Todays History Lesson is . . .

ChasFred said:
Once you start to read you will understand why I picked this board to post this to.
This is a GREAT story / interview with the Genius we know as

Seth Lover !

Interview: Seth Lover on Inventing the PAF Humbucker and Why He Left Gibson for Fender | Bacon's Archive
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That's a great article Chas. I just saw the link from Reverb in my EMail.

Seth Lover was certainly one of the pioneers of the modern guitar tone that we may very easily take for granted.
Just think about the millions of humbuckers in the world, of every brand, that this man was directly responsible for inventing.

Amazing.
 
This is, to me, the most interesting statement Lover makes in the article:

“There were several people who had designed humbucking pickups, and that's why I had a hell of a time getting a patent. I finally got a patent with one claim—claimed I built a humbucking pickup [laughs].”

Earlier he says he came up with the name “humbucker” for the pickup. So, in the end Seth Lover didn’t invent the humbucker. He actually just designed one for Gibson. Still, a fine pickup he designed, though!

The way I understand Lover’s statement, it appears the patent wasn’t granted because it was actually something new. It was granted by making the patent office ~believe~ it was something new by virtue of the new word, “humbucker.”

This article in Premier Guitar is interesting in that it points out that hum-cancelling work goes back to 1912 and hum-cancelling pickups date to the mid 1930’s.

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/The_Pickup_Story_Part_III_The_Road_to_the_Humbucker
 
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