Seymour Duncan Seth Lover SH-55 set - FREE shipping

Up for grabs is a set of Seth Lover humbucker pickups, in very good condition. Probably the most true-to-the-original mass produced PAF pickup. Includes original boxes, springs, mounting screws and pickup ring screws. Pictures are of the actual units. FREE shipping!

From the manufacturer website:

The humbucker as we know it traces its history back to a design by Seth Lover, who invented it while working for Gibson in 1955. His Patent Applied For (P.A.F.) design has served as the launching pad for innumerable pickups in the nearly six decades since, and these days original examples of those early humbuckers change hands for some pretty impressive figures. 

 Seymour W. Duncan considered Lover his humbucker mentor and in 1994 they collaborated on the release of the Seth Lover Model, an authentic recreation of the P.A.F. It has the same nickel silver cover and long-legged nickel silver bottom plate, butyrate plastic bobbins, plain enamel wire, Alnico 2 bar magnet, maple spacer, and black paper tape. And just like the originals, it’s not wax-potted, so it has a slightly more lively tone compared to potted pickups. It comes standard with vintage-style single conductor cable, but is also available with four-conductor cable for coil splitting, phase flipping or series/parallel options. 

 The SH-55 bridge pickup has a DC resistance of 8.1k and a resonant peak of 5.9 KHz. That puts it within the slightly hotter edge of vintage output. It’s a very open-sounding humbucker, and true to the spirit of the original 50s P.A.F.s, it has similar attack and detail to a single coil, but with no noise, a more rounded treble and thicker midrange. That slight single coil-like attack s something a lot of players tend to be surprised by when they first get their hands on a true vintage-output, unpotted humbucker, but it’s quite addictive. The low end is quite constrained and the treble has a smooth, buttery feel. There’s a lot of treble, but it rolls off right before the fizzy-sounding frequencies kick in. This helps the individual notes of chords to mesh together nicely, and it’s great for articulate solo work. Crunchy rhythm tones have plenty of detail, while clean tones are bright and sunny, rather than twangy and brittle.

 The neck SH-55 has a DC resistance of 7.3k and a resonant peak of 7.5KHz. The lowered output and increased treble compared to its bridge counterpart actually helps it to sound more balanced, since neck pickups are sensing a darker-sounding but more powerful section of string. Tonally, the neck model feels quite different to the bridge. It’s fuller, more singing and sustaining, with a hair more pick attack, which is great for really squeezing out those Gary Moore-style notes. It tracks very well for high-speed picking under high gain, and it has a beautiful R&B voice when you use a clean or slightly pushed tone. And it’s gorgeous when blended in with the treble pickup – a sort of Jimmy Page-esque jangle.