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I’ve been working with Fusion guitarist, Hedras for the last 12 years. He has become a Sheptone string player and it has been fun to watch him grow as an artist and entrepreneur. His latest single, Victorious is now stream everywhere and anywhere you listen to music. Click on over and give his latest track a listen.

Gibson’s patent application 1955 states that each coil had 5000 turns per coil. This number was derived from that fact that the P90 single coil, which had been the signature tone of Gibson had 10,000 turns. However, none of Gibson’s original PAF humbuckers have exactly 5000 turns per bobbin. The machines used to wind the bobbins were manually operated allowing for variances to occur.  We have found bobbins with as little as 4000 turns and some with more than 6000. They were consistently inconsistent…and so was their tone.

The first humbucking device to be patented was in 1935 by Electro Voice. But it wasn’t for guitar.  It was for radios but for the same purpose – to eliminate that annoying 60 cycle hum and help prevent external noises. The first humbucker for a stringed instrument was patented in 1938 to amplify the sound of piano strings by Baldwin. While the horseshoe pickup patented in 1939 and used later by Rickenbacker is similar having two coils, it really wasn’t humbucker. The humbucker you are looking for was in invented in 1955 and first appeared on guitars in late 1956.

The humbuckers of Jimmy Page's #2 guitar

PAF is an acronym for Patent Applied For. This Patent Applied For term is often used when a new design is invented and a patent has been applied for but not yet granted. Gibson applied for a patent for their new humbucker in 1955. Knowing that other humbucking patents had also simultaneously been applied for, Gibson began production on their design before the patent was granted and marked them as “Patent Applied For” to discourage copy cats. Interestingly enough, Larry Dimarzio of Dimarzio pickups trademarked the PAF acronym in the 1970’s preventing any other pickup manufacturer from using the acronym to describe their own products.