Mini-humbucker

The mini-humbucker is a humbucking guitar pickup (used in electric guitars). It was originally created by The Epiphone Company. The mini-humbucker resembles a Gibson PAF humbucker, but is narrower in size and senses a shorter length of string vibration.^[1] This produces clearer, brighter tones that are quite unlike typical Gibson sounds.^[2] It fits in between single-coils and full-sized humbuckers in the tonal spectrum. It is frequently used in jazz guitars, mounted under the fingerboard or on the pickguard.

The mini-humbucker technology was acquired by Gibson when they purchased Epiphone in the late 1950s. After this acquisition, Gibson began using mini-humbuckers in various guitar models. They continued to use them on many Epiphone electric guitars (now manufactured under license for Gibson) and several of Gibson's archtop jazz guitars. A slightly different variation of the mini-humbuckers was used on Gibson Firebird guitars, thus giving them a very distinctive tone.

The Firebird pickup uses a pair of long 'rail' magnets whereas the Les Paul Deluxe mini-humbucker uses a single bar magnet below one ferrous rail and six threaded ferrous pole pieces. The Les Paul Deluxe mini-humbucker has adjustment screws for the pole pieces; the Firebird mini-humbucker does not.

In the 1970s, mini-humbuckers replaced Gibson's original P-90 single-coil pickups on several of Gibson's budget guitar models, as well as the Les Paul Deluxe: the size and shape meant that it could fit very comfortably into the space occupied by the P-90, so no extra routing was required in the solid body guitars. Only select re-issue Gibson models are still made with Mini-humbuckers, as they are less popular than standard humbuckers. In 2012, Gibson released a '70s Tribute line of guitars, offering inexpensive mini-humbucker variants of the Les Paul Studio, Firebird,^[3] and SG Special; these use the Firebird style of mini-humbucker pickup. Mini-humbuckers were also used in some models of the Nighthawk.

A mini-humbucker pickup design is also used for the pickups in Rickenbacker 650 guitars and 4004 basses.

A number of third party manufacturers make mini-humbucker replacement pickups. As of 2011, Seymour Duncan,^[4] DiMarzio, RC Pickups, Guitar Fetish, Chris Klein, Curtis Novak, Jason Lollar and Skatterbrane all make mini-humbuckers.

Notable users

• Johnny Winter has used a Gibson Firebird guitar since the late 1960s. His tone is centered on the Firebird mini-humbucker.
• Pete Townshend of The Who used a number of Gibson Les Paul Deluxe guitars in the 1970s that featured the mini-humbucker.^[5][6]
• Scott Gorham (Thin Lizzy) and Barry Bailey (Atlanta Rhythm Section) are users of the mini-humbucker.
• Caleb Followill from Kings of Leon uses a Gibson ES 325 with mini-humbucker. It's his favourite guitar and it is the only one he plays live, though he has a couple of replacements.
• Jeff Carlisi of 38 Special used a 1969 Gibson Les Paul with mini-humbuckers as his primary studio guitar.^[7]

References