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 in a 'floating' arrangement, where it's mounted at the end of the fingerboard, or on the pickguard not into the body of the instrument.
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 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 2011, 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 2018, EMG, [4] Seymour Duncan, [5] DiMarzio, GFS, Dragonfire, and Jason Lollar all make mini-humbuckers.