The History of PUs and the Brands that Adorn Them
Ray Butts
The man who created another humbucker "Filter Tron
When you think of mainstream humbucker pickups today, you probably think of Gibson's "Filter Tron. Gibson started installing humbuckers in 1957. And at about the same time, the Filtertron pickup was introduced. The Filtertron is known as "the other humbucker" that appeared in the 1950s, with a humbucker construction similar to Gibson's P-490. And the man who developed this revolutionary pickup was Ray Butts.
Ray Butts, like Seymour Duncan and Bill Lawrence, was an artist, but he was an accordion player, not a guitarist. Although he had a career as a performer, Butts put that career to rest after the death of his father and began repairing appliances for a living. Soon after, he founded Ray Butts Music, which sells and repairs musical instruments and amplifiers.
Development of the Echosonic Amplifier and Meeting Chet Atkins
In 1952, a friend, guitarist Bill Gaultney, asked Butts for an amplifier that would allow him to achieve the echo effect Les Paul used to play live. So Butts built a prototype Gibson amp with a wire recorder embedded in it. However, a problem arose with noise across the wire connections, and after various trials and errors, they settled on using tape.
The amplifier thus completed was named "Echosonic. Considering that amplifiers with reverb did not appear on the market until the early 1960s, this was a very early development. It is said that the Echosonic was later used as a reference for the Echoplex.
In 1954, Butts met legendary guitarist Chet Atkins. Atkins loved the Echosonic and immediately purchased it. It is said that the Echosonic was used in the recording of many classic songs, including "Mr. Sandman. This was the fateful encounter between Ray Butts and Chet Atkins.
Development of the Filtertron pickup
In 1954, Gretsch introduced the 6120 as Chet Atkins' signature model. The 6120 was equipped with the "Gretsch DualMonde Federatone pickup" (later called "Dynasonic") developed by DualMonde.
In 1957, the 6122 Country Gentleman is introduced. This model was co-developed with Atkins, and the model name was derived from the name of a Chet Atkins song. This model would be equipped with Butts' newly developed Filter-Tron pickups. The development of the Filtertron pickups was largely due to the Echosonic amplifiers that had been introduced earlier.
Atkins was troubled by hum noise when using the 6120 in combination with the Echosonic at the time, and approached Butts for advice. Thus, Butts, coincidentally, like Gibson, arrived at the solution of hum cancellation.
The pickup he created had a humbucker construction and was named the "Filter'Tron. Butts sold the Filter'Tron to Gretsch, and with Atkins' encouragement, it was installed in the 6122. Since then, more and more Gretsch models were equipped with Filter'Tron as standard, and it became a representative model of Gretsch pickups.
The Filtertron has the same humbucker construction as the Gibson, but it is smaller in size than the Gibson. This makes the pole piece spacing narrower than on the Gibson. In addition, the magnets used were alnico magnets and ferrite magnets, which are about twice as thick as those used in Gibsons. The result is a pickup with a crisp sound characteristic that easily produces high frequencies.
If the Filtertron had not been developed, other Gretsch pickups such as the Hi-Lo Tron and Super Tron would not have been developed, and the position of the Gretsch guitar in the modern era would have been different.