The Quest For Tone

1985 Gibson Double Cut XPL / Potting The Pickups

2008-11-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, DON'T try this at home! Just kidding but really don't!

In my never ending quest for the perfect tone I couldn't just leave the guitar alone. I brought it to a friend’s house, Bill Carruth; he is THE best amp guy in the country. He tried the guitar and we both agreed the pickups were great but had a bit of microphonics to them (Microphonics is that squealing or knocking sound you hear when you tap on a pickup. ). So I asked him what I could do, he is my mentor as well. He suggested I pot them in wax. Well the idea of submerging my new pickups in wax wasn't very appealing to me at first. Well one quiet Sunday with not much else to do I decided what the hell! I did some research on the internet and it seemed I needed beeswax and paraffin.

"Mix canning paraffin and 20% beeswax by heating them in a pot. Paraffin expands and contracts with temperature changes, and the beeswax nullifies most of that. The heating is the dangerous part—never try heating your wax on the kitchen stove or in a microwave oven because hot paraffin, and especially paraffin vapors, can ignite." This came from the Stewart- MacDonald site: http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/instrument/Electric_guitar/Electronics/a-lindyfralin.html

Well I live in a rural town in Vermont and there was no beeswax close at hand. Someone suggested these ear wax candles that are made from 100% beeswax. I guess you light one end and put the other in your ear? NO THANKS! So I bought them and got them home only to find out they are cloth covered in wax, no help. I went back to the health food store and found a pure beeswax candle that worked great. My wife volunteered a small crock pot and off I went. It really was pretty easy just had to keep an eye on the temperature. Don't let it go over 150 degrees, try to keep it as constant as possible at the 150 degrees. There is a lot of information out there but basically just submerging them for a few minuets and do it a few times. Well it worked great and the pickups still work!

Believe me it doesn't always work out this well!

1985 Gibson Les Paul Double Cut XPL

2008-11-04T10:42:00.000-08:00

Sorry I must of nodded off there for a moment. Well it looks more like 4 days!

So back to the XPL, The Tim Shaw pickups usually have the patent number stamped on the bottom and a ink stamped number indicating that they are Tim Shaw PAF's.

when I bought it I didn't know anything about the Tim Shaw pickups;

"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. It had a nice top, thin binding in the cutaway, nickel-plated parts, more accurate sunburst finish and smaller headstock, but the body shape, body size and three-piece neck, among other details, were just regular production. It appears that Gibson still didn't understand the demand for an accurate reissue, because Gibson accompanied the Heritage 80 with fancier versions: the Heritage 80 Elite, with an ebony fingerboard that had no relevance to the reissue market (although it did have a one-piece neck) and the Heritage 80 Award, with gold plated hardware that also had no relevance to the reissue market. "

The Quest For Tone

2008-10-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

This is one of the best kept secrets out there!

This is a 1985 Gibson Les Paul Double Cut XPL

You may have noticed the head stock, Explorer ? What most people don't seem to notice is the Bound Body, Bound Neck, 4 Knobs 2 V and 2 T and especially the Tim Shaw PAF pickups!

Even the best and most expensive DC's dont usually have these appointments.

The best part is you can still find these out there at very resonable prices!