To you who looks for information about the Mason Deluxe P.A.F. Humbucker Pickups..
You may actually feel and find yourself in the same position I have been for many years. An inspiring guitar to play but with disappointing guitar tones and EQ. I have a PRS Starla SE that's truly an amazing guitar that can compete with higher cost guitars in my collection like Gibson Custom, Heritage, and other premium instruments. While the stock pickups did work to record some demos, I liked the guitar so much that I wanted to also use it live. This started a humbucker pickups buy and sell phase that took over 9+ humbucker sets to get it right. Something was always bad in the process... Heavily compressed, plastic sounding pickup, clear but missing bass, totally weak, muddy, scooped, cold, dark, held back, unnatural. The list goes on. I can tell you I own and use pickups from the different famous North American brands. While some may have worked or work on other guitars, all of them failed on this particular guitar. I tried even a Canadian brand of boutique pickups to see if something international could get it right. Negative! I considered European & UK located brands, but before I went that route, I read about Brickhouse Toneworks pickups. I located this website, read social media posts, found videos on YouTube from rockfnrol, Visual Guy and even Zach Broyles from High Voltage Guitars & Mythos Pedals fame talking about the 1960 P.A.F. from Brickhouse Toneworks. While I do like Alnico II on Les Paul style guitars, it's a disaster on this particular PRS Starla SE, but an Alnico IV set was created by Mr. David Shepherd. After a negative experience with 9.75K Alnico IV pickup set and then a positive Alnico IV experience with a 7.86K Alnico IV bridge,I knew low output Alnico IV was going to be the right path. I learned this after 9+ pickup sets to get it right across 6 years of experimenting, resulting in wasted time and money funds.
David Shepherd offered an Alnico IV bridge at 8.1K (based on website specs). I certainly knew that my previous pickup certainly needed a push more to get to my world of high gain tones. I placed the purchase around Thanksgiving/Black Friday 2025 time, opening it up on Christmas Day, and installing it yesterday. I have finally FOUND the tone this PRS guitar needed! It doesn't fail at any moment! Clean? Done! Break-up? Done! High gain tones? Without a sweat! Clarity, harmonics, force, excellently EQ'd. All that you need is here. I actually wanted to reach out to David Shepherd to thank him for this. He finally resolved the issue this guitar had once and for all. This pickup set will forever remain in my guitar.
Something extra I would like to add as a new Brickhouse Toneworks owner and user is the excellent customer service and human being David Shepherd, the founder and pickup winder is. I asked for a short leg, 4-conductor variation of the Mason Deluxe P.A.F. set for this Starla SE. He messaged me it was possible. This was before the options appeared on the website and now they're openly available for all of us.
Just wanted to thank David publicly for his service, attention to detail, passion and the high quality of his product. It can even be seen in the quality of the packaging, presentation, and the personal touches he adds. It's an honor to do with business with an individual and company like Brickhouse Toneworks. I'll be back for more and will look forward to owning the next pickups being launched to the market in the future.
My guitar tech said that Brickhouse Toneworks just needs someone that can spread the word and tone of Brickhouse Toneworks pickups so that the brand gets the worldwide ''BOOM'' it needs. Don't wait until that happens and get on the train now! I'll happily use these pickups and promote this brand! It feels good to support business by humble, professional and passionate individuals that can truly deliver!
Don't be afraid and purchase this Mason Deluxe P.A.F. set! It truly works nicely on a full mahogany PRS! Clean, overdriven and high gain tones are all here! Don't be afraid of them being unpotted! There's nothing to fear here! Buy safely!