PAF Set (1961)

’61 PAF

Often referred to as the last incarnation of “The PAF”, 60/61 Patent Applied For Humbuckers are in every way similar to their older siblings, but use a slightly shorter magnet. Slightly later in 1960s Gibson finally received the patent approval, and changed the sticker accordingly, to display the patent number. With that, the era of PAFs was over. But in reality, first years PAT pickups are basically short magnet PAFs with a different sticker.

There are many interesting factors to the traditional PAF pickups though which pickup connoisseurs would debate for hours on end however to summarise, all PAF’s were hand wound and the winds were counted by the person winding … so some are indeed over wound and some are underwound. Somewhere in 1961 Gibson streamlined production and set on approx 7.5K Ohm resistance.

The set we have demoed here came from a 1961 Gibson SG Les Paul.