All you ever wanted to know about Gibson T Tops

OilCityPickups · April 2023

Kittyfrisk said:

OilCityPickups said:

Dave_Mc said:

OilCityPickups said:
No I haven't, although that's no indication that it isn't factory correct. Gibson did a lot of weird and random things back in the day.

You're right, the modern Gibson company is extremely rational and never does anything silly.

( )

Absolutely, with my personal Les Paul they forgot to glue about 1/3 of the fingerboard on properly and screwed on the pickup surrounds on crooked.
Don't get me wrong, it's a fabulous guitar now - now I've changed all the plastic hardware, glued on the fingerboard securely and replaced the shonky electronics. :-)
Oh and it has my 'Green Man' PAFs installed.

How do the 'Green Man' PAF's relate to your ' three different flavours " of T-Top that you mentioned earlier in the thread?

My Green Man PAFs are not really in the T Top family. Named after the guitarist famous for Green Green Manalishi and other compositions - the basis for them is a 59 PAF with a rewound (with heavy formvar) and reverse phase neck pickup.

Kittyfrisk · April 2023

Thanks. I got the PG reference

I have a Vintage Lemon Drop & have played the Bare Knuckle PG Blues set.
I was just curious as to how close they were to a T-Top in terms of construction & general sound (apart from the reverse phase mod).

OilCityPickups · April 2023

Kittyfrisk said:

Thanks. I got the PG reference I have a Vintage Lemon Drop & have played the Bare Knuckle PG Blues set.
I was just curious as to how close they were to a T-Top in terms of construction & general sound (apart from the reverse phase mod).

Quite a bit of difference in construction and sound PAFs are in general a bit thicker with less bite on the edge - I say generally, because all sorts of PAFs exist.

76standard · October 2023

I am the original owner of a 1976 Les Paul Standard that came with T-top pickups. At some point the neck pickup stopped working. The pickups had the nickel cover. I decided to send the pickup to a reputable winder, Brandonwound Pickups here in the US, to be inspected, and if necessary rewound. Prior to sending in the pickup to Brandonwound I unsoldered the cover to inspect the inner elements of the pickup. They had the distinctive "T" on the top of the bobbins, maple (not plastic) spacers, and as I would find out from Zach at Brandonwound Pickups, short, rough cast AlNiCo 5 magnets. I did not remove the black tape that covers the coils, so I could not confirm the type of wire that this article mentions. The fix was a simple one with the braided lead where it attached to the coil wires. I'm sure some of you would like to see pictures, but this is my first post and do not have the pics loaded to a URL. For now, I'm just adding to the original posts information.

OilCityPickups · October 2023

76standard said:

I am the original owner of a 1976 Les Paul Standard that came with T-top pickups. At some point the neck pickup stopped working. The pickups had the nickel cover. I decided to send the pickup to a reputable winder, Brandonwound Pickups here in the US, to be inspected, and if necessary rewound. Prior to sending in the pickup to Brandonwound I unsoldered the cover to inspect the inner elements of the pickup. They had the distinctive "T" on the top of the bobbins, maple (not plastic) spacers, and as I would find out from Zach at Brandonwound Pickups, short, rough cast AlNiCo 5 magnets. I did not remove the black tape that covers the coils, so I could not confirm the type of wire that this article mentions. The fix was a simple one with the braided lead where it attached to the coil wires. I'm sure some of you would like to see pictures, but this is my first post and do not have the pics loaded to a URL. For now, I'm just adding to the original posts information.

Great to hear from you @76standard ; ...

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All you ever wanted to know about Gibson T Tops

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