raised me had been playing guitar 50 years before I started playing and so therefore I have played all of those vintage guitars because he owned them. Nothing to write home about. at this point in my life I have probably played thousands of guitars and nothing about those vintage guitars makes me want to go back to them, especially not at that price range. I have $200 guitars that I have upgraded the electronics and hardware on to play awesome I have $2000 guitars that play awesome there is nothing about a 1959 Gibson that is worth $250,000 or even $25,000. in my head, I have a cap on the price that I am willing to spend on any guitar and that is around $3500 the end. And it better be a really nice guitar even in that price range. it doesn't matter if I were the richest doctor in the country, no way on God's green earth would I spend that type of money on a guitar. those dudes are smoking crack. I have seen guys play cheap Epiphone and Squires through an equally as cheap fender blues Junior and make that shit sound amazing. in my humble opinion, if you think you need an instrument that expensive to sound good then you need to learn how to play better. now if I were some type of antique collector and was not interested in music at all I may invest in some of those guitars but that's about it. and then there is the fact that Gibson especially was going through a lot of trial and error in those years and most of those guitars weren't even right anyways. the design of the instrument was great the execution of it sometimes not so much lol.
There are some older LP's like the Greco's and others that can be fantastic and even have some of the older hardware that can be better then modern junk Gibson stuff. Even not that long ago SAMIC is what the old Korean Les Pauls were. Korean Les Pauls had long tenon neck joints too. They can be a real bargain and really good guitars for very little money. I have a 335 Epi made in Korea and its as good as any modern Gibsons are. Of course they really benefit from hardware and harness work to match the 50's stuff. Gibson sure went off track when Henry ran it into the ground with those horrible robot tuners :-) Gibson has become a victim of its own corporate greed. They know that some people won't buy a guitar unless it has a Gibson logo on the headstock, but there are so much better LP versions out there from Japan like Edwards and others, not to forget the ORIGINAL builders at Heritage, who don't make ridiculous "reissue" claims and skyrocket pricing. The vintage Les Paul DOES need to be kept alive like the replica builders do, who build them the way they WERE built, but then you get the best of the best Les Pauls that Gibson can't compete with. I'm glad Gibson is still alive, just wish they'd get off the corporate hype machine and making "investment" guitars that actually don't hold their value, and aren't professional axes that you'd gig with for fear of getting a SCRATCH on it. :-)
@@SDPickups yes, unfortunately with Gibson it's either junk or a $10,000+ investment. I primarily play Ibanez RG models these days because I really like the neck and it seems like any guitar you purchased from them is playable and you may have to upgrade the electronics or maybe the tuning machines but outside of that it's a pretty good guitar. You can pick up a Japanese made used version from the early 90s $600/$900 with great hardware and DiMarzios all day but if I want a Gibson it's another story. You either have to go on Reverb or Guitar Center and purchase a used Gibson marked way the hell up beyond ridiculous because it has the Gibson logo on it or purchase a vintage instrument or a custom shop instrument that is going to cost you an arm and a leg. some of them are very nice, but when you can literally go out there and find other instruments that are just as nice for literally in some cases 1/10 of the price it's kind of hard to fork over that money for Gibson. got a question for you, since you manufacture pick ups you may have a little bit more insight on this then me and I would like some advice. Who makes good pots with a full usable sweep? or how do I figure out what resistance I need? I realize the common theory is 500K for humbuckers and 250K for single coils, but then I see other manufacturers like Gibson using odd numbers that do not correspond with that and I remember the old vintage LPs had a full usable volume control and tone control that did not drop off and every guitar I pick up these days seems to do that. Why? I realize the old 1950s pots were MIL grade and such but I also read that the values were different from your standard 500K but what is really going on there? I can sort of see how the tone pot value could affect its usable range being that vintage humbuckers definitely sound more mid range heavy then modern windings and designs, but I want a usable volume control as I like to do volume swells and simply turn down my volume to clean up instead of switching channels or using some type of overdrive. The only Guitars that I have found that do not seem to have this problem are guitars with active electronics.
@@SDPickups I want to pick your brain, you have reverse engineered a good portion of the old Gibson guitars and there is something that I would like to know. how in the heck do I get my volume pot to have a full usable sweep? all of the old vintage guitars that I played had a usable volume pot. Most of them these days do not. Why? I have went hunting down the answer on groups and forums and I have been told many things such as it's the value of the pot, 1950s pots were mil grade etc. even though I am not a Gibson player mostly I would like to get a usable volume in my other guitars with more modern pups, even though I play higher gain stuff I still like to roll my volume back to clean up my signal and I like volume swells. also, it seems that active electronics suffer from this problem much less than passive electronics and I was also curious about that. I realize how the circuit works for the most part but definitely have some voids that need to be filled in. would like to know if there's anything I can do to mitigate this problem by either changing values or purchasing better pots etc or is there something else I'm missing?
@@9th_note I hope you get this reply, I am seeing comments that don't appear under my video and don't know where they are coming from, like this one of yours. What Gibson does is use LINEAR pots. They are NOT AUDIO pots. Audio pots have a small treble drop off when you turn the volume pot back a little bit.Doesn't bother me and is actually more useful. Go buy some CTS Linear pots and try them in the volume pots position. But the Centralabs were NOT linear pots. So I stick with what was used. Audio pots are more "musical" sounding. I use the audio pots from CTS that StewMac sells, I like their taper and they are easy to modify to. higher readings by shaving the carbon tracks, which is a pain in the azz to do, but works well....Hope you get this....
@@SDPickups thank you for the information I will try those for sure. Regarding the comment not appearing under the video, this comment was a reply to another comment that I made so I'm thinking the problem may be that it's appearing in a different place for some reason. I'm not sure I'm not a UA-cam genius or anything because I'm old and this is a little confusing for me as well lol. by some chance do you sell modified pots? You mentioned shaving them, would you be willing to do that for someone else? I have a guitar that just needs a single volume pot it has no tone control, I am currently in the process of putting it together from parts and it's mostly done but the electronics are the last thing that need to be completed. I want to put some type of a boutique gum such as yours or something similar in the bridge position. This guitar is going to get used for 1980s hair metal and blues so I do not want a super high output pup, something in the medium range. it will just have a single pup a single volume and a Killswitch. and lastly, do you make a pup that fits this criteria? Like what would you recommend for that? Also if it's easier for me to contact you in a different place that is a little bit easier for you to use or for us to communicate let me know I can do that instead.
Well said. A good old myth… and the current one is about needing a Murphy Lab Paul… not a common or garden custom shop anymore… and poor you if you play a standard or… oh no… an Epiphone. Haha.
I think your tones were similar enough. Let’s remember, in a mix, they will sound even closer… and if playing live, most people listening won’t even care.
I have a standard from 2000 and it sounds pretty nice thank you very much. And I’m lucky to have that.
I try to leave the cork sniffing to Joe B.
There's one simple thing. you can do. Take a magnet and see if it sticks to the thumbwheels and bridge posts. For some time they used steel wheels and stainless steel ABR1 posts. This kills sustain and sounds harsh. To this in reality and demo video recording watch all FOUR videos in this series. The Gibson bridges are just awful, these days they are putting cheap Nasheville bridges in everything unles you're buying one of their 75,000 dollar Les Paul, ha ha. Great way to get cheap chinese tones. I spent two years with the Four Uncles guys, reverse engineering my vintage bridges to copy all the REAL materials and design enough that now guys with "Burst" are buying them to replace worn out old bridges with toasted saddles.
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I think it is impossible for any person to be objective on a divisive topic such as this, as we all have our own inherent biases and agendas that shape our opinions.
What I can say from my experience is that a great guitar is a great guitar, period, regardless of when it was made. I can also say that in my experience the chances of picking up a guitar and having it be great seem to be higher with vintage guitars. I can also say that I own a recent R9, and a ‘64 335 with its original PAT pickups. I haven’t tried SD pickups, but the R9 has a set of JM Rolph’s, another high quality builder and I can say that both guitars sound excellent and neither is clearly better than the other.
The one thing I can say from the comparison is that the PAFs sound more microphonic and wanting to run away into feedback. Depending on your style this may be a good or bad thing.
Thanks for the interning and informative video.
the FACTS that the vintage LP's use all vintage metals, vintage magnet wire etc. etc. are much more musical than any modern equivalent. This is not opinion, its science and you can hear it. You might want to watch this four part series, watch all FOUR or you wont get it. You will see a Gibson '60 VOS be transformed by changing to closest vintage materials, turn from a boring guitar with no character into a screaming weapon! Then the opinions about dealers is not really an opinion, the facts are that they will do anything to sell a guitar, so they use amps no one can afford and hire professional session guys to do the playing. If you read through all the comments you will see many guys who owned the vintage LP's before they became religious artifacts and rich man toys, alot of them HATED those guitars.
Working in the advertising field for 35 years as a professional graphic designer (clients like EMG Pickups, and Shrapnel Records), hype gives me a sour taste in my mouth, its so over done. You can find demos of guys who can't really play well with these guitars and they don't sound so wonderful like a professional dealer demo. You could end up buying one thats never going to sound like a pro studio player did.
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Good video, thanks Dave. The real PAFs sound to me like they have a slightly lower peak mid freq, and tapered high end when compared to your pups. They are close otherwise in every other way.
Thanks, but........You're not taking into account that the X set is NOT a CLONE of the 1959 PAF set. It was never supposed to be an attempt to copy any SPECIFIC set. It was made to hear some wire I acquired
using my favorite recipe for my HD59 set and the vintage Belden sets. High wind bridge and low wind in the neck for piercing clarity. Both '59 PAF's in the video are only 7.6K, the X PAF is 8.8K, so they're not a match and not meant to be a match. Thats why the real '59's have more treble because there's much less wire on them. Between the '59's and the X set I like the X set better personally, and in the blind poll 60% preferred the X bridge over the real PAF's for the same reason mine have a bit more warmth. 60% also swore the X bridge was the real PAF :-)
NOW, at one time I DID make a head to head attempt to CLONE a SPECIFIC SET OF DOUBLE WHITE 1959 PAF.S So watch this link below here. I dont use that rig anymore because it was just too edgy.....Now with THIS video, its a completely different amplifier and speaker and microphones. The speaker was a Celestion Alnico 12 inch speaker, that is blisteringly bright. I got rid of it eventually and now use Greenbacks. The amp was my 1973 Silverface/blackfaced Vibroluxe, which is a pretty bright amp itself. I really should have used its own speakers, but this was years ago. The microphones were one condenser mic and one SM57 on the cab, no room mics.
The Clone set is the same amount of winds as the the PAF's, both neck and bridge. I didn't have our Four Uncles bridges back then so bridge is a Faber bridge which is similar on the hight notes but too bassy compared to originals.
So, THIS experiment was a controlled experiment to see how close can my methods and knowledge can get to the most valuable pickup set you can buy in the world. These sold for $12,000 after I repaired one small coil break at the surface of the coil. Even though the audio is too bright for me it greatly lets you hear the tiniest details of both sets. My current rig I am really loving it now with the vintage Garnet and Greenbacks and the JTM45.
I hope you understand that if you want to darken a pickup you wind it with MORE wire. Coils self-choke themselves the more wire you use, hitting the entire frequency spectrum in different ways depending on what wire you're using. Let me know if you don't understand this stuff.
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@ I understand! Was simply pointing out the differences to my ears. Thanks again, will check this other vid out
@@missioncontrol6037 Thanks, hope you enjoy it. That was the Black Beauty set which was the clone.
In the double white clone Black Beauty set, listening now, I can hear a definite difference in the modern wire Black Beauty set. Especially in the neck bucker. I have wire closer to that, but have used most of it up and some AWC seems to be falling apart, the insulation is flaking off. The vintage wire was lowerer annealing and thicker than now. Thicker insulation opens up the sound a LOT. We dont have much choices in magnet wire now. They banned benzene around 2004 or so and we lost all the good wire makers because of that, like Essex and others, they just quit making it. Worst day ever.....
Totally agree with your angle here. "Tone" might be one of the most nebulous concepts out there. A pickup is a primative electrical device that is EASILY replicated. There is no magic, there is no mojo. There's only good vs rubbish playing and know-how of the instruments and gear. all the rest is human effort/emotion/craft. That's where tone comes from. Even a Stradivarious sounds like a joke in the hands of a bad player.
You've gone completely off track here. "Easily replicated?" A vintage PAF IS A TECHNICAL DEVICE. A microphone is a technical device. Many vintage microphones sell for thousands of dollars. Why? Because they "hear" in ways that modern microphones can't duplicate. Like PAF's they were made of materials that don't exist anymore. A guitar amplifier is a technical device. A 1959 Bassman will cost you thousands of dollars. Why? Because ALL the components, even the metal chassis, is made of materials that don't exist anymore. You can try to copy one, but you'll never duplicate. There is a book written by an engineer on the '59 Bassman, who analyzed ALL the components, including the metal chassis, the speakers, every tiny techincal detail. His conclusion was that they cannot be duplicated because none of that stuff exists in OUR times. Doesn't matter if a crappy player can make it sound "bad" or not. He also explained that every component in the amp affected every other component, you cannot isolate one single thing that made those amps sound so great. Its the same thing with vintage PAF's. NONE of those ingredients exist in OUR TIME. You can't isolate out any single thing thats responsible for the "voice" of those pickups. I looked at it ALL, with the help of materials experts who manufacture those materials in our time. Nothing is identical. I'm the ONLY person who spent near a quarter of my life, using materials SCIENCE to identify every little tiny thing in their makeup to IDENTIFY the REALITY of what they are. This isn't some junk I read on some forum, I have stacks of documents from their laboratories of the many kinds of tests that were done. To protect my work I don't disclose hardly any of that information because it took an insane amount of time to understand WHY those materials react the way they do as an entire unit. Data numbers don't tell you how it SOUNDS. That part involved a zillion prototypes played for months to hear it, and to gauge how they sound over TIME, the reason being that a brand new pickup goes through a settling process that can take months for all the parts to settle into a cohesive whole. With modern materials this takes about 4 months, if I use vintage magnet wire it takes around 6 months. There's a similar thing going on when you replace a capacitor in your harness, you won't hear how it really sounds until you play the guitar for several days. You can't just judge how a tone cap really sounds immediately, because it WILL change. I spend my days listening and listening and listening, your average guitar player probably won't notice it, especially if they are pedal babies :-) My ears are highly educated from more than two decades of mastering my craft. "Tone" CAN be quantified, because I did it. You need to get yourself a network frequency analysis digital device to use with a computer and look at the frequency chart. You use a frequency generator to see how guitar frequencies work in the real world. You need to own an LCR meter to look at inductance and capacitance readings. After awhile you don't need that stuff anymore because you know how it all SOUNDS. The gear for me was as a teacher of what happens when you do this or that in a guitar pickup. The only use my LCR meter gets anymore is to measure capacitors. People always want to think this stuff is stupid simple, and you can bet most amateurs don't even know what I'm talking about. Winding patterns was another thing I researched myself. You're not ever going to find any engineering books on winding patterns and its effects on audio frequencies. I built a CNC traverse controlled by an old PC. It gave me the ability to precisely wind any pattern I could dream up, that would precisely be identical to every coil I wound. I did just that with probably around 20 patterns over a couple months. So now I know what patterns can do. The vintage PAF winding patterns were stupid by-the-book formula. The earliest PAF's used the same patterns as P90's for a short time then changed to one single pattern the rest of the years. Likely it was a different machine. Those old winding machines used GEARS to change the pattern. They weren't sloppy machines, but precision devices. None of this stuff is simple, amateurs WANT it to be simple, its just an excuse to avoid doing any work to master the craft. Even the Fender ladies who hand wound their single coils were taught a METHOD of hand winding, it wasn't random as most seem to think. I agree with you that amateur guitar players can make anything sound bad, its NOT in the fingers, its HOW you use your fingers. If you just keep your guitar knobs all the way up all the time, you miss an entire world of sound control. End of rant :-)
I'm With You on this stuff and i really enjoyed this ! Thanks !!