Favorite PAF style pickups

[Hiwatts-n-Gibsons]

I’m building an arsenal at my house with all these pickups. Want to try some more PAFish pickups that are great under high gain. Specifically in an LP. By that I mean something under 10k . Whatcha like?

The TV Jones Powertron is amazing, and definitely worth the reasonable price of admission to try his and Billy Gibbons take on a vintage hot PAF meets Filtertron design. I had one in the bridge of an SG/LP Custom that replaced a late '70s Tarback. It was warmer, with a strong mid forward ballsy rock tone with great clarity and responsiveness to changes in playing, and volume knob adjustments.

 

[mentoneman]

Definitely the best non-vintage pickups I’ve played. The other stuff recommended here imho is just plain worse in tone quality and detail. Haven’t tried Holmes though. The only thing I’ll say is I’m not crazy about the TS punch set and the virtuso set needs the right guitar to shine. The Bloombucker & Twang sets to me are the best ones. The latter gets super underrated from the name, but is like the Gretsch pickups and can be quite aggressive an articulate, but you can get some model real vintage Gretsch pickups for not a ton more money

If I were your friend I’d also upgrade that Fralin SC. If not TS, maybe a vintage Schaller or Bill Lawrence as cheaper options

did you pickup the TS RR 74 set?
love mine for clarity and being able to use the clean tones.
i had the Lawrence 280 neck in my Tyler before i got the kitchen sink switching mods done. it was cool for blues rock solos but not as pretty and dynamic on the cleans as fralins or tge suhr fletcher-landaus i had in previously.

 

[franko5150]

For a PAF, old style PAF sound I would say Tom Holmes. I had a 456 and so far it's the best sounding pickup I've owned by far. Sadly, in a moment of insanity & sold the guitar it was in WITHOUT taking it out. Big mistake. I wish I'd taken it out & put the original Duncan back in, but I didn't.
I'm now on his 2 year waiting list, so sometime in 2027 I should be getting a set of his 456.
In the meantime, I ordered a set of these which I'm still awaiting delivery.
https://www.brickhousetone.com/products/brickhouse-60-p-a-f-humbucker-pickup?variant=42194066997329