“If you’re like me and find the neck pick up a little dark in most les Pauls, you may find this interesting. If you’re a purist you may flame the hell outta me for this.

So there is a Canadian winder named David bowes (Sigil Pickups) that winds a really nice P.A.F. style pick up called “the bluesman”. He did a set for me with aged covers that I was real impressed with, so I approached him with a strange idea for a custom wound set for my 08 standard. I had been playing my tele a lot and was obsessing over the clear, glassy note pronunciation and overall brightness that you get from a tele. So…… I asked Dave if he would wind me a set of pick ups where the neck pup was actually a single coil with a tele style wind, but in a humbucker “body”.

Instead of being appalled he was actually intrigued with this idea, so we brainstormed a bit and came up with this. ..
Neck pick up is essentially an 8.2k single coil, with an unwound slug next to it to complete the humbucker body. You would never tell by looking at it that there is actually only one coil wound under there!
Bridge pick up is sort of a t top style humbucker 7.8k as this was Dave’s idea of what would suit the neck pup.

The result. …… fantastic! In neck only position my 08 standard now sounds very similar to my AVRI telecaster. I absolutely love it. It’s got great spank and just unreal clean tone. Switch to neck/bridge and throw some reverb on there and you’re nailing that clean Stevie Ray Vaughan tone. Add a little overdrive and it’s off to Hendrix country. ..
Flip back to the bridge and it’s back to classic less Paul vibes. ..

The project worked out so well that Dave decided to make this an official set and he even let me name the set. I chose “Dirty Little Secret” for obvious reasons. 

He sent the set to me labeled “prototype #001 Jeffs Dirty Little Secret” with the Sigil branding. I thought that was a really cool touch.” – Jeff E.