Choosing The Right Pickup Set
Bloom 57 vs Snap 58 vs Growl 59: Which PAF Set Is Right For You?
It’s not easy to discern whether a particular PAF-style pickup fits your playing style and your guitar. That’s why I want to shed some light on my intentions behind creating the three Earuption Guitarworks PAF sets, why they share some similarities, but still live in sonic spaces of their own.
Snap 58: Bright, chimey and immediate
The first humbucker set I designed for Earuption Guitarworks was the Snap 58 set. I had gone through so many sets of PAF-style pickups I lost count, but even those that promised the “Tele-on-steroids” tone often fell short in that regard. For me, the tone of a sunburst Les Paul is bright and vibrant, but still has some push and chimey, soft highs. In the bridge position, this reminds me of a fat-sounding Telecaster, hence the “Tele-on-steroids” tag.
The Snap 58 is designed to sound like a big single coil, with just the right coil offset in both the bridge and neck pickups, offering unmatched clarity and responsiveness. For me, it really encapsulates everything that I look for in PAF pickups, and this is the sound I hear on my favorite records. The Snap 58 is for players who look for a bright, chimey pickup that is responsive to volume and tone knob adjustments and excels in crunch and overdrive applications, even more so when combined with NMV amps such as Plexis, old tweeds or blackface amps.
Growl 59: More lower-mid push, more wood, more authority
After that, the next pickup design was the Growl 59. This is in line with what many other winders offer: a more “perfectly” balanced set, with a higher-reading bridge pickup. The Growl 59 set has more push in the lower mids than the Snap 58, hence the name, but still retains much of the clarity of its predecessor.
I’m not really fond of very low-reading neck pickups. They trade a strong fundamental tone for added clarity, leaving behind a hollow, bright sound which our ears can’t really make sense of because of the missing fundamental. So the task was to make a neck pickup that feels good to play, is clear, and retains its fundamental even under gain and complex chord voicings.
The bridge pickup wants to rock, but works across a wide range of music styles and playing techniques. It’s easier to control than the Snap 58 because of the added output and supports the player just a little bit more. It has a nice woody texture to it due to the Alnico 4 magnet. The Growl 59 set is the most universal set in the lineup and covers a lot of ground.
Bloom 57: Soft, sweet and three-dimensional
The Bloom 57 was the last of the three “base” sets I designed. It is the most gentle out of the three, the softest and most hi-fi sounding one. It has a very three-dimensional sound, where notes have clarity but also a deep bottom end. Played into a clean Super Reverb, this set reminds me of a piano. It is a tone that hugs the player.
It excels in clean and crunch applications. The magnets I chose are Alnico 3 and Alnico 2. Alnico 3 was used by Gibson in the earliest PAF pickups, as they were left over from P-90 production. The Alnico 3 keeps the notes in the neck clear, while the Alnico 2 gives some extra warmth and three-dimensionality in the bridge. A soft compression is felt and heard with every pick stroke. It is what gives this set its name: notes “bloom”.
Which set to choose now?
Choose the Snap 58 if you want the brightest, clearest and most immediate set in the lineup. The Snap 58 can also help brighten up a dark guitar.
Choose the Growl 59 if you want a more universal PAF set with extra push, woody mids and a stronger bridge pickup. The Growl 59 feels at home in either a dark or bright guitar, translating the acoustic qualities of the instrument into the amplified tone.
Choose the Bloom 57 if you want the softest, sweetest and most three-dimensional set, with a warm, piano-like clean response. The Bloom 57 set can help smooth out a very bright instrument.
Still unsure? Send me a message with your guitar, amp and the tone you are chasing, and I’ll help you choose the right set.
At the moment, I am also working on two sets that replicate the sounds of two famous bursts that used to belong to British guitar players. And there is also my Wildcard set, which features just enough randomness to conjure some of the Kalamazoo magic PAFs had back in the day. The Wildcard set is really a character set and is similar to an overwound Snap 58 bridge combined with an overwound Growl 59 neck pickup.