I just connected
with one of my guitar engineering "heroes" online.
I own a 1980
Gibson Heritage 80 Les Paul, in a brown case next to my 1979 Les Paul
KM. To make a long story longer, 32 years ago, I yanked out the
Gibson pickups on my newly bought Heritage 80 (traded a BC Rich
Seagull for it, good move on my part), thinking that they were just
another not-so-great humbucker created by a then budget-conscious
Gibson.
Gibson Guitars
were coming out of a bad period of ownership changes and accompanying
not-so-great engineering. Craftmanship on a budget. Success wasn't
coming easy for them at this point, as the glorious 1950's and 1960's
were a full generation past.
I put a pair of
Seymour Duncan JB's in this Les Paul, and proceeded to love the sound
for the next 25 years or so. Great pickups, but perhaps not the
authentic sound of the 50's vintage originals. I didn't know of any other options.
Gibson was creating the Heritage 80, Gibson's first re-issue of the
coveted 1957-1960 Les Paul Standard. They recreated the 50's neck
carve, maple top "dish" carve, tuning headstock shape, deep
neck tenon (neck joint) and other re-creations to answer the growing
call for vintage Les Pauls, an internal decision was made at Gibson
to have someone in engineering do whatever it took to re-create the
original PAF (patented applied for) humbucking pickups for this model. It was
getting known that Gibson was not making good pickups over the
past few years. Duncan and DiMarzio were creating great products and killing the market for
Gibson's pickups.
Gibson assigned one
of their engineers to take apart the old PAF's, analyze the magnets,
scope all the electronic data for the wiring specs, output voltage,
capacitors, etc, etc.
Tim Shaw was
that engineer. He created, without any fanfare or publicity from
Gibson, an identical 1959 Gibson PAF humbucker. Nothing out of the ordinary was said about these pickups in the press releases.
I had recently
been reading online that the "Tim Shaw" pickups were now valuable and
selling for over $150 each. Huh? That's a lot of money
for some regular old pickup made by Gibson, I thought. I was
snobby and thought my Seymour Duncans were the best and Gibson was
clueless... But his name and public adoration for these pickups was getting a grass roots following.
Hmmm. Uh, wait a
minute - I saved those old pickups, didn't I? (I never throw any guitar
electronics away to the chagrin of my beautiful wife) Where the hell
are they?
After a one week
search I found them in my basement in the bottom of a large box full
of music cassettes from when we moved to our current house 22 years
ago. The mildew was quite aromatic. I checked out
the serial numbers and stickers and compared my pickups to now-online
photos that others had put online of these special design pickups.
Holy %@#*! Tim
Shaw pickups. I actually own a vintage SOMETHING.
I
put the pickups and now faded chrome original pickup covers back on
my Heritage 80. Re-strung the guitar and plugged it in with nervous
anticipation. Mesa Boogie Mark IIC. Lead channel, drive at 7,
master volume at 1. (it's loud, kids.)
B string, pick it hard and hit
a D on the 15th
fret and bend it up to an E. Slight quiver of vibrato.
Wow – do you
know how a picture, a smell, or an aroma can instantly bring back a
memory?
My guitar sounded like the1957 Les Paul I once played in a music store in
Evanston Illinois in the mid 1970s. That LP was
being offered for sale for $1200. $1200 bucks for an old finish-cracked Les
Paul goldtop? (I'm about 21, so
it's like tastes in wine at that age – not refined.) BUT I
remembered the sound that old finished-cracked guitar made through
the Marshall combo back then. Nice guitar, but I passed. I wanted a new Hamer instead.
Returning
to 2008, I am hearing that sound again through a guitar I actually
own. Wow. I never knew that the "middle" pickup
position (both pickups on) had a clear bluesy creamy tone that I
never heard with my gear, as my hard rock roots kept me nailed to the
bridge position full time. The neck pickup wasn't muddy, it had that
jazzy tone that matches up well with a vintage Hammond B-3. And the
bridge pickup had a sparkle that even when overdriven through my amp
settings, had a definition and a sparkle even with a bar chord in
full drive. Welcome back to the future. The former replacement
pickups made great sounds in all the positions, but not like this. I
never gave the Gibson pickups a chance back then, but no one knew
Gibson was working overtime in their lab and opening up the 1950's pickup
winding archives. They didn't name the pickups (as they do now) when
they had them installed in these Les Pauls in
1980. But now they are being called the Tim Shaw pickups. Is he
alive or dead? Did Henry
Juszkiewicz
retain Tim after he acquired Gibson?
Did Tim retire? I never knew. I just speak of his pickups to anyone
who plays Gibsons and anyone else who will listen or pretend to
listen.
In
May of 2012, a name surfaced by accident as I was scouring contacts
on Linked In. I'm connected to some people at Gibson, Fender, and
many other Audio/Video/Musical Instrument organizations. I always
had a dream to represent a guitar maker, so new online tools make it
fun and easy to seek out and make connections. As I was rapidly
scrolling through a section of Linked In called People You May Know,
a name came and went quickly. Tim Shaw. Nah, can't be, common name,
must be hundreds online. Let's go back and look. Tim Shaw, Director
of Project Management, Guitar Design, Fender Musical Instruments. If
I'm a betting man, I think I'd win this one. Got to be him. Fired
off a contact request and asked if he was the Tim Shaw that designed
the re-issued PAF Humbuckers for Gibson back in 1980. He replied a
week later. Yes, that was him, he said, "glad I liked the pickups".
Bingo, he's alive and well and now working for Fender. Fantastic.
Brought out my Fender Strat Elite from 1982 and got it back in stage
playing condition. Tim later indicated in another email that he
designed this pickup version closer to the original specs that Seth
Lover, the inventor, had intended. The output was lower, and Tim said
he preferred this specification in order to hear what the guitar is
doing as “a structure”.
Gibson now makes great pickups and some of the best guitars in their history, but I can't help but think that Tim started the big resurgence in electric guitar pickup design when this re-issue was released.
Well,
this man is a living legend to me. He quietly turned the guitar
pickup world around for Gibson, and the rest of the pickup
manufacturers upped their game from that point forward. No
headlines, no big publicity for Tim in the trades. He does what he
loves, and now Fender will certainly benefit from his expertise,
experience and passion in their instruments. Who's Tim Shaw?
Doesn't matter – I know.
