Is this a Tim Shaw humbucker?

M37a · May 18, 2020

Hi based on some quick google searched this look like a 70' or early 80's Gibson pickup. It measures 8.78k. Is this a Tim Shaw pickup? Any other tips for ID'ing it?

zacknorton · May 18, 2020

Tim Shaw's usually have an ink stamp. Not always. But that pickup would be pretty hot for a Tim Shaw.

And the tape?

corpse · May 19, 2020

Zack- the early ones have the ink stamp- but that stops around 1982-83 and they used these PAF's until the Bill Lawrence PCB ones started in 1988. I cannot say definitively from the etched Pat number.

rifle · May 19, 2020

No braided wire?

zacknorton · May 19, 2020

right. not all have ink.

Do any of the shaw's have bobbin tape showing?

what did this get pulled from?

It seems to be a bit too high on the high side (ohm wise) to be a shaw. No??

Wilko · May 19, 2020

A Shaw "PAF" would have braided wire, ink stamp on a six hole baseplate. That is a high output pickup from that time, but a not a "Shaw".

M37a · May 20, 2020

Here are some pictures with the cover removed. Definitely strange. I picked this up from Reverb, not sure what it came out of unfortunately.

MikeSlub · May 20, 2020

The impressed patent number is okay. But braided wire and an Ink stamped serial number would be the best indicators of a Shaw. Also, I’ve never seen a sloppy one with the tape sticking out around the cover. That pickup may be rewound.

I don’t get the non-braided wire on this one. Doubtful that it is a Shaw, but from that era.

I don’t know how the urban legend got started regarding the greatness of Shaw pickups. I have a number of them in my reissue Les Pauls. They are good, but nothing to write home about IMHO. :hank

Wilko · May 20, 2020

MikeSlub said:
I have a number of them in my reissue Les Pauls. They are good, but nothing to write home about IMHO. :hank

My first real Les Paul was a 1982 Studio Custom with Shaw PAF's (Had the stickers on the pickup rings) and after I bought three more Les Pauls, it just couldn't compare to the T-Tops. It was a little "muffled" sounding.

dnabbet2 · Jun 30, 2020

Wilko said:
My first real Les Paul was a 1982 Studio Custom with Shaw PAF's (Had the stickers on the pickup rings) and after I bought three more Les Pauls, it just couldn't compare to the T-Tops. It was a little "muffled" sounding.

I srtill have a 1980 Standard 80 from about 1982 that came with Tim Shaws. I also had three Elite 80s over the years. And the first thing I did on all of them was install early DiMarzio PAFs 'cause I was playing funky stuff and wanted more brightness and articulation -- the Tim Shaws did sound muffled to me.

But I wanted to say the inked numbers faded from the pickup chassis almost completely ... aided by the removal of those grey self-adhesive foam-rubber cubes about the size of sugar cubes that used to hold the pickup steady in Les Pauls in the early 1980s. So yuou might see little traces of foam rubber and no inked number on a Tim Shaw.

Is this a Tim Shaw humbucker?

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