Zebra Coil

In 1959 and 1960, the bobbin color of Gibson’s humbucking pickups was temporarily changed to cream due to a shortage of black plastic. During this transition, the two coils in a particular pickup might be of different colors. When a cream and a black bobbin were matched, it became known as a “zebra coil” (or just “zebra”). Some guitar players swore that these 2-color pickups actually sounded better, and soon every guitar player was sneaking a look under the nickel cover to see if he or she had one of these “killer pickups.” Eventually, pickup manufacturers began creating cover-less zebra-coil pickups to satisfy the demand. There has never been any scrap of real evidence that zebras were in any way better than all-black or all-cream pickups.