Years later he was offered 3 million for it by a collector from Japan.
Of course he kept it. LOL
He nic named it 'Pearly Gates' and has always felt it is 'the' perfect guitar tone.
In 2009 he teamed up with Gibson to make a clone of it. They made in all 250 guitars...but only 50
were painfully detailed to the very smallest scratch.
So much for history of the guitar. The thing that blew my mind was what the guys at the Gibson Custom Shop discovered.
They are the masters of wood!!! They have cloned
many '59 and '60's LP's. Everyone came out
frighteningly accurate to the original.
BUT !!!The big problem is since every PU in every guitar made back in the 50's was hand wound no two are exactly the same.
It is obvious then that each 'cloned guitar' would have to have a prototype reproduced
from the original PU from scratch that matched the original dead on.
They got very good at cloning many old Gibson PAF's. BUT all prototype PU's had to be accepted when they got either very close or if they got lucky it was very, very close. NONE WERE DEAD ON!!!
They tried getting the Pearly right and became frustrated and decided to stick in a stock Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates to see what Duncan was passing off as a Pearly.
Bingo!!!! it was dead on. They tried another one Bingo !!! dead on. They were forced to confess that a stock Duncan Pearly is the 'ONLY' perfect clone of at least one 59 LP.
CONCLUSION
In my opinion the best PAF on the planet is a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates because it is quite literally the only known dead accurate repro!!!
ALL others can only claim to be a great sounding Gibson style humbucking PU.
I have zero problem if someone claims to have the worlds best hummie!!! In fact maybe they do???
BUT it is NOT a PAF ...it is a facsimile
QUESTION
So if 10 PAF's were taken out of 10 great sounding LP's
and one manufacture had a PU that was stellar AVERAGE of all 10
Would you choose that PU or take one of the 10 ????
If you chose one of the 10 and it turned out to be the original Pearly and given the choice would put it back and take the new AVERAGE one or keep the Pearly???
Too bad this choice is not just hypothetical.
But the off the shelf new Duncan Pearly is not!
Half of all my 10 guitars have a Seymour Duncan 'Pearly Gates' at the bridge.
everyone of those guitars were not just improved on but quite literally transformed!!!!
SEYMOUR DUNCAN 'PEARLY GATES' bridge SH-PG1B
 |
| $105.00 USD |
So I have tried a few PAF style PU's and most are more or less similar to each other. The Pearly is different. It has 'slightly' less highs. The bass is average to most other PAF's.
The BIG difference is that it has comparatively massive mids. This makes the damn thing very fat sounding. The overall tone is very sumptuous and rich in harmonics.
The price is reasonable. No gourmet gouging with this sweetheart!
So is it the bullet proof no brainer classic PU ???
Well I am one guy who think's so!!!
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