Well, I hope I don't get in any hot water over this, but here goes.
There is proprietary stuff involving patents involved. The true story is, Bill Bartolini had designed Hi-A Beast's in the '70's for guitars - and Paul used two of them in a 12-string he built for Al DiMeola around 1976. They were really incredible in an electric 12 string, which benefitted from primarily uber clean pick-up sounds. The twin rotary switches made it truly magical and well, revolutionary. While Paul felt that the "Beasts" were far too clean for the majority of his guitars, he really wanted to try them in his basses. Paul worked out a deal making several key changes on the pickup structure with Bill Bartolini and ordered maybe a dozen pick-ups for his basses - modified by Bill to his exact specs. Paul also altered and patented his own design for the 9 position rotary switch he was using - which is key. Well, as the story goes, there was a fire at Bartolini later that year and all of the specs on the exact pickups Paul designed along with Bill - along with many other specs and technical drawings - were lost forever. In the meantime, Paul moved on from the pickups, not realizing how legendary they would later become.
A few years ago, I was in touch directly with Clyde at Barolini about resurrecting a version of this pickup. He was very excited - and would love to try and make some of these, and not just for me - but they are totally clueless as far as the original "recipe" goes with Paul's mods. Wanna know how serious it is? Clyde begged me to take the pickup out of #11 - and take photos of the wiring and the back of the pickup, which doesn't look like anything I have ever seen before. I would basically describe the wiring as perpetual layers of multi-colored spaghetti - and I can't even count the number of coil taps on the back of the pickup.
Of course, I had to clear this photo idea with my good friend Paul and his very stern comment was - "Rick, if you do that I will kill you."
Enuff said...
