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WALLACE MARx JR.
The Pickup Story, Part II: De Armond Guitar Microphones
Since the beginnings of electric guitar,
pickups have been a fertile area for third-party producers. They could provide original
equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts to
manufacturers that were of a higher quality
or out of the range of a manufacturer’s
capabilities. Or they could sell parts
directly to the player that improved upon,
augmented, or were unavailable in original
instruments. In this column, we are going to
continue our exploration of the history of
guitar pickups by looking at one of the first
successful manufacturers devoted solely to
pickups, De Armond.
Unfortunately, not a lot has been written
about De Armond. I called around to a
number of experts and I got very little
back. As the legend goes, John Henry De
Armond was a budding guitar player who
in 1935, at the tender age of 10, fashioned
a guitar pickup from the coil off of an old
Ford Model A. John’s older brother Harold,
born in 1906, seized upon the design and
looked for ways to profit from it. De Armond
believed that offering an add-on pickup that
would avoid cutting a hole in the top of a
guitar, and also give depression-era players
a way to go electric without buying a whole
new instrument, was the way to go. Harry
De Armond teamed with a Toledo, Ohio,
company named Rowe Industries and the first
De Armond pickups were introduced in 1939.
That same year, 14-year-old John hopped a
train for California where he would make his
living as a musician until joining the Navy.
Initially, two models were offered: the RH
for “Round-Hole” guitars, and the FH for
“F-Hole” guitars. Mounted within a metal
casing, the pickups consisted of six Alnico II
pole pieces on a bakelite spool, scatterwound
with 42-gauge copper. For round-hole
guitars, the pickup would fit within the sound
hole of the guitar, with a volume control
flywheel sitting at one end. The F-hole units
offered two mounting options. On a string-clamp unit, the pickup would be attached
to a rod which would then mount to the
strings between the bridge and tailpiece. The
pressure rod was as long as the distance from
the end of the fingerboard all the way to the
54 PREMIER GUITAR DECEMBER 2009
bridge, meaning the pickup could be widely
positioned. This setup became known as the
“Monkey on a Stick.” For a neck-mounted
unit, the pickup would attach to the side of
the fingerboard on the bass side. All FH units
had volume and tone controls housed in a
separate box that attached to the strings
between the bridge and the tailpiece.
De Armond pickups enjoyed widespread
popularity. World War II disrupted business,
but a full-page ad in the April 6, 1946,
issue of Billboard magazine announced the
company was back to production on Monroe
Street in Toledo, Ohio. On Nov. 18 of the
same year, De Armond filed a patent for the
RHC. The patent drawings show a slender
pickup bearing a striking resemblance to the
Fender units that would appear in the years
to follow. De Armond was granted his patent
for the RFC in 1948. (Also in 1948, Rowe
Industries released the Trem-Trol—the first
widely available external effects unit.)
In 1954, the company released an improved
archtop model called the Rhythm Chief
1000. The design of the 1000 had some
serious backspin on it: six Alnico V pole
pieces, two larger in diameter than the other
four. The four pole pieces for the lowest
strings were wound together first, then
the other two magnets would be inserted
and the whole coil would be wound. This
resulted in much fewer windings around the
B and E strings. De Armond is known for
using very thin wire, ranging in sizes from . 38
to . 44 gauge. The 1000 was followed soon
after by the Super Chief 1100, an elegant
chrome unit with six adjustable poles and a
remote volume and tone control that also
included a push-button rhythm switch.
De Armond branched out into designing
and producing on-board units for literally
dozens of guitar manufacturers. De Armonds
were found on some of the highest-quality
guitars of the time such as Guild, D’Angelico,
Epiphone and Martin. De Armonds were also
available on some of the cheapest guitars
available, Airline and Silvertone.
Beginning in 1949, De Armond began
supplying Gretsch with a single-coil pickup
called the 200. Later renamed the Dynasonic,
the 200 was a complex unit. Large Alnico V
pole pieces were spring-loaded to facilitate
height adjustment. The magnets were
powerful enough that if mounted too high
they could actually cancel the vibrations of
the string. The bobbin was made of bakelite
and the unit was wound with . 43 gauge wire.
Over the years, the Dynasonic has been
loved by some (Cliff Gallup, Billy Zoom)
and hated by others (Chet Atkins pulled his
off and Eddie Cochran replaced his neck-position Dynasonic with a P- 90). Gibson’s
Seth Lover found the pickup good enough
that he felt compelled to respond with the
square-magnet P- 90 found in early Les Paul
Custom models. From humble beginnings,
De Armond cast an influence across the
industry that still resonates today.
Wallace Marx Jr.
Wallace Marx Jr. is the author of Gibson Amplifiers,
1933-2008: 75 Years of the Gold Tone.
www.premierguitar.com
