Butyrate bobbin shoot out--Bang!

[Possum]

....

Yeah they are. HEre's the bottom, Seth signed it....

[JGundry]

If those are real they have some major issues that put the authenticity into question. Besides the pickup being strangely aged. There is an extra set of mounting ring holes in a different location under the ring. The clear finish protected by the ring should be lighter in color where the ring was. The pickup rings are a different shape than Seymour's prototype Les Paul. There are no springs on the adjustment screws which according to the Gibson guitars Ted McCarty's Golden Era Book it should have (pages 88, 89). Also the book states that only two prototype sets were made. The first set which Seth put in a modified P-90 cover (there are photos of Seth holding this pickup). These pickups ended up in a modified Les Paul. The book specifically states they wanted to test them in a solid body guitar. Then a second set was made and a Les Paul in the white was pulled off the line and had the cavities hand cut to accept the new pickup. Then it was sent on to finishing. Then later assembled with the second set of prototype pickups. This cosmetically better looking guitar was played in front of the board for approval. And this is the guitar Seymour owns. Both sets of prototype pickups are accounted for. There is a photo in the book of the prototype pickup in the Duncan owned guitar with the cover off but it is the back of the pickup. I'm pretty sure I have seen good photos of the top of the pickup uncovered somewhere.

There are enough specifics in the book that anyone reading it would have been able to make a copy form the photos in the book and the Pat. drawing alone. If this pickup is real I would expect it to have pickup surrounds made in the same mold as the one made for the Duncan Les Paul. But they are different. The two real sets are well documented also. Combine that with other obvious red flags like the extra mounting ring holes and finish issues and it adds up to a fake IMO.

What is interesting is that after reading the book. It is pretty obvious that the prototype was essentially made of existing Gibson parts. The bobbins are two cut down P-90 bobbins drilled out for slugs. The slugs are probably the same that were used for lap steel pickups but cut down. The magnet is a P-90 magnet, the baseplate is the same hand made plate used for lap steels but drilled for the prototype. The adjustment screws were P-90 pole screws. The mounting ring was mounted with trim screws. The only "made" part of these were the covers and pickup rings. Once Seth got the concept he probably whipped the prototype together in an afternoon. He probably wound 5000 winds on two P-90 bobbins, marked the bobbin, cut two down, drilled them for slugs, realized he could cut them down to make the slugs fit a P-90 magnet and then put it in a lap steel baseplate. Simple and practical solution using found parts. The final PAF design was probably just a practical application of the concept. Butyrate instead of styrene to avoid cracks in the bobbin, pole adjustment screws to make sales happy... The design is even the perfect cost minded corporate solution. Lets say the boards says what is this thing going to cost? The answer is "After tooling the same or a little cheaper because it only uses one magnet instead of two, but we can charge a little more because it is an improvement." Followed by laughter and cigar lighting..

[cryptozoo]

Wow the inside of Seymours (Seth's) first PAF?

That's not Seymour's original Seth prototype, these popped up in a guitar that was (or is) for sale on Gbase a while back.

[greenfingers]

All I know is Belwar and I were extremely lucky to get 100lbs. of it. The usual buy is 1200lbs. Also the ratio of colored mix to plastic is tiny. I think you would really have to have an injection molding machine to mix the color well enough. The butyrate comes in either clear or natural and then you mix in the color. When you look in the bucket that has the plastic mixed with the color you think there is no way it will come out the correct color because there is so little color in the mix.

You could probably figure out how to mix CAB from scratch but coloring beyond a basic black seems like hours of research that could end poorly.

If you are going to do injection molding yourself I got to see that so please take pictures.

Tim Mills coloured butyrate bobbins turned out OK.

[David Schwab]

That's not Seymour's original Seth prototype, these popped up in a guitar that was (or is) for sale on Gbase a while back.

Correct. Here's more photos.

The last photo is Seth's prototype. So they are clearly some kind of prototypes, but not the first one. They seem to be made from P-90 parts, including the baseplate. But that would make sense.

[belwar]

That's not Seymour's original Seth prototype, these popped up in a guitar that was (or is) for sale on Gbase a while back.

Yeah I know, im talking about the one that Seth gave Seymour. I dont believe the one shown in this thread is legit myself.

[JGundry]

Tim Mills coloured butyrate bobbins turned out OK.

That is because Tim Mills is having them done with traditional injection molding. Possum has something else in mind.

[Possum]

....

No, I don't

Its a bit strange to think he nailed the design in only 2 pickups and that only 2 sets exist. The official one everyone sees was the PATENT APPLICATION model for the patent office application. Better photo attached. That leaves the question-how did he get there? The ones on the guitar are probably THE original working test pickups. He obviously made them since they are signed and the baseplates look hand made. Note the low B pole also. So there is a hole in that story because here we have a set of pickups the official story doesn't mention. The lack of bull's eyes means the slugs were hand cut on a saw, something you would do on an experimental pickup, and I don't think there were any products being made by Gibson that period that were using production slugs; the lap steel pickup is much older. Too bad there is no info on those pickups. Probably came from Seth's junk box of experimental stuff he did, I bet.

[JGundry]

I'm not saying that there were not other prototype Seth Lover designs but of the final design there are two sets. The pickup above and the set in the Goldtop Duncan owns. The entire sequence of events at Gibson that led up to the PAF are well documented in Gibson Guitars Ted McCarty's Golden Era on pages 87-89.

[frankfalbo]

And you have to ask how much relevance you want to place on the earliest prototypes. I have quite a few P-Rails prototypes, but they're not P-Rails. They are just what I needed to do to get calibrated and prove it out. They're not "better" than the production version. I always knew what it would look like when I could have tooling made, and how it would go together, but if 50 years from now someone wanted the proto, I would probably consider that nonsense.

Also I agree the lack of bullseye means nothing on a custom sized slug. Maybe I'll ask Seymour about the "wierdo-buckers" if he's in tomorrow and see what he says.

[JGundry]

Frank,

Do you have any photos of the prototype pickup with the cover off?

The idea of a prototype is to prove the concept to get approval to start spending money for the final production model. The fine details are worked out after the prototype is approved. These prototype humbucker are just a way cheaply demonstrate the concept.

[Possum]

....

I found an interesting fact about CAB plastic:
"C.A.B. has a shelf life of approximately 10 years if stored in a temperature controlled room. Humidity may cause moisture absorption-Keep covered."

Maybe this explains why PAFs and TTops got darker with age.

Frank if you're going to see Seymour can you ask him if (sorta off topic, but maybe not) if the Charlie Christian pickups used CAB plastic for the black bobbin work. Those were all hand made, I have a relative of one and also some never finished tops from an ebay auction. I have a customer that wants me to hand build an authentic version to fix his English copy he bought that fell apart on installation. So trying to find out what material the black stuff is. The one I have in the photo the base was cut out with a router.

[Sam Lee Guy]

I don't want you guys to feel like you can never say anything negative about Seymour Duncan just because I might be hanging around.

Ahh! Good! Seymour, you get haircut now!

[David Schwab]

Frank if you're going to see Seymour can you ask him if (sorta off topic, but maybe not) if the Charlie Christian pickups used CAB plastic for the black bobbin work. Those were all hand made, I have a relative of one and also some never finished tops from an ebay auction. I have a customer that wants me to hand build an authentic version to fix his English copy he bought that fell apart on installation. So trying to find out what material the black stuff is. The one I have in the photo the base was cut out with a router.

What did Gibson make pickguards from back then? Could it be celluloid? There were a number of plastics available in the 30's, including PVC and polyamide (nylon).

[cryptozoo]

And you have to ask how much relevance you want to place on the earliest prototypes. I have quite a few P-Rails prototypes, but they're not P-Rails. They are just what I needed to do to get calibrated and prove it out. They're not "better" than the production version. I always knew what it would look like when I could have tooling made, and how it would go together, but if 50 years from now someone wanted the proto, I would probably consider that nonsense.

Also I agree the lack of bullseye means nothing on a custom sized slug. Maybe I'll ask Seymour about the "wierdo-buckers" if he's in tomorrow and see what he says.

Not for tone purposes of course, but certainly relevance would be placed on these if were they original... just in the same way Seymour places relevance on the prototypes he has.