The Gibson ES-335

This is a real PAF sticker (decal). Note the font, the spacing and the filled open areas in the letter A. Sometimes the P and the R are filled as well. Most fakes don’t have this feature and the spacing is wrong. It should glow solid green under black light. If it doesn’t, it’s a fake.

The real misinformation begins when Gibson decided (finally) to put the patent number on the sticker. Sidebar: It’s not even the real patent number assigned by the US Patent Office. The number on your patent number pickups (2,737,842) is actually the number for the original Les Paul trapeze tailpiece. But I digress…

I don’t know the exact date that Gibson moved from the PAF to the patent number pickup but it was a very slow transition. They used pickups with the PAF sticker, patent number sticker and no sticker at all from early 62 to 64. PAFs, especially gold cover versions, can be found in 65 and some claim they’ve seen them as late as 67. I’ve never seen any later than 65. I’ve never seen a patent number on a 61. I’ve seen pickups that are missing their stickers in every year from 58 onward. Some fall off and some were never put on. A missing sticker tells us nothing. That brings up our first bit of misinformation. Gibson did NOT change the pickup when they changed the sticker (I know, it’s a decal). An early patent is identical to a late PAF. It’s also identical to any unstickered Gibson pickup with original enamel coated windings and correct string spacing.

Enamel coated windings on a PAF or an early patent number pickup. The later patents and the T-tops will have bright orange windings. This photo is from the Throbak site.

Let’s take the no sticker version first. The first problem is that many boutique (and Gibsons own) PAF reissues are nearly identical to the original PAFs. They have gotten the tooling marks correct, the pole screws are pretty close (and easy to swap out). In fact the only feature of an original PAF that is unmistakeable is the sticker. I’m not going to go through all the things to look for to authenticate a PAF sticker here (I’ve done plenty of posts about that). The repro stickers don’t black light correctly. They should shine bright green and with a consistent, flat glow. The most recent trick is to spray a good repro sticker with invisible phosphorescent paint. But most paints of that sort glow more blue than green and tend to look uneven.

The most reliable way to tell if a PAF (or patent) sticker is real or fake is to black light it. A real sticker will glow green and flat. A fake either won’t glow at all or will glow blue and the shine will be wavy or inconsistent

The patent sticker pickup is tricky because lots of changes were made over the years but the outward appearance did not. If the pickup has a nickel cover and has never been opened, you almost certainly have an early (purple to brownish enamel coated winding) patent number pickup. Same as a PAF. If the cover is gold, it’s a lot harder to know what you have without removing the cover. I’ll cover chrome covers later. In early 65, Gibson changed to poly coated windings and the tone changed. Not by a lot but enough to notice. Also, the pickups became much more consistent due to the use of an automated stop. I’m not sure exactly when this happened but I’ve seen enough poly winding pickups to know that they are pretty inconsistent when it comes to DCR (the ohms reading everybody posts). It may have been as late as the first T-tops when the auto stop mechanism was used as T-tops are almost always in the 7.5K range.

That brings me to the big misinformation surrounding the t-top. For some reason, guitar folks have it in their collective head that t-tops were introduced in 1965. In fact, just about any time a T-top is advertised for sale, the seller calls it a 65 or a 65-69 or some variation of that. I have owned many 65-69 ES-3×5’s and the earliest t-top I’ve seen is 68. In fact most 68’s still have the enamel winding patent number. T-tops are extremely common-Gibson made a lot of guitars during that era and T-tops can show up anywhere a pickup change was made. Back in the day when nobody cared about PAFs, a humbucker was a humbucker and when your PAF crapped out, your local dealer would drop in whatever he had in stock which, if it was 1968 or later, would be a T-top. A good way to ascertain what pickup you have if the cover is chrome but you don’t know what year guitar it came out of is to look at the bobbin screws (the four on the bottom). If they are flat head, it’s likely a T-top. If Phillips, it could be either a late patent (ornage windings) or a T-top although it’s more likely to be a late patent. You can always remove the cover if you aren’t certain but that diminishes the value.

Even if there is no sticker, slotted bobbin screws like the pickup on the left, almost always indicate a T-top. It’s not 100% but it’s close.

The whole pickup thing is a bit of a futile exercise since there are great PAFs and lousy PAFs. There are also great patents and lousy patents (of all types). They seem to get more consistent as they move forward in time. T-tops are very consistent but almost everyone agrees that most PAFs sound bigger, fatter and more articulate than T-tops. I should make the point that you should use your ears and not your eyes when deciding what pickup to use. That said, use your eyes to determine what it’s worth. My personal player is a 59 ES-345 converted to 335 spec. I change pickups all the time. Currently, there is a zebra long magnet PAF with no sticker in the neck and a Throbak in the bridge. It sounds absolutely great even with a lousy player like me. It will never be a collector piece (two filled holes in the top and other issues) but I’ll put it up against just about anything. I had a white PAF in the bridge for a long time but when I needed that for another guitar, I switched to the Throbak and it sounded nearly identical.

Use your ears when assessing a pickup. This is my personal player. It’s had dozens of pickups in it over the years. I have switched the zebra to the neck and the Throbak to the bridge since the photo was taken. Most folks put the higher DCR pickup in the bridge. I tend to do the opposite. That’s another post, however.

Here’s a 57 PAF. No sticker (and no sign that there ever was one). Also note the bobbin screws (the four Phillips screws) are steel. They were brass later but went back and forth a few times so it’s not a very reliable method of dating.

I’m sure I’ve covered all of this before but I see so many errors in listings for Gibson guitars that I’m compelled to try to clarify this issue once and for all. Well, twice or three times for all. It’s about pickups. Since I deal in vintage, we’ll only cover Gibson humbuckers from 1957 until 1985. There are quite a few iterations in that time span. Everyone pretty much agrees what these different pickups are but a lot of folks don’t have the timeline right. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a t-top listed as being from 1965. I know everybody chooses the earliest possible year when listing parts and entire guitars. Like when there is a re-used serial number seen in 65, 66, 68 and 69. It always seems to be listed as a 65, right? But we’re going to talk about the timeline for pickups only here. My facts are based completely on observation. I’ve owned over 600 Gibson guitars equipped with humbuckers and while the majority of them are from 58 to 64, I’ve gone through plenty of them from 66 to 82 so i think I have more credibility than most folks.

The very first Gibson humbucker was introduced in 1956. It had no sticker (decal), enamel coated 42 gauge copper windings and it had a stainless steel cover. These early PAFs (patent applied for) pickups were used on pedal steels (and had 8 string poles). Six string PAFs were being installed on electric Spanish guitars (ES) and Les Pauls by 1957. The early 57’s had no sticker and stainless steel covers. For reasons lost to history, they switched to nickel plated covers during 57-probably fairly early in the year since I see a lot more stickered PAFs in 57 than I do unstickered. Same goes for nickel covers vs stainless. These were long magnet (2.5″ usually A2, A3 or A4 although I can’t tell the difference). Some say A5 might have been used as well-like I said, I can’t tell the difference. There were also gold plated covers for the higher end guitars but the pickups were the same. There were no changes to PAFs in 58.

In 1959, there was an apparent shortage of black plastic-the type used in the bobbins and white was substituted. You’ll find PAFs with one black bobbin and one white bobbin-the slug coil is almost always the white one. We call these zebras. There are also “reverse” zebras where the screw coil is the white one. These are really rare-I’ve seen perhaps 8 of them in the last 30 years. Then there are double whites which, of course, have two white bobbins. Double black bobbins are the most common type in 1959 as well. It seems that certain guitars are more likely to have gotten the white bobbins than others. ES-355’s seem to have a higher percentage than other guitars. Les Paul Standards seem to have gotten them frequently as well but so many were swapped in because folks love the look of exposed double whites in a LP.

Ooh baby…a 1959 ES-335 with a pair of reverse zebras. This is the only one I’ve had with a pair of reverse zebras. And yes, I left the covers off. They were way too cool to hide. Let’s see, I’ve owned somewhere around 1500 PAFs over the last 30 years. Only 8 have been reverse zebras.

1960 also saw no changes to the PAF. There are still double whites and zebras to be found throughout 1960 but they get rarer as the year goes on. By late 60, they are just about gone. I did have a 61 355 with double whites though. The magnets are still long A2 and A3. The covers are still nickel or gold. The windings are still enamel coated 42 gauge copper. In 1961, Gibson switched from a 2.5″ A2, A3 or A4 magnet to a 2.35″ A5. The A5 is a stronger magnet so to keep the level of force the same, a shorter magnet was used. Long magnets seem to be more desirable but I’m not sure why. The short magnet PAFs are incredibly consistent and almost always great sounding pickups. I’ve had some not so great sounding PAFs over the years (not many) but I’ve never had a bad sounding short magnet PAF. I always tell people that the best sounding long magnet PAF will sound better (and better is a really subjective term) that the best short magnet PAF. But the average short magnet PAF will sound as good or better than an average long magnet PAF. I’m not totally certain exactly when the change occurred. It seems to be around mid 61. I don’t crack open sealed pickups to check the magnet so it’s largely guesswork.

Short PAF magnet and long PAF magnet. Shorts were usually A5. Long was usually A2

PAFs continued unchanged until the end of their run. The last PAFs seem to have been used up by 1965 (and these would be gold ones). I hear stories about PAFs found as late as 67 but I’ve never seen one past early 1965 (on an ES-355). That brings us to what is perhaps the biggest misunderstanding of all of them…the early patent number pickup. I’ll cover these and all those that followed in the next post.