Making some new boutique guitar pickups part I

4:12 pm

My vintage guitar pickups treasure vault-the story of the                                        gold foil pickups!

 

While I’m waiting impatiently to upload some killer demos of the new Electric Poet and the new Underdog (and finally adding these models to the new 2023 collection), I’ve decided to add some new great-sounding pickups to the current line.

Besides the 50’s style lipstick single coils and the Listick humbuckers I make, a few more pickups have put their sonic spell on me, not because of a technical prowess or ingenious design, but simply because of their magical tone.

For example, I’ve always loved the Teisco gold foil, especially the ones with the ceramic magnets or the Hershey Bar pickups that were used for some of my favorite 50 catalog guitars, such as the Silvertone 1420 and the Harmony Stratotone, and the trouble was that I couldn’t find a modern boutique guitar pickups builders that sounded as musical and sweet as the original ones among the various modern recreations. 

 

       A Teisco and Harmony gold foils from the 1960s

There are a few main reasons for this. The first one is that hand-winding pickups are slowly becoming a lost art because of developments such as automatic winders, which move the AWG copper wire in a traverse movement at a repetitive pattern and an “accurate” and consistent tension.

The thing is that the human touch is one of the things that makes pickups sound better.

A scattered coil pattern will give you a wider range of frequencies.

That is why a few years ago, the Fender Custom shop made a limited run 

of their pickups and brought back for this project one of their former employees from the 50s. The human touch and understanding of the winding process and the various patterns and tension are crucial elements that make these hand-wound pickups deliver the full-bodied bell-like tone with enhanced bass response, punchy mid-range, crystalline highs combined with delicate touch responsiveness.

The second thing is using polyurethane-coated wire instead of the vintage correct enamel-coated wire with the accurate gauge used for a specific type of vintage pickup.

Modern pickup manufacturers moved away from this type of copper wire because of the cost. However, suppose you have to manufacture a large number of pickups daily. In that case, you’ll discover that you have to sand off the enamel coating on the edges of the wire (the positive and negative) to expose the copper and solder it. If you use a poly-coated wire, the heat will evaporate the coating in a split second, saving you time. But, once again, there is a tonal difference between the enamel coated and the other modern types.
The enamel coat delivers more highs and lows.
The tonal difference is due to the capacitance of the various coated wires.

Another critical factor is the pickup’s construction itself,
Using the same size pole pieces, metals, and magnet size is
crucial. Using different sizes and spaces between the coil
magnet and pole pieces will change the magnetic field and hence the tone, and let’s not forget the magnet itself-for instance, I’ve seen some
manufacturers building lipstick pickups with Alnico five magnets instead of the accurate long sand cast Alnico six that I use, and most of them use a plastic bobbin with poly-coated wire. Besides the look, it has nothing to do with the original 50s-style Danelectro lipsticks.
Sooooo, while I’m getting ready to recreate some of my favorite classic pickups, let’s start with the first type -“The Gold Foil Pickup.”

Modern pickup manufacturers moved away from this type of copper wire because of the cost. However, suppose you have to manufacture a large number of pickups daily. In that case, you’ll discover that you have to sand off the enamel coating on the edges of the wire (the positive and negative) to expose the copper and solder it. If you use a poly-coated wire, the heat will evaporate the coating in a split second, saving you time. But, once again, there is a tonal difference between the enamel coated and the other modern types.
The enamel coat delivers more highs and lows, as you can hear in this excellent demo :
The tonal difference is due to the capacitance of the various coated wires.

 

               The Back of a Harmony Gold Foil Pickups from 1962

Another critical factor is the pickup’s construction itself,
Using the same size pole pieces, metals, and magnet size is
crucial. Using different sizes and spaces between the coil
magnet and pole pieces will change the magnetic field and hence the tone, and let’s not forget the magnet itself-for instance, I’ve seen some
manufacturers building lipstick pickups with Alnico five magnets instead of the accurate long sand cast Alnico six that I use, and most of them use a plastic bobbin with poly-coated wire. Besides the look, it has nothing to do with the original 50s-style Danelectro lipsticks.
Sooooo, while I’m getting ready to recreate some of my favorite classic pickups, let’s start with the first type -“The Gold Foil Pickup.”

Now let’s take a look at this vintage pickup treasure box.
These are three gold foils. The two without the pole pieced were made by
De-Armond in the 60s and let’s delve into the fascinating world of Rowe Industries/DeArmond pickups and their iconic gold-foil pickups. These little wonders created the unique sound of many Harmony and Silvertone guitars from the late ’50s through the mid-’60s. And if you’ve ever heard the term “Golden Tone pickups,” then you already know exactly what we’re talking about.
The gold-foil pickups are instantly recognizable by their partially cut-out chromed-metal cover, which is often referred to as an S cover. But did you know that some models have silver-foil tops and diamond cut-outs, while others have black tops and are known as blackjack pickups? Regardless of the color or design, all of these pickups are constructed in the same way and produce a sound that’s simply magical.

In a stroke of luck, these pickups were created almost by accident. The construction of some of these involves winding a 44 or 43 AWG enameled thin wire around a thick magnet of rubberized ferrite or – the chunky kind you find on semi-flexible refrigerator magnets. Unlike most vintage pickups, these beauties have no real bobbin, just the wire wound around a coated magnet (usually with some kind of adhesive tape) ,with bottom and top plates made of thin plastic, a metal baseplate, and a decorative card and cover on top. Some types of gold foils have ceramic magnets (like in many of the Japanese Teisco guitars from the 60s), While others have Alnico 5 magnets (Like the ones found in a Hershey Bar pickup). When stacked together, this gold-foil pickup is only about 1/8-inch tall, making it perfect for surface mounting on a guitar’s top.

Despite their simple design, these pickups have an undefinable magic that’s hard to resist. They’re simultaneously clear and biting in the pick attack while also slightly soft and compressed, delivering thick and creamy lows and mids and clear and expressive upper mids and highs that are never spiky. And when you add distortion, a more gnarly, raw character shines through without sacrificing articulation.
It’s no wonder that many players are obsessed with these pickups and that the craze for gold foils has led to skyrocketing prices for vintage examples.
So if you’re looking for that perfect vintage tone, look no further than the Rowe/DeArmond gold-foil pickups. Ask Tommy Brenneck with the Dap-Kings or Dan Auerbach with the Black Keys – they’re the real deal.