THAT UNUSUAL ’BIRD

Ushered in on Gibson’s 1963 reverse Firebird, this fully covered minihumbucker was just one of the raft of changes that the ’bird brought to the table. But overshadowed by car designer Ray Dietrich who’d conceived the design, its pickup seems more of an afterthought: Gibson needed something “different while keeping costs under control”, writes Andre Duchossoir in . “Gibson’s reluctance to invest in the development of an entirely new pickup design quickly narrowed down the choice to the mini-humbucker devised by Seth Lover in