Best SG Pickups?

Dimarzio's interesting. I don't know much about their PAFs though. Bare Knuckles are... not cheap lol, dunno if I can afford

in the past dimarzio's PAFs were their own thing... they had a brass baseplate which changes the tone a lot from a real 50s gibby pickup.... the new Dimarzio PAF repro ones are more period correct though. I have not played them.

hmm ok

like I said, 70s and 80s dimarzio PAF and PAF+ were built on brass base plates isntead of nickel... but they also were the first comemrcially available PAF replica to intentionally mismatch the bobbins like some of the originals were mismatched only larry dimarzio went so far as to use different wire on each bobbin too. So some accuracy some innaccuracy asome innovation. They tended to eb on the hot side unless you get a dewound one thatw as pulled from a hamer of the era. Dewound oens were the stock Hamer neck pickup in the sunburst and a lot of the explorer shped guitars... when I ahd a sunburst the enck pickup sounded pretty decent but the super distortion at the bridge was kidna goofy even dewound a bit. I just can't use the super distortion in most situation because tis hard to get my amp to clean up right with it... rather than hack a valuable guitar I resold that Hamer. Overall I found it to be a bit muddy and I blame the dimarzios, but that was the sound they wanted back then, buzzsaw upper mids, woofy lows, no real sparkle.... tose pickups work rpetty well like that into a sickly bright stock marshall of the era if you wanna do 70s/80s radio rock riffs or 80s hardcore punk maybe...

the new ones, I think they're anniversary PAFs or soemthing, are supposedly vintage correct construction except he still has mismatched wire gauges on screw and slug coils, not just mismatched winds. People who like his new PAF are pretty vocal about it, but they're a minority sicne most of his customers play his screamin' hot pickups. If you cna get a set of these used or soemthing I would lvoe to hear a recording of them inyour epi with some legit pots and caps.

Sweet, super insightful as always. I think I might shoot for these just because they seem an interesting and slightly cheaper alternative to tracking down T-Tops and tbh the Gibson '57s i've heard lack sharpness. maybe it's the amp EQ or my ear, but it wasn't nearly as aggro as I wanted it to be

most PAFs aren't 'sharp' sounding. the things that make for that upper mid cut are wire turns, magnet type and magnet size. More turns rolls off the treble a bit and gives a mid emphasis.... different alnico grades have different emphasis... alnico 2 being the mellowest and also the classic paf magnet material.... short abrs tend to sound different than long bars. PAF style pickups have long abrs. A short A5 bar will sound a lot more bitey, maybe even abrasive, then a long A2 bar....

its a lot to absorb.

Jeez, yeah. I gotta do my research,haha

a PAF is like smooth, but bright and when it distorts its got like thsi extra ghost note harmonic if tis made right... but tis ahrd to generalize. Original 50s pickups are so inconsistent.

I think there are 2 schools of repro PAFs. SOme guys get the most vintage correct materials possible and then copy an original PAF they have on hand, usually one that's busted that they took apart.... other guys take the general formula and then use their own combination of wire gauge, windigns and magent grade to hit a famous benchmark PAF tone from a record like the pearly gates tone or the peter green tones or like kossoff from free.... but there's a lot of other factors in those tones. Early marshall gear with the good old tubes and sweet speakers, microphones, compressors and Eq... Tape artifacts... my experience is that all of them sound good, but none of them sound the same.

I got rid of the muddy 490 pups in my 94 SG, lol first thing I did, then slapped EMG 81/85 in it. I did put EMG 57/66 set in my Eclipse..I'm thinking of putting those in my SG now.