Best PAF replica? Greco Dry Z versus Vintage Gibson PAF 

Thanks for the video. It is really hard to know what to make of that single pickup example given the prevalence of fake DRY Z pickups that were sold on Yahoo Auctions. A fat Z stamp similar to this one is one of the things they had, and DRY-Z did not have a bobbin with the square in circle hole. Genuine Zs are a brighter pickup and original Grecos that had these used 100k tone pots which give you an effect similar to a 500k audio tone pot at around 6.5 or so. One person’s thin is another person’s clear and articulate. Nice playing and great video production!

I have a set of Maxons' and they have a verry good balance of low and high frequances .It's hard to explain what a sound can make you feel good.

The PAF's had a quality in the upper midrange that really does make them sound HUGE. The Z's were more scooped, and rounder in a way some might say "prettier" because of the way the EQ is set in relation to them. but the PAF pickup is one of the sweetest sounding pickups on the planet

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I was surprised the difference was so easy to hear. I expected it to be closer after all the fuss online. Dry Z was thinner for sure. 02¢

Yes. You can definetelly tell the difference when comparing pickups of the same type but different resonance frequency. You can also make them have the same resonance frequency and compensate amp's gain to their output.

Great video guys! They are very nice pick ups but at the same time there’s no way I would pay that much money for them. Looking forward to your next video.

The Greco SA-1200 (335 clone) also got the dry z pickups

Thank you for this. It's hard to find a set of these. The Dry 1982 are a bit easier, and there is also the Dry that appeared through the 90s. Loads of mystery around the Z, but I've heard much talk around the parts - being different. Never know i guess.

I own at least 10 sets of Dry Z most of which are still attached to the original guitars with unmolested solder joins. Unfortunately for the reasons mentioned by others - potting, date stamp, bobbins - these ones shown here are not correct. They aren’t Dry Z.

Finally, but I found this vid 8 months after it was put out

I think that's a counterfeit Dry Z. I have both those and Dry82 and they sound better than that. Brighter for sure.

Old Ibanez Super 58 pickups also have ALNICO 3 magnets (not sure about the new ones). Might be similar to the Dry Zs? Cool comparison guys!

Never had any experience with the Maxon humbuckers. I do have Maxon single coils in a 74 Ibanez strat copy that are great.

I find the PAF mellower, mostly in the neck position. To be perfectly honest in the 'jam' part with the backing track i can't tell wich is wich without looking to the screen. A question: The Dry-Z is alone in the guitar, without the magnet of the other position pup interacting with the strings. Should we accounted this for some of the difference in sound , or can it be deemed negligible ? Very nice playing, and channel.

I have Maxon Super 70 pickups..I like them alot.

I have to confess I had never heard about Dry Z pickups until today but I think there are so many variables that you can never get two pickups which are exactly the same. I do think that the answer is to keep away from hot pickups if you really value good tone, but then tone is subjective anyway. My personnel favourites were David White pickups made in Cornwall many years ago.(sadly David passed away some years back but his pickups are now very collectable ). He made quality pickups which were sweet sounding with an even spread of frequencies and for a very reasonable price. Many of the companies who make so called PAF replicas now, charge soooo much for the BS and people fall for it and sadly having paid so much then convince themselves that they must be better than the rest. I fitted a lot of David White pickups in my guitars and never had one customer complain, in fact they all loved the tone. I took out many overwound pickups from big names to fit either David White or Kent Armstriong pickups to my customers total satisfaction. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and New Year!!!!!!

These are not Maxon Dry-Zs... Maxon used a 2 hole bobbin winder. Dry-Z’s are also wax potted and the Maxon date stamp is missing.

No idea which Greco's are in my Greco - certainly no Z's, but nevertheless do they sound a lot more interesting than any of the modern Gibson pickups I've had so far.

With an ALNICO 3 you can get the pickups closer to the strings. If they were adjusted to the same height I understand the output. The height should really be adjusted by ear

Great to see a video like this! I’ve got an early 70s Greco with a set of maxon pickups, obviously not the same but compared to what you’ve got here I would suggest throwing the early 70s maxon pickups in for comparison to the real PAF. My pickups have a bit more of a jangly mid heavy kind of sound compared to the dry Z in this video. Also, I’m not particularly familiar with the dry Z pickups but are they wax potted? That may explain the slightly duller sound compared to the PAF.

Another great video. My burning question is where can I buy a tone twins TV t-shirt?

To my ears, the PAFs had more mids so I'd expect them to have more winds and have a higher DC resistance. They still retained the high-end so had the edge over the Dry-Zs, IMHO.

If you’re on a budget and want something other than a Seymour or a DiMarzio, get a set of Mojotone 59 Clones. Absolutely fantastic pickups that I like far more than the Custombuckers that came in my 60th Anniversary R9. I got the set with the “Hot” bridge pickup. It’s just a bit overwound, reads about 8.5k DCR. The neck pickup is around the readings of a patent number humbucker. Which is around 7.5k DCR and is very clear and surprised me when I installed them. I thought I wired the switch backwards or something.

I have a Morris late 60s early 70s with Maxon pickups. They sound exactly the same. I like Gibson PAF, because A- I don’t like high E and B string character when they are thin (even if people call it sweet) in Maxon, and Gibson seem to have smoother highs, and B- the mid-range tone is more pronounced in Gibson PAF which is the best part of the tone for me. Using proper amp and amp settings and a high end EQ unit perhaps it’s possible to make the tones closer to each other but still dynamic behaviour (string to string character differences as well as attack, generally the whole ADSR tone profile) is something that can’t be changed).

Wow they sounded great quite surprised by them considering there potted!! Would you consider doing a show on the differences between a 1960s Epiphone Casino and the Newer ones?

Ive got a set of super 58 dry Zs in my LR 10 and these things rip, sound better than both examples on this vid to me

I liked them. Would definitely compare favorably to a low wind PAF. But not worth the price they are getting with so many options out there.

4:19 the sounds seem pretty identical but Gibson PAF's is more tridimensional and dinamic where Dry Z is thinner and muffled

Fantastic stuff, gentlemen. I own various Greco’s, but none with Dry Z’s. They are almost mystical - and super expensive. As you say finding anyone demoing them is like locating a 2 horned unicorn. I’m looking forward to watching this, back in a bit.

Not having a PU in the Bridge area affects the pull on the strings and so the tone !! They sound good tho!! but so do millions of others ..SLE 101MXV being the best in my opiniion !!

DRY Z 👍

The PAF's are a lot fatter.both low and high mids were very even. According to tests done when Gibson did a Custom Shop repro of Billy Gibbons 'Pearly Gates' 59 Les Paul they were having trouble cloning the PU so they were curious to see how close to it that Duncan got. They were astonished to not being able to hear any difference in a blindfold test. They confessed they had often got very close on several Custom Shop re-pro's other guitars they had done but nor dead on. The short story if you want as close as it gets to a vintage PAF. But a Duncan 'Pearly Gates' PAF.

Well, they sound nothing alike. Good to know. The Zs seem to have less low-end which make them a bit clearer, perhaps brighter. Certainly not a fat “metal” tone IMHO. Still lovely though.

Would have been great to have some objective measures on these pickups, to correlate with what we heard. Inductance, DCR, capacitance, magnet strength. Or even a full frequency spectrum with resonant frequency. Easy enough to do.

BOTH good, but the PAF was better all round! \m/

Comparing them with one pickup missing and one not kind of invalidates the comparison as it's been shown having a second pickup in the guitar affects the sound.

初期のGrecoのPUは音が悪かったが、良いピックアップを作れるようになれたんだ

Maybe heresy to admit it but I preferred the Greco in the neck! Seemed to half slightly scooped mids.

Gibson PAF for me,

Gibbo pickups definitely sound the better of the two.

I keep dropping by here for the comments. There are a lot of excellent gourmet PU's but a great deal are all about being different not better. Often they are trying to reinvent the wheel. Because many players have bought into the new and improved even Gibson got into the game with I might add great success. The result of all the hype is that we have been convinced that the mid 1974 ... Classic '57 PU is crap. It has it's faults but no one reading this has not been impressed by the at least some of the hot players 30 years that have used a Gibson that had these PU's already in it. Yes that great sound on those records was made with a ...Crap? PU! I recently got an SG with the Classic '57's and I use a 50 watt Plexi. Before even plugging it in I was thinking about getting something 'good' to replace them. After just playing them for a minute I had to change my underwear. No more bull about PU's for this guy. From now I buy with my ears ...not my eyes. What's cool is there nearly always used ones going cheap.

To me they were as Huw said more sweet and airier than the PAFs less rock more jazz

nah..the PAF are more woodier. dry Z sounded a bit muffled (but still good). Maybe because it is potted. If we can take off the wax, then it will be a serious contender

I'm honestly not convinced that's not a fake (there are SO many about as the real ones fetch silly money as you say).. the single fat 'Z' stamp, no date markings, lack of wax, 3 hole bobbin etc.

The Dry Z has more, dare I say.. mojo ??… Just a tiny bit ;)

you're not demonstrating Dry-Z's real features which are in its dynamic range tonal variety.

Why do you'll compare pickups with music in the background.

Those are fake Dry Zs, you can’t really gather anything from this comparison. Both Dry Zs and PAFs are amazing in their own right. I have a set of Zs and they are special no doubt, though I agree the hype and price tag is steep, same could be said for PAFs. But hey, that’s how prices go with tons of gear.

Prefer the Gibson PAF. A more rounder and fuller and better balanced sound.

日本ではグレコ　DRY Z 今1000ドルくらいで取引されています。

Hi guys, I think that Z might be fake.

This does not sound like a Dry Z pickup, or at least none I've heard.

Nice ‘debunking’! I never quite understood the high prices, I guess its mostly due to them being rare. I think those particular ‘super Real’ Greco’s have low resistance pots too, like 300K volume and 100K tone pots?

looks like Fake this Dryz.There are many Fake DRYZ or DRY82 SOLD in Yahoo ,or other site. Sat

Interesting! Great comparison. Some of my early prototypes came out sounding like the Greco Z. I didn't rate them. Too spangly. Honestly though the most ridiculous hype and the prices wow. Its just wire wound round a bobbin. Absolutely naff all "voodoo" involved. Pick a TPL between 20 and 100 and set your machine to auto-traverse. Even the bare minimum single TPL, straight traverse if left unpotted will sound 90% there. You can experiment with mixed TPL coils or add offsets between 100 and 300 for more or less "single coil" sound and degauss the mags slightly to soften it up further etc. That's it. There's no magic or hoodoo or advanced science really! The older I get the more it irks me that so many average intelligence people always seem to want to mystify and obfuscate simple things in to pseudo-religious bullshit. I'm off to fetch my pipe and slippers now.. sheesh.

If you have a set of these pickups...sell them! Worth way more than their sound. It’s quite unbelievable what bullshit people will lap up when it comes to ‘vintage’ tone. Those GENUINE PAFs were head and shoulders above the Grecos. Not even close. I wouldn’t say they are any better than a generic paf clone from any budget maker...iron gear etc. Decent enough, but that’s it

Just get a set of WIZZ Pickups, last set of PAF you will ever need.

Too far of a difference to even compare. Totally different character. All hype. I would put those Z's in a drawer. Or in the can.

One set of PAFs isn't enough to draw any conclusions. They were made so inconsistently that some do sound better than others.

Clean or dirty, that Dry Z is nothing like that PAF. Too ‘hard’ sounding to my ears.

Sorry but that Dry Z you got there is fake.

vintage PAF versus some cheap brand pickup.. Because there fake Zs

bouth are amazing and antyderesiv hummmmm