Fender Wide Range Humbucker patent

[DrStrangelove]

Can't find the patent on this one.

Seth Lover is said to have designed it for Fender for use on 1971-79 Thinline Telecaster and Starcaster (Coronado?) hollow bodies.

Some sources say the pickups differed from the Lover PAF in that
they used Cunife for the pole magnets, and were somewhat
underwound at 6800 winds total.

Cunife I's numbers suggest a slightly undercharged Alnico II
save that it was much easier to machine.

Does anyone have a patent number?
I'm guessing it would be between 1968 and 1974.

-drh

[Old Tele man]

...I did a GOOGLE PATENT search on Seth Lover+Fender+CuNiFe and didn't find anything, but that was a couple years ago.

...FWIW, CuNiFe materials are *still* around and in use, predominately as core slugs in Linear Velocity Transducers.

[Joe Gwinn]

...I did a GOOGLE PATENT search on Seth Lover+Fender+CuNiFe and didn't find anything, but that was a couple years ago.

Be aware that Google Patent runs on scanned OCR-converted images, yielding searchable text that is rife with errors, making keyword search chancy. Try more smaller searches, to reduce the impact of OCR garbles.

[Possum]

....

buy a real one and take it apart. I had one on a tele when I was a kid, I hated that thing.....

[DrStrangelove]

buy a real one and take it apart. I had one on a tele when I was a kid, I hated that thing.....

We're building a pickup patents table over at
http://www.pickupedia.info/index.php/Patents

I'm trying to get the table filled out,
so I don't need the actual pup structure bits right yet.

-drh
--

[Possum]

another idea...

why don't you have a photo gallery of pickup pix there as well. I look forever trying to find a P13 photo of the guts, none on the web.

[DrStrangelove]

Great idea.

why don't you have a photo gallery of pickup pix there as well. I look forever trying to find a P13 photo of the guts, none on the web.

You expect a f*ck of a lot from a project that started five days ago.

And yes, a list of pickups with images and maybe drawings of the
internals of basic pickup types is essential, but where do we get
drawings that are not copyrighted? Go begging hat in hand to
Duncan, DiMarzio,etc?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Submissions would be even better.

-drh

[Old Tele man]

...I'm going to go out on a limb and say that "maybe" CBS-Fender didn't actually patent the Fender/Seth Lover "Wide-Range Humbucker Pickup" for three possible reasons: (A) it was designed by Seth Lover who had also designed the original HB for Gibson, (B) it was only a 'utility' design-change (location of adjusting screws), and (C) the use of CuNiFe wasn't considered unique enough(?)

...I'm just guessing here, because I've searched and found nothing.

[David Schwab]

Lover's original patent covers split coil humbuckers like this. Fender got around the patent when making the P bass pickup, by getting their own patent on a split coil pickup with unequal size coils.

So maybe it was Lover's original patent.

[Old Tele man]

So maybe it was Lover's original patent.

...could be, but I doubt it since he (Seth Lover) assigned all rights to Gibson...and I seriously doubt CBS-Fender would "rent" manufacturing rights.

[Joe Gwinn]

And yes, a list of pickups with images and maybe drawings of the internals of basic pickup types is essential, but where do we get drawings that are not copyrighted? Go begging hat in hand to
Duncan, DiMarzio,etc?

The cleanest solution is to make one's own drawings, and copyright them for good measure. The copyright owner can then choose to publish the work on the web. Copyright protects the expression, not the idea. Unlike patents.

[David Schwab]

...could be, but I doubt it since he (Seth Lover) assigned all rights to Gibson...and I seriously doubt CBS-Fender would "rent" manufacturing rights.

True.

Were the Wide Range pickups ever patented?

Maybe it's this one then? 3177283

[Old Tele man]

...couldn't be #3177283 because it's Leo Fender-era and was submitted in 1961, and Seth Lover was later, during the CBS-era...mid-late 1960's.

...it's an interesting design though, having the tone control only on the treble two strings!

[madialex]

Am I missing something or is the Patent web site messed up. For about 2 weeks I cant get any text or Pictures to come up, the page loads with the next page, previous page arrow things and tells how many pages but no visible text or pics?????

[DrStrangelove]

Uspto?

Am I missing something or is the Patent web site messed up. For about 2 weeks I cant get any text or Pictures to come up, the page loads with the next page, previous page arrow things and tells how many pages but no visible text or pics?????

If you mean the US Patent office, then you may need to tweak your browser
plug-in configuration to use QuickTime to read the USPTO .tiff images.

I can't get anything to happen under Linux and have resorted to
downloading .pdf files from PAT2PDF.ORG

Can someone else help here?
I don't use Internet Explorer.

-drh