The elusive PAF tone, covers??

[Zhangliqun]

Someone above made reference to metal filings stuck on a cover when it was removed... can the materials used for some pickup covers become magnetized? Wouldn't a cover made with ferrous material be a huge tone sucker?

No covers I know of are made with any iron in them.

Some covers do sound better than others but I don't know of any that don't have the copper layer. There may be some, I just don't know of them. RS Guitarworks makes aged covers that I strongly suspect are made of unplated covers that are polished and then aged.

 

[BrazenPicker]

Take a vintage PAF cover and a 60s chrome PAT # cover and touch each with a magnet. See what happens there?

Most of us have neither, so just tell us. :wah

 

[gcat]

The plating process is what deposits the copper layer (microns thin), whether it's nickel plated or chrome, the first dip is always copper.

 

[jwalker]

The plating process is what deposits the copper layer (microns thin), whether it's nickel plated or chrome, the first dip is always copper.

Not true for P.A.F. covers. No copper with those. Nickel silver can be nickel plated without copper if buffed and cleaned properly. I nickel plate my covers with no copper at one of the Kalamazoo platers Gibson used during the golden era.

 

[bigsby'd]

And very early (pre-sticker) PAFs weren't plated at all. They were brushed stainless.

 

[j45]

I had to end up removing the cover on one of my 345's bridge PAF due to some squealing at very high volume. That fixed the problem but I didn't notice a whole lot of difference in the guitars voice. Didn't do any A/B recording tests though.

 

[wizardmc]

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[Cream Fan]

What I remember back in the early 70s is guitar players wanting to kick the front ends of their amps with more powerful pickups, so they started pulling the PAFs out and putting in Dimarzio Super Distortions and their ilk. Nowadays, we take a different--and somewhat more sensible--approach with those same amps: goosing the PAF tone with various overdrives and clean boosts to get the same effect.