The Les Paul Story 1952-60
This article was researched and written by the webmaster of this site and is © 2001
In 1957 another design change took place with the replacement of the single coil P90 pickups for the hum-cancelling 'humbucker' pickups. These were designed by the engineer Seth Lover, who sought a way of eradicating the 50/60 cycle mains hum and other interference that single coil pickups like the P90s, the Alnico and the Fender pickups all produced.
His design idea, like many great ideas, was essentially very simple; take two pickup coils instead of one and wire the two coils in series and out of phase so that the hum cancels itself out. The result of producing a pickup in this way was, however, not merely that the hum was gone, but also that the sound was different. Humbuckers generally produce a higher output signal and also a mellower tone with fewer treble frequencies.
The Seth Lover designed humbuckers fitted to the 1957 Les Pauls came to be known as PAFs; this was due to the fact that they were designated as 'Patent Applied For' pickups. The patent for these was applied for in 1955 and granted in 1959, but Gibson still continued to label these as 'PAFs' for at least another three years.
Gibson seemed to be in no hurry to apply the patent number to their pickups even after the patent was granted in the USA. And when they did finally get around to showing the patent number on the sticker underneath the pickup, they quoted the wrong number!
Even in 1962 a Gibson humbucker with patent number sticker bore the number 2,737,842. The correct patent number for the Seth Lover designed humbucking pickup was in fact 2,896,491. The number shown on the pickup is actually a patent for a Gibson bridge, not a pickup at all. It might be deduced from this that Gibson were not about to help the competition to copy their pickup design by telling them which patent to go and look up at the US Patent Office!
If you follow this link to the US Patent office website you will be able to view scans of the original patent documents as filed by Gibson.
Although the first Les Paul Customs had two pickups, a P90 and an Alnico, when P90s were swapped for PAFs on Gold Top and Custom models the Custom was then made with three of the new PAFs, the guitar acquiring an additional middle pickup.
Original PAFs from the 50's can vary signficantly in terms of their tone and output. Arguments rage as to the reasons for this, but one credible explanation is that the machines Gibson used to wind the coils around the pickup's magnets did not have an automatic cut off at a set number of turns. Consequently, the machine's operator would manually stop the process when they judged that it was 'done', causing some PAFs to have more windings than others. Differing effects of the passing of time on the magnets could also be a factor.
Forward to Part Five: 1958-1960
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This article is © 2001, first published in the UK 2003. It was licensed for use on the UKGuitarShop.com website in 2004 and also appeared on earlier versions of this site previously hosted at vintage-gibson-les-pauls.ukartists.com and freeserve.co.uk. Permission has not been given for it to be reproduced anywhere else. All rights reserved.
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