For most of 2026 I've been trying to find the best budget PAFs for two of my guitars. One of which is a bridge pickup replacement for my Peavey JF1 EXP, aka Cherrie King. The stock neck pickup sounds fairly decent, but the 15k mud beast in the bridge has to go. Since Cherrie is my ES-335 style guitar, I'm aiming for that PAF blues/blues rock tone. In my research I've listened to everything from Gibson Burstbuckers and Custombuckers, Epiphone Probuckers and Alnico Classic Pros, Toneriders, Wilkinson, Roswell, Duncan Designed HB-101s and Seymour Duncan 59s, Donlis, Fleor, GFS, Guitar Madness, Artec, the list goes on and on. Nowhere in the vast market of affordable PAFs was TESLA ever mentioned. That is until my brother happened across some and bought a brand new VR-60 Classic for me to test out.
Being completely unfamiliar with TESLA guitar pickups, I decided to do a bit of research into what all they make. It appears they're a well liked brand, and Harley Benton sometimes even uses TESLA as OEM for their pickups. A lot of their pickups, even some PAF inspired ones, seem to be too hot for my needs. They do make a handful of PAF inspired options that seem to fit my needs, but with some quick research it seems the VR-60 Classic is the closest option to a PAF that they offer. Is that true? I'm not entirely sure, but it's what I've got, and I guess we're about to find out.
I was excited to test this thing out, but the main hurdle is the whole semi-hollow pitfall. Being restricted to working through the F-hole was a nightmare. The first issue was the pot falling into the body cavity, initiating an infuriating game of cat and mouse. I chased the pot around for a while, but I did eventually fish it out. Even though Peavey used 16mm Alpha pots, they still barely fit through the F-hole. Once the old pickup was desoldered I followed the TESLA wiring diagram online. Red is hot, so it goes to the volume lug. Green and bare are heat shrinked together, so they go to the back of the pot. White and black are paired together for our series link, so we leave them alone. Once the soldering was done I plugged the guitar in and tapped on the pickup to make sure it worked, thankfully it did. I adjusted the volume pot to make sure I didn't fry it, and thankfully it still worked.
Going from the 15k mud beast to the VR-60 Classic was a change, but it wasn't as drastic as I was expecting. The VR-60 Classic does have a ton more clarity and harmonic definition, maybe too much. It sounds good, but does it have that PAF magic? I decided to pull out my Les Paul with Burstbucker Pros and tested them side by side, or as side by side as I possibly could. Given they're both Alnico 5, and roughly the same resistance, I figured this was close enough. They sound similar, but not identical. The BB Pro attack is noticeably softer. Is it down to the differing body woods? Maybe. However, the main issue was when I checked the middle switch position I noticed it was out of phase. On my Les Paul the out of phase sound is a feature, not a bug, but I don't want that on Cherrie. This led to yet another frustrating removal of the volume pot, an additional infuriating game of cat and mouse, then a tense removal of the green wire from the heat shrink it was in with the bare wire. Although there is plenty of lead, I was worried I was going to snap the wire and have to keep cutting it back to reveal more and more, until there wasn't enough left. After swapping the red with the green wires everything was fixed.
Now, my only experience with PAF style pickups are my Burstbucker Pros, and while not the exact recipe Seth Lover put together all those years ago, they give me a pretty good idea of what I personally want from a PAF style pickup. Lets face it, there was no QC when it came to PAFs, back in the 50s/60s. Whatever came off the winder was put together and voila, a PAF was born. The magic, or in some cases detriment, was the lack of manufacturing standards; it teetered on the brink of chaos. Most affordable PAF inspired pickups today follow the basic formula, but leave out the chaos that made PAFs what they are. Does the TESLA VR-60 Classic sound like a PAF? Kind of, but not really. It's built to a stringent standard, so the chaotic nature of mismatched winds per bobbin, and chaotic nature of the windings themselves aren't there. It's a low to medium output humbucker with an Alnico 5 magnet that certainly tries its best to be a PAF. It doesn't sound bad by any means, but if TESLA had shown up during my research, the VR-60 Classic would have been lost in the shuffle of mass produced, affordable PAF style pickups.
No comments:
Post a Comment