Vache, mais arrêtez ! Vous me donnez faim à force...
Info intéressante (si pas déjà trouvée) : les techniques de Jess Loureiro s'apparentent beaucoup à celles utilisées par Tim Shaw, concepteur de micros Gibson PAF Reissue dans les années 80.
They were all made in the same place. They all had a seperate inked in number on the base plate in addition to the stamped patent number.
The first three digits will tell you the type. 137 is a neck pickup with less windings and 138 is a bridge pickup with more windings. There is a date code after the fist three digits. 1381280 would be a bridge Shaw made in December 1980. Not all of them had the silver PAF sticker.
They had PAF coilforms with the square/round inspection holes and no T on top. The wire is a bright copper color.
The magnet was a special Alnico V that was longer like the 50's style and rough cast. This is a special magnet and
the closest to a vintage PAF in tone to my ears. They had white plastic spacers and braided connecting wire.
They
typicaly read under 8Kohms and seem to average out in the middle 7's. They
sound very big and powerful in spite of the low readings.
Tim Shaw who designed these pickups under Norlin restraints did a remarkable job IMO. They really are a neat sounding alternative to most humbuckers. the Magnet , as was explained to me was "
Unoriented AlnicoV" I do not know what that means other than it isn't a regular AlnicoV. It seems that AlnicoV has higher gauss mesurments or something to that effect than any other type of pickup magnet, and Tim said that
by deleteing a final step that puts a full charge or orientation on the magnet, the tone was closest to what he was after. It was a long time ago, but that is how I remember it. I really don't understand all the fine points of Magnetism so I could have some terms mixed up. Basically it is a real cool sounding, Big Al approved magnet. This is what I put in my Antiquities.
From Gibson on Shaw:
"Whether it was rivalry between plants or increased market awareness,
the Nashville plant jumped into the reissue action in 1980. By this time, one of the most glaring deficiencies of new Les Pauls (compared to the originals) was the humbucking pickup. In preparation for its first attempt at a reissue,
Gibson assigned engineer Tim Shaw the job of designing a reissue of the original Patent-Applied-For humbucking pickup-within certain restrictions. "This was 1980 and Norlin was already feeling the pinch," Shaw said, referring to Gibson's long decline through the 1970s and early '80s. "We weren't allowed to do much retooling. We redid the bobbin because it was worn out. We got some old bobbins and put the square hole back in. We did it without the T-hole, which stood for Treble."
To replicate the magnets,
Shaw gathered up magnets from original PAFs and sent them to a lab to be analyzed. "Most were Alnico 2's," he said, "but some were 5's. In the process of making an Alnico 5, they stick a magnet in a huge coil for orientation, but
an unoriented 5 sounds a lot like a 2. They started with Alnico 2 and then switched to Alnico 5."
Shaw discovered that the original magnets were a little thicker than 1980 production magnets. "Magnetic strength is largely a function of the area of the polarized face; increasing the face size gives you more power," he explained. So he specified the thicker magnet for the new PAF.
Wiring on the originals was #42 gauge, which Gibson still used. However,
the original wire had an enamel coating and
the current wire had a polyurethane coat, which also was of a different thickness or "buildup" than that of the original, which affected capacitance. Norlin refused to go the extra mile-or extra buck, as it were. Enamel-coated wire cost a dollar more per pound than poly-coated. Shaw could change the spec on the buildup without additional expense, so the thickness of the coating was the same as on the original wire, but
he was forced to use the poly coat. The difference is easy to see: purple wire on the originals, orange on the reissues.
Shaw later found a spec for the number of turns on a spec sheet for a 1957 ES-175. "It specified 5,000 turns because a P-90 had 10,000 turns and they cut it in half," Shaw said. In reality, however, originals had anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 turns, depending on how tight the coil was wound. Shaw later met Seth Lover, who designed and patented Gibson's humbucker, at a NAMM show. Lover laughed when asked about a spec for windings, and he told Shaw, "We wound them until they were full."
The spec for resistance was even less exact, Shaw said. The old ohmeter was graduated in increments of .5 (500 ohms). Anywhere between 3.5 and 4 on the meter (3,500 to 4,000 ohms) met the spec. Consequently, Shaw pointed out,
there is no such thing as an exact reissue or replica of the 1959 PAF pickup. There can only be a replica of one original PAF, or an average PAF.
As Gibson would find out in the early 1990s, the same could be said about the entire guitar.
Shaw's PAF reissue debuted on Gibson's new Nashville-made Les Paul Heritage 80 in 1980. Compared to anything Gibson had previously made (which is to say, compared to nothing), it was an excellent reissue of a sunburst Les Paul Standard.....
- lors des essais, il a découvert que l'unoriented Alnico 5 sonnait très proche de l'Alnico 2 => il a conservé la solution UOA5 pour ses micros
- les PAF originaux était bobinés avec de l'enamel 42, mais pour des raison de coûts, Shaw a dû se débrouiller avec du polyuréthane
- les humbuckers Gibson conçus par Tim Shaw avaient une résistance de 7-8 Ohms
