Brickhouse Toneworks 60 PAF Humbucker

September 23, 2026 darthphineas 60 PAF, Alnico 2, Brickhouse, Brickhouse Toneworks, David Shepherd, Humbucker, PAF, Pickup, Vintage PAF

Built Like A Brickhouse

The Brickhouse 60 PAF comes from pickup designer David Shepherd, whose work includes collaborations with players and technicians connected to names like Rene Martinez (tech for Stevie Ray Vaughan), Lee Dickson (tech for Eric Clapton), Bill Kelliher (Mastodon), Alex Lifeson (Rush), Paul Waggoner & Dustie Waring (Between The Buried And Me), as well as designing award-winning PAFs and list-topping HSP90s, Mini Humbuckers, P-90s, Filtertron, and Single Coils.

That experience matters here because the Brickhouse 60 PAF is not trying to reinvent what a vintage PAF does. Instead, it takes the characteristics that make the best examples of late 1950s and early 1960s humbuckers so desirable and puts them into a consistent production pickup.

The original PAFs are famous for their inconsistency as much as their sound. Two sets made around the same time can have completely different personalities. That is thanks to variations in magnets, wire, winding, materials, and the manufacturing process itself. Some of those differences produced legendary pickups. Others simply produced pickups that made noise.

The Brickhouse 60 PAF takes the more useful approach. You get the character associated with those great early PAFs without having to hunt down an expensive vintage set and hope you found a good one.

Wired for Sound

The Brickhouse 60 PAF set goes into a mahogany dual humbucker guitar. Maple neck, 25 1/2 inch scale, and 22 fret maple fingerboard. The harness uses Bourns 500K pots, a Switchcraft 12120X three way toggle, and a Pure Tone 1/4 inch output jack. The guitar is tuned to E standard with 10 to 46 strings.

These pickups use braided single conductor lead wire, which keeps the installation straightforward for a traditional PAF style setup. There is nothing complicated about getting the Brickhouse set wired up and ready to go.

Shep 60 PAF Reverse Zebra — 60 PAF Zebra

The Brickhouse Gets to Work

Neck: Smooth Operator

The Brickhouse 60 PAF neck pickup has the vocal quality that makes a good PAF so useful in the first place. There is plenty of character through the low end and low mids. But the bottom stays firm instead of turning into the usual humbucker mud.

The lows have depth and weight without becoming oversized, while the upper mids and highs provide enough edge to keep lead work articulate. Notes have room to breathe, and that transparency becomes particularly noticeable as they decay. You can hear the smaller details of the performance instead of having the pickup smooth everything into one big sound.

Clean tones show off the chime and complexity. The neck pickup becomes more interesting once the amplifier starts getting some dirt under it. There is enough harmonic information to respond to changes in picking attack and enough clarity to make the guitar’s volume and tone controls useful parts of the sound rather than decorations.

Bridge: Bring The Noise

The bridge pickup brings a little more attitude to the party.

On a clean amplifier setting, it has the clarity and definition you’d expect from a good PAF, with enough high end to keep individual notes separated. Add some gain and the Brickhouse 60 PAF starts pushing the amplifier in a way that makes the pickup considerably more aggressive than its vintage credentials might suggest.

That is one of the more interesting things about this pickup. It does not need to become excessively hot to get an amp moving. The bridge sits in the mid to high 8K range, yet there is plenty of presence and harmonic information available when the gain comes up.

It also has enough of that familiar PAF response to get into the brown sound territory when you push it, while retaining the clarity that makes a lower output pickup useful in the first place. Players who like high gain but still want the guitar to remain part of the equation will find plenty to work with here.

PAF CHARACTER WITHOUT THE GUESSWORK

There is a reason the original PAFs continue to be such a big deal. The good ones have a combination of clarity, dynamics, harmonic complexity, and responsiveness that is difficult to reduce to a single resistance reading or a vintage inspired marketing label.

That also makes the PAF category a minefield. Simply putting “PAF” or “59” on a pickup does not automatically make it sound like a great example of either.

The Brickhouse 60 PAF takes a more practical approach. It focuses on the musical qualities that make those early humbuckers desirable while giving you a matched set that does not require a vintage pickup hunt to find them.

The result is a set that works just as well when the amplifier is clean as it does when things start getting dirty. The pickups respond to the player, clean up from the guitar controls, and retain enough definition to keep higher gain sounds from turning into a wall of indistinct humbucker mush..

Features

Alnico 2 Roughcast Long Bar Magnets
Long Leg Frames
Butyrate Bobbins
Vintage Correct Alloys and Coil Wire
Braided Single Conductor Lead
Unpotted Coils

Specs

Bridge
DCR – 8.837 K
Inductance – 5.157 H
Magnet – Alnico 2 Roughcast

Neck
DCR – 7.728 K
Inductance – 4.17 H
Magnet – Alnico 2 Roughcast

Yep, that’s all there is to give. This Brickhouse 60 PAF set has covers and braided 1-con lead wire. If something changes, I will update the specs. But you cannot blame me for not wanting to crack open an excellent work of art like this.

Demo

Brickhouse Toneworks “60 PAF” Set with 60th Anniversary 1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom Shop Reissue

Brickhouse Toneworks – 60 PAF pickup set

Brickhouse ’60 PAF with SG

Built To Rock

The Brickhouse 60 PAF delivers the combination of clarity, dynamics, and harmonic character that makes a good PAF so useful. The neck has the depth and vocal quality you’d expect, while the bridge adds enough push and aggression to handle everything from clean tones to a properly dirty amplifier.

That range is the real appeal. These pickups retain the touch sensitivity and openness associated with a great vintage PAF without requiring you to hunt down a rare and expensive original.

The Brickhouse 60 PAF is available with nickel, aged nickel, or gold covers, along with zebra, reverse zebra, and black bobbins. Shep Guitars also offers additional customization.

For reference, this Brickhouse Toneworks 60 PAF humbucker set evaluation was conducted with the following: Fractal Axe-Fx II XL+ featuring Celestion Impluse Responses and Fractal MFC-101 MIDI Foot Controller. ADA MP-1 Tube Pre-Amp loaded with Tube Amp Doctor ECC83 Premium Selected tubes, using the ADA MC-1 MIDI Controller. Fryette LX II Stereo Tube Power Amplifier. Physical cabs use are Marshall 1960B, Mojotone British, and Peavey 6505 cabs loaded with Celestion Classic Series Vintage 30s and Classic Series G12M Greenbacks.

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