A humbucker, humbucking pickup, or double coil, is a guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out noisy interference from coil pickups. Humbucking coils are also used in dynamic microphones to
Open coil (uncovered) humbucker pickup
Covered humbucker pickup on a Les Paul copy
The Music Man StingRay bass pickup, which is wired in parallel, unlike most humbuckers.
Humbuckers on a Gibson Invader
A P.A.F., or simply PAF, is an early model of the humbucker guitar pickup invented by Seth Lover in 1955, so named for the "Patent Applied For" decal placed on the baseplate of each pickup. Gibson use
Humbucker
…of then-president Ted McCarty. Because of its use of a "Patent Applied For" sticker on the underside of the pickup, it became popularly known as the P.A.F. and would be widely be used in Gibson's guitars, starting with the Les Paul. At the same time Lover was working on his humbucker, Ray Butts developed…
Gibson PAF Humbucker Top View
Close-up of a "Patent Applied For" sticker