The PAF Humbucker Clone - Let's Buck the BS!
When it comes to what makes PAF’s, PAF’s… So many go on and on about cosmetic matters such as “tooling marks”, stickers, and other such nonsense. That’s basically just smoke and mirrors. If you know anything about how pickups actually work, its all about magnetic induction & resonance... and then how the pickups interpret that information, and then how that signal gets sent to your amplifier. That’s what makes a PAF Humbucker pickup sound as it should. It seems that many pickup makers these days are only concerned about making pickups that look like PAFs. Of course Doyle Coils TRU-CLONES PAFs do indeed look like the real thing, but more importantly, they have that elusive authentic tone that only comes from a true understanding of this exclusive, very specific formula and proper building technique. Our Doyle Coils TRU-CLONES PAF pickups are meant to be Vintage correct in how they look and feel, certainly… However, we don’t spend a whole lot of time on things like tooling marks, and circles inside of squares, etc, etc. That stuff brings absolutely nothing to the party… we assure you! We are not trying to fool anyone that these pickups are the actual original late 50's PAF pickups. They are not meant as an attempt to be a counterfeit product, hence you will not see the “Patent Applied For” sticker on the back of Tom’s pickups… just his proud maker’s mark.
There’s an actual science to why those old PAF pickups sound as they do… and sure a little “black art” and mojo get thrown in for good measure. What we spend our time creating here is all about understanding electronic and magnetic induction, transduction, proper magnetism and flux field, improving the signal-to-noise ratio, vibrational resonance, current flow and hysteresis... and of course, all of that equals TONE. Oh that sweet, sweet tone… the one that’s in your head, and on that favorite album you grew up listening to. We get it… after all, Tom was there! He has enough stories to fill ten books. You should hear the one about Les dragging Tom into NYC back in ’69 to meet these young English guys that were recording their 2nd album. Turned out to be some band calling themselves ‘Led Zeppelin’ or some such! Tom had already been working with Les for 5+ years at that time.
Tom has handled and worked on countless early Kalamazoo Gibson pickups with Les Paul right there at his side. Tom and Les took them apart, put them back together, reverse engineered them, experimented on them, installed them in countless guitars, rewound them, added stuff, took stuff away, compared them, and explored the innumerable variables that made these humbucker pickups sound the way they do. They changed the magnets, degaussed them, added copper winding wire and took some off, changed the pots and caps, switches, signal paths, etc, etc… All in the interest of chasing that elusive balance, signal, and “perfect tone”. Tom has been making custom hand-made pickups since the mid 70's... way before it was "the thing to do" or cool, or trendy. Hell... even before most of today's pickup makers were out of junior high school, for that matter!
Now all of that knowledge, experience, understanding, and decades of hands-on experience with “The Master” is available to you in these amazing PAF reproduction humbucker pickups. Our Limited Edition Doyle Coils TRU-CLONES PAF Humbuckers...