Dearmond Rhythm Chief 1100 high E string not being picked up

[pingu]

1264009[/URL]]Does that suggest a solution?

How about, it's wound 4 and 2. The electrical contact for the wire under the B and E strings becomes intermittent. The B string still works, because it's close enough to the G string to be sensed by the 4. The E string is too far away. Then, something is jostled and the electrical contact is restored. Now the E string works again. The B string is probably louder, but that might be hard to tell.

that’s a great idea for explaining the
intermittent e string problem

except ….

the 4 and 2 wiring scheme was only
deployed on the rc 1000
(not the rc1100)

as far as know ….

[pingu]

does anyone know if the re issue
rc 1000 has the 4 and 2 winding scheme ?

[sgosnell]

I haven't taken mine apart to see. I have removed the b string polepiece to try to balance the volume with the e, and didn't hear that much difference. The polepieces have some effect, but not as much as I find with a humbucker. I don't know how the reissue 1100 is wound, all I know is that I like it.

[sgcim]

PT, with respect, I would discourage anybody from trying to re-magnetize a vintage DeArmond 1100 at home.

The original DeA 1100 is built differently from almost all other pickups in multiple ways.

1. Almost all guitar pickups use either AlNiCo bar or ceramic bar magnets. AlNiCo can de-Gauss over time; ceramic less so.
Instead, DeArmond 1100s use rubberized plastic -- rightly or wrongly think, 'refrigerator magnet.' I have never seen anything which suggests that it de-Gausses.

2. Almost all guitar pickups are wound onto bobbins. On almost all Gibson-style pickups the bobbins have magnets underneath them. On almost all Fender-style pickups the bobbins have magnets going through them.
Instead, the DeA 1100 is wound on the magnets without a bobbin. That's a big part of the reason it's so thin.

3. And here's where it gets really weird: Almost all guitar pickups are either single-coils, like Strat or Tele pickups or P90s with the wire wound on one bobbin, or they are humbuckers, with wire coiled on two separate bobbins
Instead, the DeA 1100 starts by winding wire around one magnet which goes under the low four strings. Then the winder stopped, and jammed-up the other magnet that goes under the two high strings, and the wire gets wound around both magnets for all six strings.
That means the bottom four strings have a bunch more wire than the top two, so they are hotter. That's a feature not a bug.
It's also a really hard build.

All that is why the original DeA 1100 is so unusual, and why nobody has bothered to do all the work required to accurately pirate it.
And in turn, why just saying, "I'm gonna re-magnetize that sucker!" is likely to yield unanticipated results.



We now return you to normal operations on JG.be: "What is the best strap for Benson-style picking technique?"

So even though the reissue of the 1100 is a 'nice pickup', it is nowhere near as good as a vintage Dearmond?
I compared the reissue to an Armstrong version of the 1100, and it is nowhere as good as the Armstrong. version.

BTW, the problem with picking up the E string was a common fault with the vintage RC 1000. I used to have to constantly push the thing over to get the E string to sound loud enough.

[Sam Sherry]

So even though the reissue of the 1100 is a 'nice pickup', it is nowhere near as good as a vintage Dearmond?
I compared the reissue to an Armstrong version of the 1100, and it is nowhere as good as the Armstrong. version.

"As good as" is a very personal evaluation, and a highly transitory one at that.

The 1100 reissue is the perfect pickup for someone's ears and guitar in some particular musical and physical context. It's a bad fit for some other situation. There's no one-size-fits-all-forever "good" solution.

BTW, the problem with picking up the E string was a common fault with the vintage RC 1000. I used to have to constantly push the thing over to get the E string to sound loud enough.

My guess is that the 1000 and 1100 were wound the same way.