singemonkey wrote
I'm not quite sure how I missed something that big that's right in my go-to style.
As a kid,
Albatross struck a chord within me and remains one of my favourite instrumentals of all time. But somehow when I came to music in the '80s I also missed the PG Mac. Later I ran across the Buckingham version, but that is more slick pop/rock.
Even in the bridge position, PG's Les Paul sounds almost like a mic'd acoustic when played clean.
Good Les Pauls do that. Almost acoustic when unplugged, and they retain some of that when plugged in with a bit of a pianolike quality added in. The bridge pickup should be clear when playing softly and get a vowel like "AW" sound when digging in.
So if the Tokai pickups don't have enough dynamic range, I'll replace them along the line with some scatterwounds like the PAFs in PG's guitar.
I can tell you without reservation that the stock pickups nail a good LP tone. Swapping them would only be necessary if you're the hair-splitting type or if you wanted to change it into a high gain metal machine.
PG's tone was unique because of the flipped magnet in the neck position, which made the two pickups out of phase in the middle position - you can get a huge range of tones by playing with the pickup balance. To a lesser degree, the reversed neck pickup (with adjustable poles towards the bridge) also had an effect. Hell, the purists say that the length of unshielded lamp chord from the pickup selector to the output also had a small effect.
