[2] The PAF is an essential tonal characteristic of the now-famous 1957–1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitars, and pickups of this type have gained a large following.

In the mid-1950s Gibson looked to create a new guitar pickup different from existing popular single coil designs.

Gibson had already developed the Charlie Christian pickup and P-90 in the 1930s and 40s; however, these designs—like competitor Fender's single-coil pickups—were fraught with inherent 60-cycle hum sound interference.

[3] Engineer and Gibson employee Seth Lover had developed a hum-canceling circuit for amplifier power supplies and suspected the same concept could be applied to guitar pickups.

[7] In 1956, McCarty threatened legal action over design similarities between the PAF and Filter'Tron upon learning that Chet Atkins was already performing with Butts' pickups.

However, the stickers were, and continued to be, labelled with "U.S. patent 2,737,842", which is the number issued to the 1952 Les Paul trapeze tailpiece design and not the humbucking pickups.

Around the time of the last small-guard SG's offered in early 1966, Gibson standardized a T-shaped tool mark on the top of humbucker bobbins.

These early patent sticker T-Top humbuckers have the same wood spacer and short A2 and A5 magnets of the previous iteration.

"[10] Pickup manufacturer Seymour Duncan described the characteristic tone of PAFs as a "Tele-on-steroids," with a "full, uncompressed sound that’s slightly less bright than a single-coil" and "a nice balance of warm lows, clear mids and crisp highs.

"[2] Additionally, the pickups had a tonal clarity and touch sensitivity at higher gain levels that helped make them popular among rock and blues musicians.

Shaw's efforts are generally considered to be the first of many recreations of the PAF humbucker, and it was used in Gibson's reissue and Custom Shop models through the '80s and '90s.

[2] The PAF's warm, uncompressed sound has remained popular—even as hotter, more powerful humbuckers have become the norm—with notable fans in Dave Grohl, Derek Trucks, and Jeff Tweedy.