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The first guitars to feature humbucker pickups were the Gibson lap steels, in 1956. The begin to appear on Gibson’s high end guitars in 1957.

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Gibson’s patent application 1955 states that each coil had 5000 turns per coil. This number was derived from that fact that the P90 single coil, which had been the signature tone of Gibson had 10,000 turns. However, none of Gibson’s original PAF humbuckers have exactly 5000 turns per bobbin. The machines used to wind the bobbins were manually operated allowing for variances to occur.  We have found bobbins with as little as 4000 turns and some with more than 6000. They were consistently inconsistent…and so was their tone.

The first humbucking device to be patented was in 1935 by Electro Voice. But it wasn’t for guitar.  It was for radios but for the same purpose – to eliminate that annoying 60 cycle hum and help prevent external noises. The first humbucker for a stringed instrument was patented in 1938 to amplify the sound of piano strings by Baldwin. While the horseshoe pickup patented in 1939 and used later by Rickenbacker is similar having two coils, it really wasn’t humbucker. The humbucker you are looking for was in invented in 1955 and first appeared on guitars in late 1956.

The humbuckers of Jimmy Page's #2 guitar