Description
Seth Lover started something special when he designed the original PAF, and DiMarzio spent years chasing that same magic before landing on an unexpected reference point: Larry DiMarzio’s personal 1959 cherry sunburst Gibson Les Paul. Rather than cloning a random vintage pickup, they reverse-engineered the weak, soft magnetic field that gives that guitar its uncanny clarity, then rebuilt it with modern winding precision.
The result is the PAF 36th Anniversary set, paired here as a matched neck and bridge in black covers. The DP103BK neck uses Alnico 5 magnets and 42-gauge custom wire to deliver a sound that’s articulate almost to the point of single-coil clarity, with an output around 250mV and 7.31k ohms DC resistance. It cleans up beautifully and pushes into breakup purely from pick attack, just like the best 50s-era humbuckers.
The DP223BK bridge model is the hotter sibling, at roughly 285mV output and 8.60k ohms DC resistance. It carries the low-end weight and midrange definition of a Virtual PAF Bridge but with the volume of a Virtual Hot PAF, plus bigger, smoother highs than either. Introduced in 2008 and covered under patents 5,399,802 and 5,908,998, it’s equally happy in set-neck Les Paul-style guitars or trem-loaded bolt-ons, and splits cleanly to a bright, musical single-coil voice in four-conductor mode.
Both pickups feature nickel-silver covers with plating designed to stay magnetically transparent, and 4-conductor wiring (1-conductor optional) for full flexibility with coil-splitting and phase wiring.
- Includes free D’Addario EXL145 heavy string set
- Neck: Alnico 5, 250mV output, 7.31k ohm DC resistance
- Bridge: Alnico 5, 285mV output, 8.60k ohm DC resistance
- 4-Conductor wiring (1-Conductor optional)
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