To give you some more details about the rear pickup of the Richie Sambora Signature Edition Black Paisley, the DiMarzio PAF Pro pickup, I have created this post.
DiMarzio (full name: DiMarzio Musical Instrument Pickups, Inc.) is an American-based electronic manufacturing company, famous for its guitar pickups. The company also produces miscellaneous guitar accessories, such as cables, straps and hardware. They have manufactured the PAF pro.
P.A.F. or just PAF is the world’s first humbucker guitar pickup, invented by Seth Lover in 1955 as an engineer for Gibson. (PAF stands for Patent Applied For)
The PAF pro is a so called “Medium Power” humbucker. This means it is not high power such as DiMarzio’s D-Sonic or Super Distortion. This would not really fit a Sambora Stratocaster, to my opinion.
DiMarzio puts it as
“The PAF Pro was created when chops-intensive playing was first starting to happen, and high-gain amps and rack systems were getting popular. A pickup was needed that combined a lot of presence and cut with an open-sounding PAF vibe.”
The sound of a PAF Pro combined with a single-coil pickup in the middle position adds the versatility of the traditional glassy twang to any guitar. Using a five-way pickup switch and backing off on the guitar’s volume control gives you a range of tone from over the top to slashing funk rhythm.
This is a great building block pickup, because it’s effective in many different situations. As a bridge pickup, it’s really effective with single-coils, because it won’t drown them out with too much power, and it’s bright enough to blend in tone-wise. And that is exactly how Richie uses it.
DiMarzio PAF Pro Humbucker Pickup Specifications
- Wiring: Standard four conductor
- Magnet: Alnico 5
- Output: 300mV
- DC Resistance: 8.40K
- Year of Introduction: 1986
The Paf pro was used by many other guitarist such as Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker etc.
Here is some more info in the PAF Humbucker and on the website of DiMarzio you will find more info too.