HISTORY OF THE PAF – SETH E LOVER THE MAN WITH THE PLAN

The humbucker pickup was invented by Seth E Lover in 1955 whilst he was working for Gibson primarily as a amplifier designer.

Lover worked for Gibson between 1952-1967 as a design engineer and was given the task of sorting out the 60-cycle hum inherent in their P-90 design by the management.

Using his knowledge of amplifiers, Seth Lover realised that by connecting two singlecoil pickups in series and wiring the coils out of phase both electrically and magnetically he could cancel out most of the hum and noise before the signal hit the amplifier. This discovery gave the world the humbucker.

Seth and Gibson applied for the patent of this revolutionary design on june 22nd 1955. The patent wasn’t issued until July 28 1959. Around 1957 Gibson placed a little sticker on the underside of their pickup, the famed “patent applied for” sticker which gave the pickup it's new name - the PAF.

Interestingly Gibson received the patent in 1959 and did not change the patent applied for sticker until roughly 1962 where it now displayed a patent number, not for the pickup but the trapeze tailpiece designed by LES PAUL. No one knows if this was a typo or an attempt to hide their patent from the competition.

So everyone say thank you to Seth E Lover as without him so many classic tones wouldn’t even exist.