News — humbucker

The Heartbreaker Humbucker Set

April 14, 2025 • heartbreaker • humbucker • jimmy page • josh vittek • led zeppelin

The humbuckers of Jimmy Page's #2 guitar

Where does the term humbucker come from?

April 10, 2025 • Gibson • guitar • humbucker • pickup • sheptone • sheptone pickups

The first documented use of the term humbucker appears in a 1957 Gibson ad and was most likely coined by Seth Lover, who had designed a double coil pickup that eliminate or “bucked” the hum often encountered with single coil pickups of the day.

Tribute 2 PAF Style Humbuckers

November 06, 2023 • alnico II • alnico2 • humbucker • paf • tone • tribute • vintage

Do you have a naturally bright sounding guitar that just needs to be tamed and fattened up? Then my Tribute 2's are the humbuckers you need to achieve that ultimate vintage tone. Wrapped with plain enamel 42 wire, the neck tends to measure out at around 7.7 and the bridge at about 8. The AlniCo 2 magnet really helps soften up the harsh top end that can occur with strong maple tops and maple bodies. CLICK ON OVER and check them out.

Humbucker Soup Podcast

May 15, 2023 • humbucker • josh vittek • kevin chisolm • soup

Josh Vittek talks shop with Kevin Chisolm of Humbucker Soup.

One of My Favorite Guitarists

September 13, 2021 • humbucker • nakamura • paf • sheptone • strat • stratocaster • tribute • video • yohei

Yohei Nakamura Demonstrating the Sheptone Tribute Humbuckers

Really vintage tone 335

Both 6T8 have a fast, dynamic response at any volume. Both overdrive and distortion work equally well. Warm and harmonious sound. Great.

Sweet sound tele pups!

I replaced fender 64pure vintage pups with sheptone A2tele.
This pickup set sounds sweet so if you like jazz, blues, solo guitar and so on, you can enjoy the tone. If you like punchy tele sound, I recommend you go to sheptone A5 tele set. I think this goes better with swapash body and maple fingerboad!

Great Sounds

I purchased a set for my Warmoth build, and they sound just great! Clean or overdriven, they have a certain clarity to them that I like. And they never sound harsh to my ears. I have them wired like a 50's LP, and with a phase switch wired on a push pull pot. I can get all kinds of sounds out of these. Thank you!

An amazing and unique set of PAFs, and a standout builder.

The Sheptone Blue Sky set is an exceptional pair of PAFs. The neck is somehow both airy and woody, and also smooth and creamy. It never gets muddy but delivers very smooth and round tones.

The bridge, in my opinion, is a very special pickup that really stood out to me. I have never experienced such a vocal sounding and expressive bridge pickup in my life, it just does everything I want it to do and more. It's like a 52 tele on steroids without an ounce of harshness in the treble. Roll back the volume and it doesn't lose any heft, and gets you even closer to a single-coil like sound. It's insanely inspiring.

On top of that, Josh is super helpful and available to answer any questions you may have. Truly top notch customer service.

Stop Chasing Dragons

Just buy this thing. It's the best humbucker for any style of music, period. Don't tell me you're a tone snob unless you at least try it.

High gain? It's wound enough to give you some serious chugs and leads so smooth, like butter on a muffin, but not too much that you lose clarity and definition to compression.

Clean? This is one of the very few bridge pickups that can actually pull off a great clean tone without fumbling with the volume and tone, and it holds up split.

It's friendly with fuzz and drive pedals, built like a tank (seriously, Josh isn't screwing around with that baseplate and wire quality) and sleek enough to fit into any humbucker routing.

The Heartbreaker Humbucker Set

Where does the term humbucker come from?

Tribute 2 PAF Style Humbuckers

Humbucker Soup Podcast

One of My Favorite Guitarists

Let customers speak for us