patent applied for???

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

Okay, had the original pickups pulled from my 336 and replaced with fat cat P-90s. The original pickups said 'patent applied for' on them. Obviously, they are not original Gibson pickups from the 50s, but that appelation must mean something. Any of you pickup gurus know what they are?

 

Thanks,

 

Bill

[Steevo]

Originally posted by bpark@prorec.com:

Okay, had the original pickups pulled from my 336 and replaced with fat cat P-90s. The original pickups said 'patent applied for' on them. Obviously, they are not original Gibson pickups from the 50s, but that appelation must mean something. Any of you pickup gurus know what they are?

 

Thanks,

 

Bill

I guess those are the 57 classic humbuckers that came in it ... not sure why they would say PAF on them because that carries the late 50's, very early 60's connotation of 'vintageness'. My 356 has the 57 classics and I think they sound great. How would you describe your new pickups as compared to the originals?

[Ricochet]

Seth Lover invented the humbucker as we know it while working for Gibson, and applied for the patent in 1955. The patent was issude in 1959. Gibson brought out the humbuckers in 1957 with "Patent Applied For" on the bottom. They kept that tag on 'em even after the patent was awarded, till 1962. Then they put a sticker on with a patent number that was for a Gibson bridge, not a pickup!

 

Ray butts, working for Gretsch, invented an almost identical humbucker at about the same time. He did so at the urging of Chet Atkins, who hated single coil pickups. He didn't get the patent, but Gretsch built guitars with his pickups for a time, calling them "Filtertrons."

 

Here is a page with a lot of information on Gibson's early buckers.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

Originally posted by Steevo:

I guess those are the 57 classic humbuckers that came in it ... not sure why they would say PAF on them because that carries the late 50's, very early 60's connotation of 'vintageness'. My 356 has the 57 classics and I think they sound great. How would you describe your new pickups as compared to the originals?[/QB]

The luthier who does my work came back to me, both loving the guitar and the sound of the Fat Cats. He said, "This guitar sounds -huge-!". and he also liked the way that it played. Mike is a guitar builder as well as repair guy, and he is also a great jazz player. His brother is a very well respected jass bass player, and is now in the Music Department at Carnegie Mellon. Great sound runs in his family. He sees a lot of classic guitars, and it is very hard to impress him with an instrument, so I took it as a compliment and reaffurment that he liked it, too.

 

I had the pickups changed because I did not like the sound of what was in there. I didn't think that the Classic 57s were in it, though on the Gibson site they said that this is the standard pickup for the 336. But as this was a special edition ("Lucky Strike" cigarette model), it was possible that there might be some electronic as well as cosmetic differences.

 

In any case, I have the Classic 57s in a solid body guitar built for me by Mike Pellow, and they sound great. These pickups didn't sound great. They sounded kinda mediocre. So I changed them, keeping the oriiginals so that the guitar can be returned to original condition. After about an hour of playing the new pickups through the UniValve and tweaking the amp a bit, I'm digging the P-90s.

 

Gotta try some different tube combos though to darken it up a bit. As Phil and I both noted, the UniValve is a little bright. With the P-90s, the top end on the treble pickup could take your head off.

 

Bill

[fantasticsound]

Gibson has used the "patent applied for" stickers on pickups for several historic guitars, among others, I assume in an attempt to make those guitars more of a throwback to vintage instruments. Anything to tie a new instrument to the era considered to be the holy grail of Gibson p'ups. The late 1950's.

[dougsthang]

PAF has almost become a term unto itself. It equates to a certain era in pickups. Many companies now say their guitars have PAF style pickups. The pickups have a certain type of coil winding and usually Alnico V magnets with a wax based compund filler.

[Dave da Dude]

Originally posted by dougsthang':

PAF has almost become a term unto itself. It equates to a certain era in pickups. Many companies now say their guitars have PAF style pickups. The pickups have a certain type of coil winding and usually Alnico V magnets with a wax based compund filler.

Yeah ... that had me confused for a while ... cool with it now tho

 

btw: OT, attn: overflow thread; I typed all the above, selected the *cool* Graemlin and it wiped out everything after the space after *Yeah*

[fantasticsound]

Originally posted by dougsthang':

PAF has almost become a term unto itself. It equates to a certain era in pickups. Many companies now say their guitars have PAF style pickups. The pickups have a certain type of coil winding and usually Alnico V magnets with a wax based compund filler.

Actually, vintage PAF's were not wax potted. Also, anyone (including Gibson) claiming to use the number of winds from those late 1950's p'ups are liars.

 

Gibson examined a bunch of vintage PAF's only to find the windings (which was done by hand back then) on each pickup were inconsistant. They've chosen an average number of windings from those examples for the Burstbucker pickups.

 

In addition, Burstbuckers are asymetrically wound. Otherwise, there are more winds on one bobbin than the other. This reduces the effectiveness of it's ability to reduce hum minimally. However, this also effects the timbre of the pickup and mirrors similar inconsistancies in the vintage pickups examined.

 

But all Alnico V p'ups built like the original PAF's are called PAF style, regardless of how accurate specs of the new p'up are.