MA Pete
Pattern Thin Convert!
Thank you for your kind words MA Pete.
Yes the Mules are a nice classic kick in the balls PAF. They're super sensitive to the slightest change and ergo they respond to your volume & tone knobs very well.
Definitely at the British end of things though a la Clapton, Kossoff, Page dependent on where you set the volume and tone.
What they will not do though is your lighter PAF sounds - Think Bloomfield, Peter Green etc very well. I mean they'll sound pretty killer but not perfect for that kind of PAF tone. They do Gibbons pretty well though! I tried jamming to La Grange and was not disappointed.
Now that I'm where I want to be though, in catharsis: I do not blame the original 58/15LTs. I think they were authentic to Holy Grail tone. But as stated as a caveat by PRS and well any other PAF chaser/repro manufacturer out there. Holy Grail tone is different for everyone because those pickups between 57-60 were very inconsistent not only year on year but even piece to piece in each production batch.
So maybe LTs were Holy Grail pickups but just not my Holy Grail. The Mules got me there but maybe they will or won't work for you?
There's a legend that Bernie Marsden's Beast and Kossoff's All Right Now Burst were both Clapton's at one point but he traded them and settled for something else because he never rediscovered the Beano tone in any of them and switched to 335s & SGs!
So if it differs for them, who're we really, noodlers & enthusiasts? But at least we know we're not wrong in looking beyond what's given to what could be.
The most exciting this is I'm sure this thread and others like it are reflected in the new 2020 models. Anyone see those videos the ones with Tim Pierce & Howard Leese and then the CME one?
About the scews, Bareknuckle are kind enough to supply "historically correct" mounting hardware.
The only thing I believe they say, that's not 100% accurate to original PAFs is that there's a Bareknuckle logo embossed to the bottom plate instead of a plain one with a Patent Applied For sticker like other cloners. The rest of the materials used are pretty faithful as claimed and I think reflect in the sound.
Great reply, thanks!
I had seen the Howard Leese / Tim Pierce video, that is terrific! I am a huge fan of both of them, and had the opportunity to meet Howard and trade some guitars with him over the years. (It has been great fun to see him out there gigging my former guitars!) That is a great demo of them comparing the tones, and it is pretty mind-blowing.
I hadn't see the CME video, that was pretty cool as well. That to me was a very "real world" test, I thought the 594 sounded the best of any of those guitars, by a long shot.
Back to the pickups, the stock 5815 LTs are absolutely AMAZING in both the bridge and neck of my new SC 594 Semi-Hollow and DC 594 Hollowbody II guitars. Something about those LTs and Semi-Hollow and Hollow construction, WOW! Those won't be going anywhere.
In the SC 594 Prototype, based on finding my old notes posted above, I am going to start with the 5815s. The set I snagged on Reverb came in yesterday! I will report back when I get them in and get a chance to test them out...