Type of
guitar pickup where two seperate single
coil pickups are aligned opposite each other to cancel
electromagnetic intereference. The dual coil pickups have a fat tone and "Two humbuckers and a
Marshall stack" was the
sound of 70's rock.
I'm pretty sure Les Paul invented the humbucker, and if he didn't he sure used the heck out of it as almost all Gibson guitars have humbuckers.
If you need to play your guitar near flourescent lights you want a humbucker on your guitar.
Hey
fricto,
From guitar.com
These pickups are legendary in rock guitar. Developed by Gibson guitar guru Ted McCarty in the late 1950's, these first-generation humbucking pickups revolutionized the electric guitar by eliminating unwanted hum and generating a sweet sound. PAF (Patent Applied For humbuckers)'s didn't really become popular until Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and others introduced the Les Paul into the popular culture. Today,
most pickup manufactures make a pickup based on the PAF, which is good news since the originals fetch a king's ransom on the vintage market.
It wasn't Les, but it was Gibson.