There are few truly iconic guitars in the annals of music history, guitars that reputation and mystique have only grown over time. Guitars that have been played by the best, on songs that are deemed classics.
Out of all of these instruments, none have the history of Peter Green's '59 Les Paul, known as Greenie.
Peter played the guitar throughout his time in Fleetwood Mac, recording countless, timeless songs before it passed into the possession of Gary Moore, who played it for years until it was time to move on again. After some time in the wilderness, it has been acquired by Kirk Hammett and is now being wah wah’d across the globe as I type.
I was lucky enough to get my dirty mitts on this guitar while it was living in London and hungrily took copious measurements and readings of the pickups and sat with the guitar for a while, just playing it, soaking up its sonic majesty.
These iconic pickups have all the touch sensitivity, clarity, sweetness and balls you would expect from a great PAF set but are totally unique in design. The bridge is hotter than may be expected for a PAF, some were wound like this from the factory, and has a noticeable mid-range flavour with real bite. The neck is fatter and warmer than most PAFs, this is down to the fact that at some point it was rewound with heavy formvar wire.
Whilst the pickups on their own are really special, the true showstopper with this set is the famous out of phase middle position, which opens up a world of sonic possibilities that are unique to this set. Mixing these two oddball PAFs out of phase gives them an incredibly fat, throaty tone that is unlike anything else.
With the out of phase middle positions on Gibson’s, there is a little trick that can open up the number of tones available substantially. To get the out of phase tone both pickups need to be on ten, if you lower the volume of one the two pickups will slide back into phase the further the volume goes down.
We have crafted this set of recreation humbuckers, by hand, using period correct parts, they are as accurate as humanly possible right down to the way the decals are cut.
Made with -
Alnico II magnets
Unpotted coils
Bridge coil wire 42 gauge plain enamel
Neck coil wire 42 gauge heavy formvar
Vintage PAF Accurate pure nickel silver, aged covers
Nickel silver baseplate with correct tooling marks
Brass baseplate screws
Vintage Correct PAF Decals