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Stew Mac Parsons Street Humbuckers


cherokee6

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I just finished installing the Stew Mac Parsons street PAF's in my old Epiphone Sheraton ii. I also put in a harness from BCS guitar with the Bournes mini pots. (I was too lazy to make my own.) The quality of the harness is top notch: great soldering and I like the schematic and mods they used rather than many I've seen on the internet.

The pickups are AMAZING! :wOOt Turned the guitar into an ES-335. They sound like PAF's and fully bring out the semi-hollow sound. They are very clear - almost too clear and deliver a lot of "punch". I found I needed to tone done the brightness on both pickups to get the sound I wanted. I found in playing with distortion the pickups do not require very much to give them the "growl". I used the Alnico 5 in the neck and the Al 2 in the bridge. The only downside is that the al 2 doesn't have quite as much output. Possibly a soldering issue? I'm not willing to disassemble the setup at this time to figure that out ( you know what its like to install an ES-335 harness!) ;)

Based on this experience I may try their Tele pickups for my build.

I bought the PAF's with the gold covers. Excellent deal for $118!

One other issue: Go to the Stew Mac home page first before going to the Parsons Street page. For some reason if you go directly to the pickups page from your search engine, the pups are $148 for the set!

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Not to take away from the OP, but how does a PAF sound? How many of those who talk about "the PAF sound" have actually listened to a real PAF pickup? I have, but not in a controlled environment meaning I really don't know how the pickups themselves sounded.

We tend to use "a PAF sound" describing anything we like except for the distortion pickups type sound from the 70's. Were the original PAFs overwound? Under wound? Or what? In reality Gibson used a very poor QC during the first years of production. No turn counters were used and no DCR checks were made. They simply let the bobbins spin until they were full. Very scientific... Seth Lover designed the bobbins to hold 5000 turns of wire. Allegeable there are PAFs with as much as 5500 turns of wire and as little as 4500 turns of wire. The difference is 22%! And the coils weren't match. They were thrown in a big box after being made and the next person down the assembly line simply grabbed two bobbins and made a pickup. The pickup could consist of two very hot coils, two very moderate coils, two very un-mached coils and every possible combination in-between. The magnets used also varied quite a bit, although not as much as in the Fender factory (some claim fender used more or less whatever magnets they could find that had the right dimensions in the early years). So with all those variables there are not a single PAF sound, there are infinite PAF sounds. So when a lot of my fellow pickup winders use the term "PAF sound" that really doesn't say a thing. Having that said, I too use the term as Duncan and a few others have cornered the PAF sound as a slightly under wound, slightly brighter sounding pickup and as that have become the industry standard description, I need to use it too to make the customers familiar, to set a common lingua, even though I really don't like to use such a vague, and really not very correct, description

Sorry for the rant... Nice to hear that the Parson street pickups are good. The SM long leg bace plates are considered one of the best to use in terms of "vintage correctness"

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Yes, what you say is true as to the earlier PAF's in quality and consistency. I guess I equate the sound I now have like an earlier es-335. It seems to have the more "classic" sound that would probably be close to the Gibson '57 classics (which I was originally planning to use). By the way, I readjusted the A 2 as I figured they had a little less output and the result is that the output improved. I'm very happy the way it sounds now. The highs on the a2 still need to be turned down for my taste even though the harness was modded to keep the them rolled off. Otherwise it gets a bit nasally for me. The A5 is very smooth and sounds great for jazz and rockabilly along with rock. By the way, I'm only playing through a Marshall 30 watt amp., so that probably effects the sound, too.

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Even though it is a PITA to get it out you could try using a 350 K Ohms pot (I guess it comes with 500 K) for the tone of the neck pickup. Or a 250 K pot

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