In the 1950s, as the electric guitar burst onto the music scene, guitarists shared a common frustration: “hum,” a noise that grew louder as the volume increased.

There was one engineer who put an end to this inescapable fate and shaped the history of guitar sound that followed. His name was Seth Lover.

This is the story of the man who worked for both Gibson and Fender—the two giants of the industry—and propelled the history of the guitar forward.

While experimenting with various methods to eliminate hum, Seth focused on the principle of “humbucking,” which uses two coils to cancel out each other’s noise.

By placing the two coils side by side and winding one of them in the opposite direction (out-of-phase connection), external hum noise is canceled out.

However, this approach had the drawback of also canceling out the signal from the string vibrations, resulting in a thin, weak sound.

Therefore, by reversing the magnetic poles of one coil (swapping the north and south poles), he succeeded in eliminating noise while allowing the string vibration signals to add together, resulting in a more powerful output.

Development of this groundbreaking pickup began around 1955 and was completed in about six months with the cooperation of President Ted McCarty and others.

Since a patent was pending, a sticker reading “PATENT APPLIED FOR,” or “P.A.F.,” was affixed to the back of the pickup.

This marked the birth of the P.A.F., which is now spoken of as a legend.

The Gibson Les Paul equipped with this P.A.F. pickup captivated many guitarists with its warm, rich sound and had a tremendous influence on the development of music genres such as rock,

blues, and jazz.