“For his entire life Les strove for a guitar sound that was as clear, crisp and even-sounding as possible,” said Doyle. He has picked up the torch and finished Les Paul’s last project as homage to his friend and mentor of almost five decades. “I’m thrilled with the result, as I know Les would be.”
The time Doyle spent at the side of The Master has given Doyle the know-how that can not be found anywhere else. For over 45 years, Doyle maintained and repaired Les Paul’s guitars, worked as his live sound man and even drove him from his New Jersey home to his legendary Monday night Manhattan gigs at Fat Tuesday’s and The Iridium. No one knows what Les Paul wanted his guitars to sound like more than Tom Doyle.
He and Les Paul worked together for decades pursuing the ideal electric guitar sound – a labor of love embodied in the new Tru-Clones PAF Humbucker Pickups, available in neck and bridge pickup models as a set.
Each Tru-Clones pickup is meticulously hand crafted by Tom Doyle from the finest materials including vintage-spec 42-gauge wire, butyrate bobbins, nickel-silver baseplates, long-cast magnets, nickel-silver pickup covers and many other high-end refinements.
Among guitar buffs, the tone of the “Patent Applied For” PAF humbucker pickup developed in the late 1950s is an iconic sound, and Les Paul and Doyle also considered it to be a quintessential sonic reference. Nevertheless, as is the case with almost anything Les touched, he wanted more. In addition, the originals are inconsistent – some sound brighter, some darker and so on.
“Without getting overly technical, it’s a misconception that Les Paul only had an interest in custom low-impedance pickups rather than commercially-available high-impedance pickups,” said Doyle, “but that is untrue. Les had an incredible passion for making things ‘just right’ and would tinker and experiment on things he wanted to fix, tirelessly, almost to the point of obsession,” Doyle pointed out. “Towards the end of his life his constant passion was for getting the high-impedance humbucker pickup – so named because they ‘buck the hum’ and deliver a noise-free signal – to come alive and deliver that clarity he so desired.”
“Tom and Les took pickup after pickup apart, experimented, put them back together again, installed pickups in countless guitars, rewound them, added and took away stuff, did endless comparisons and explored innumerable variables,” explained Max Stavron, Tom Doyle’s Business Relations Manager. “These Doyle Coils Tru-Clones pickups are the embodiment of everything Les Paul and Tom Doyle worked towards and they deliver an extraordinary combination of clarity and warmth, sweetness and definition, all with a fidelity that captures every nuance of the player and their guitar.”
Pricing information:
MSRP $500–535 (variety of new and aged nickel, chrome and gold-plated finishes in either vintage unpotted or lightly wax potted versions.)
For more information:
Doyle Coils