Staple Singer

Gibson’s ‘forgotten’ Les Paul pickup…

The so-called ‘Alnico’ or ‘Staple’ pickup was designed by Seth Lover on request from Ted McCarty. Although Lover had previously worked at Gibson, at the outbreak of WWII he’d enlisted in the US Navy. He rejoined Gibson in 1945 before he realised, in 1947, he could get a better job in the new Kalamazoo Navy training centre. In early 1952, however, the Navy decided you had to move from base to base – not something Lover wanted to do. Around the same time, he was contracted by Ted McCarty to do a ‘special job’ on designing a pickup – a direct response to the DeArmond 200 that was already in use by Gretsch as the DynaSonic, with its heightadjustable magnetic polepieces. Using the same 10,000 turns for its coil as the existing P-90, instead of the DeArmond’s slug magnets housed in threaded sleeves, Lover went for six 28.6mm (1.125”) long rectangular magnets, each with their own height adjustment facility. Apparently, it was the first Gibson pickup to use Alnico V magnets.

While these stronger magnets produced a louder pickup, players tended to raise the magnets too close to the strings and cause unwanted wolf tones. “In other words,” Lover is quoted, “they wanted to get it loud, and all at once they’d get these sour notes from that pickup. They should have kept the magnets down the waist.”

While modern replicas of the Alnico pickup are rare, Jason Lollar has just introduced his own Staple, a direct retrofit for a soapbar P-90 with six fixed-height rectangular magnetic slugs. “Someone loaned me an original late 50s Les Paul Custom for a gig,” says Jason. “Ever since then, I’ve been fascinated with the sound of the original P-90 Staple pickup. We modified the design so it fits most soapbar routs with no modification to the guitar, [but] I voiced it to sound just like the legendary Les Paul Staple pickup that was loaned to me.”