Swing Guitar

Dedicated to pre-bebop jazz guitar.

Friday, May 19, 2006

New Gear, pt.1

So, I went over board on ebay a while back and got a 1947 DeArmond Guitar Mic pickup and a 1937 Gibson EH-150 amp. Well, I'll tell you - you get what you pay for! The EH-150 had a blown speaker, the cabinet is falling apart, and the handle is completely shot. The good news is that I just took the speaker in to Orange County Speaker. I'd heard that it's the only place to go, and they knew exactly what they were looking at and what to do with it. I'm picking it up in week - we'll see what happens.

As for the DeArmond, it worked great when I got it, except for an intermitent short in the cable by the jack. So I fixed that. But then a problem developed where the pickup only put out a quarter of its output. This happended on-and-off, but eventually stayed muted all the time. So, I have to crank my Peavey Classic 30 all the way up just to get useable signal. But, damned if it doesn't sound pretty good. It really does have that old-school single coil sound!

Also, I made some changes to my Eastman 805. I had taken the guard and pickup off, and I got a really nice repro tortise shell guard from archtop.com. It's shaped like an early 30's, 16" L-7 guard, but triple bound and redish shell color. I had my tech install the guard and also do some wiring to acommodate the new DeArmond. I had him wire the pickup into the end pin jack, but put an RCA connector in-between so I can take the pickup completely of the guitar whenever i want. He's also modifying my 810 for the same thing, so I can put the pick up on either guitar. Also, I had him redo all of the pick up cabling with mogami wire, because the old wiring was pretty frayed.

Here a before and after on the 805:
Before:





After:

3 Comments:

  • At 1:48 PM, Blogger mrG said…

    curious. you just paid a lot for DiArmond mics, and after 30 years of fighting with mine, I just sold mine (to a guitar shop). Yeah, they have a sound, but I just found them too clunky, too heavy, and I was tired of hum and interference problems (beyond just being single coil, probably due to the ancient wiring inside). So I switched to a single-coil bar that fits on the base of the neck just before the fretboard, and, well, it's a different sound (after 30 years, I can't expect to adapt too fast ;) but it is not an unpleasant sound.

    but man, it's a reliable sound, there every time, every gig, and doesn't get bumped out of place by an arm.

    but, if you like them, then that's good too, 'cause it means they are likely not to spend long in that shop's parts drawer before somebody takes them home to make music.

    and that's what it's all about.

     
  • At 6:25 AM, Blogger asdasdasd asasdasdasdasdasdasd said…

    This comment has been removed by the author.

     
  • At 2:51 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

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