Jim Lillard explains the historic Gibson PAF, 57 Classics, Burstbuckers and more..... very insigtful

[@avivpinto4013]

Vintage 57 classics are just great 👍

[@WayneMemphisMojo]

I can personally vouch for the excellence of the Memphis Historic Spec. (M.H.S.) pickups ... I only wish they sold them individually. They are amazing!

[@BaileyBrothers]

agreed. thanks for the feedback wayne

[@TheIronWord]

I love the 57 classic and 57 classic + i think they are better than the custombuckers. I have had worse luck with custombuckers in the neck position. The 57 is clear and detailed and not muddy.

[@fredmanteghian5913]

I appreciate history from the perspective of people who were there "in the day" so thank you very much Jim Lillard. My limited experience with Gibson humbuckers are Classic 57's that sound excellent on both my early 201x Les Paul (just off the rack ebony) and an Epiphone Johnny A. They sound different on each, correctly relaying the tone of the solid vs hollow bodies. I also have a 345 from 67 with Patented pickups and a 335 from 81, first year of the Dot Reissues, with Tim Shaws. Those both sound a bit more detailed and lively than the Classic 57s and are cherished. I never played a Burstbucker whose tone I liked, but I could happily live with Classic 57s and certainly both the Patented and Tim Shaw

[@Dang...]

fred: My experience is the same as yours: Tim Shaw from '83 and classic 57s are excellent.

[@donlessnau3983]

Great stuff. Good job Bailey Bros.

[@gerritcuypers]

Good explanation of the different types of Gibson pickups. I have a 2018 ES-335 "Anchor Stud bigsby" pelham blue with MHS pickups, a 2011 Les Paul Studio with Burstbucker Pro pickups, a 2015 SG Standard with '57 Classic pickups and a 2019 Les Paul Special with P90 pickups and they all sound awesome ! Gibson always stands for great quality !!!

[@raulgrangeiro]

Awesome content!

[@svitlanaostapchenko5642]

This needs to come with a GEEks R rating 😹 however as an amateur I found it fascinating knowledge…tnx👍

[@whiteon5627]

57 Classics are the best outta there

[@user-cd2cz3tv3u]

⁠i hate 61 Burstbuckers…if i replace them with PAF clone style pups (wizz paf, monty paf, SD seth lovers), are they going to sound pretty similar to the 61 BB??? I love my 490r/498t in my SG..i know its more modern but it works well for an SG classic rock..alought of gainy output and mids with a nice growl. im looking for something more true to a Les paul, i dont want 2 axes sounding the exact same…if the PAF style pups i mentioned sound very similar to the 61 BB’s (too uneven, to much contrast from the low strings ti high strings, the bridge is nothing special imo & doesnt really seem to have much sustain or character..), i was looking at SD Slash 2.0 alnico II pro pups, i know those def dont sound like the 61 bbs..but they do seem to lack some clairty/dynamics that i hear in the monty PAF’s (thers a youtube A/B of the 2 in an LP). Jw your thoughts since youve played them and hard to base a $500 choice on youtube demos where most of the time i find ppl using effects/overdriven reverb tones lol. Thanks & appreciate any insight!

[@SDPickups]

Vintage PAF's were not "sloppily wound." I've restored and dissected probably a couple hundred of them at this point, often completely unwinding them by hand to check the pattern and other things everyone else completely ignores. They used ONE winding pattern and were all automated winding. Gibson's attempts to recreate a true PAF replica are all miserable failures, he also neglected to mention that Custom Buckers came from Ron Ellis, a guy who attempted to copy my early pioneering work with the magnetic circuit parts in vintage PAF's, but because I don't talk about the real meat of what I did, he really missed the point and got no further; in my reverse-engineering project of 17 years, six of those years were spend alone on the metallurgy of vintage steel and magnetic circuit parts from a 40 year time span of every model Gibson pickup made from 1937-1977. Their capacitors are a joke, they are cheap film caps cast inside a plastic shell, for which they charge $70, huge markup. Film caps were only ever used in vintage Les Pauls in '61, not before that. There are many big problems with Gibson guitars, their "reissues." The harnesses are basically junk and best completely replaced for huge gains in transparency and good tone. Then there's the hardware, most of which is completely opposite of anything found on a vintage Les Paul or other models. Another set of huge gains can be made by replacing all the hardware except for the tuners. With their True Historic Les Pauls, they finally made an attempt to get it right, and I suspect they have been reading alot of my Facebook posts and earlier forum posts, ranting about how they don't seem to even know their own history, they only seemed to suddenly have remembered about "hide glue" in the last 2-3 years, while all the replica builders have been doing that for years. There is no reason why they should not be doing these vintage correct things on all their other Les Pauls because its not more expensive to do things right.

[@9unslin9er]

Are you Scott Grove? Nice rant LOL. I own a '16 LP Traditional with '57 Classic/Classic Plus and an '18 Explorer with Burstbucker 2/3. They are relatively equivalent spec-wise. I listen to any Classic Rock album, be it Led Zepp, AC/DC, Free, Journey, Guns N' Roses, and... Either one of these pickup sets nails the tone. 99% of the sound is in your playing and attitude. So please, FUCK OFF, dude. Gibson, is a dying company. Their atrocities speak for themselves. But their exceptional pickups are not to blame for their failures.

[@vechap]

Errrr... When he say "I" in his comment, and you think, perhaps even a little bit about SD and what it stands for, and who created the company SD... Hmmm... I wonder who it could be...

[@andyfulton9603]

vechap Stephen's Design pups, not Seymour Duncan

[@andyfulton9603]

I M Never had a chance to use them but apparently his pups, Stephen's Design, are some of the best PAF replicas out there

[@shred5]

Guys like Jimmy Page and both Youngs were famous for using overwound pickups as well. Not that that's a bad thing, but the '57 Classic will end up being closer to those pickups as they make them a bit hotter than a true PAF. The Tim Shaws were the first attempt at replicating the PAF sound from Gibson, and to this day they remain the most accurate attempt as well. I have Tim Shaws in my Les Paul, a friend has a '57 Classic Plus and '57 Classic. Both are nice pickups, but the Tim Shaws have this openness and sparkly clean the 57s can't replicate and the 57s push an amp better. If you're curious, there's a video on Foxxy Gear Reviews on youtube comparing Lollar Imperials to '57 Classics, the original PAF or Tim Shaws are more like the Imperials. Both are solid.

[@frantisca]

I have played a lot of Humbuckers through the last 5 decades. Good ones, bad ones: my experience is they are all different, as there is little consistence even in a same batch. I haven’t been much impressed by Tom Holmes’ 57 Classics I’ve played, nor by Tim Shaw’s that I found a bit hot to my liking. Between the ones I liked best are: AL3 unpotted CustomBuckers, Lollar Imperials and Seymour Duncan’s SH2’s as well as Whole Lotta Humbuckers. Seymour Duncan’s pickups are very consistent and give you a lot of tone for your buck IMHO.

[@steveregnier7317]

I can’t use a string winder on my custom shop 330... they drilled the tuner holes crooked on the top three tuners, the winder hits the wood. Now I don’t have too high expectations from Gibson lmao.

[@dodgedandle8311]

Did you not bring this up with the shop we’re you got it or Gibson themselves , that is not good ? ….

[@ronnyyulianto8553]

Love the way he say potensiometer

[@redjet4810]

Good stuff

[@MrTPF1]

This is just about the pickups, but the rest of the guitars were the same way in the 60's and 70's, ie: hit or miss. That's why I laugh at everyone trying to find "vintage" guitars. A lot of them were CRAP, but there were some nice ones in there too. Today's guitars are FAR more consistent and higher quality.

[@SDPickups]

I was there, am 71. Quality Gibson guitars pretty much have never been as good as when they were in Kalamazoo and real craftsmen built each guitar. The materials and processes of the pickups were at the peak for great sound, because of the crude materials technologies of the time. The REAL secret of vintage PAF's for instance, was because the magnet wire, steel, and magnet were crude stuff, that quickly became modernized enough around '65 that the magic evaporated. The problem with Gibson was when they tried to recreate it all starting in '68 era, is they seemed to have been hit in the head and forgot everything they'd known. The first Les Paul they brought back was the LP Deluxe. I bought one brand new, and it was GodAwful, and quickly got rid of it. Now these days, they are considered "vintage" and cost alot, but they are still plywood and awful weak mini-buckers. But pedals fix that, uh hmmmmm ;-). Gibson has kind of sold out to greed. Ultra high priced guitars claiming to be reissues, when nothing about them is anything like how the originals were made. Wrong hardware, wrong harnesses, wood drilled full of holes, neck joints that are nothing right. Acrylic "nitro" that smothers the sound. Historic Makeovers can fix that part. A recent horrifying thing they are doing is using cheap steel anchors to mount the bridges. Thats pure Chibson methodology, cheap and bad for tone. Last year I traded for a replica, with all the right glues, real nitro, real Brazilian Rosewood neck, FAT neck, everything on and in it done the old ways. You can see it in my Episode 3 from last week and my replicas with vintage 50's magnet wire. Unfortunately Gibson can't do that. They have improved, but they consistenly refuse to LEARN about their own vintage guitars. They had to be shamed into using hide glue in the neck, but yet defy using urea formaldehyde glue for the top. The new owners are all CEO types, lots of hype, consistent QC problems, and prices real musicians can never afford. We need to hold their feet to the fire, but they are selling to kids who know little about the real history and don't even know who Michael Bloomfield was ;-) Their guitars are "good," but thats as far as it goes.

[@realtruenorth]

SD is right,,there is "vintage" (old crap) and there is >vintage ( golden era). Two different vintage.

[@sid35gb]

Which Gibson humbuckers are believed to be the most dynamic?

[@lowqualityguitarvideos]

vintage tim shaw PAFs from 1980-1984 if you can find them. (about $600 on the used market for a set, but can find individuals for around $200-250 per)

[@tushar8998]

Custombuckers

[@Dang...]

@@lowqualityguitarvideos Agreed! My Tim Shaws in my 1983 ES335 sound so sweet!

[@rnarizona9686]

Well, I think that you did a fine job with the video. Yes, it would have been more precise and scientific if you had used the same guitar for all the comparisons, but this was close enough. It certainly helped me decide on the replacement pickup I want to put in my Epiphone Les Paul, and it is going to be the GFS. Thanks for the video, it was quite timely for me. And you saved me some money.

[@jonrarrick2527]

which GFS pkups are you going to use?

[@thomasadams675]

Centralabs 500K pots do measure at about 440K!

[@thomasadams675]

Audio taper for TONE and Linear taper for VOLUME!!

[@thomasadams675]

You guys actually didn’t measure pots back in the day? Like you’d use a 1meg or a 200K or anything??

[@pepticon]

Ohh cmon gibson, nowadays you made all those so called PAF with poly wire with dark purple coating color! and the specs keep changing every few years. the early 57 classic is quite good though, the one which has specs close to original tom holmes design of 57 classic.

[@jerryyeaaah15]

yet the 57s are balance wound so...

[@chalacochoro7023]

:-/ my head exploded at 525

[@JonathanPantele]

Ha!👍

[@RealGreggStallings]

Gibson faked up bumblebee capacitors and sells them for 112.00 in the historics -

[@SDPickups]

"Historicly" wrong.

[@garyeckel1656]

...ya and how did that sound? thin ? tinny"? what do you think was a good balance in tone? bla bla bla...ohms n wraps, who cares"

[@ΓιωργοςΜαμαλης-υ3ζ]

the gibson now is shit...