1950s DeArmond Rhythm Chief 1000 Electric Archtop Guitar Pickup
A local customer of mine brought this by the other day for consignment. I got a chance to take it out of its box, spray-out the pots, mount it to a guitar, and try it out. It works! The pots were quite scratchy and are getting pretty good after the spray-out and some wiggling.
It's all-original though the control box has lost its backplate and the pickup's rear no longer has the felt backing (just the remainder of it). There's also a missing thumbscrew adjuster for the string-mount bracket part of the "monkey on a stick" arrangement.
It looks great and is in good shape but there is a little sticky-tape residue on the control box and rear of the pickup. I'll leave it to the next person to spiff it up or not. The "rhythm" selector seems to switch between two different caps for the tone pot, but I'm not entirely sure. I couldn't hear much of a difference when I was using it.
So, to recap: working well, feels like 8k "oomf" factor (though I didn't measure it -- my multimeter is on the fritz), missing one thumbwheel/bracket mount adjuster, missing control box backplate, otherwise all there and all-original. There's no date-stamp but I'm guessing this is mid-'50s or early-'60s at the latest.
Comments
Thanks!
Rhythm switch reverses the phase and has nothing to do with either the volume or tone control :) if you can't hear the difference between switched or unswitched, I suggest you replace both capacitors with the same values/quality. If nothing changes, replace the pots, then the switch. (which in either case is bad, cause the switch is a beautiful 50's heavy duty Leviton, and pots are very good quality CTS or Centralab that todays shitty asian CTS/ALpha/Bourns shit is never gonna emulate the transparency.
The switch engaged should provide a very nasal/bass free tone with way lower output.
Switch disengaged, the inner construction of the pickup (hold two coils in series, one for bass strings, one for treble strings and asymetrical magnets) implies that you should read a DC resistance between 13 and 18 Kohms (YES YOU READ WELL !!!!)
if you activate the Rhythm switch, you should get no reading at all.
There is no such thing as a "8K ooomph". This is not a thing and never has been.
My 1938 CC pickup has more output than many and is fat as hell, reading only 2.7Kohms
I have several Dearmond Pickups, that all read different DC resistance, and trust me, the number you get is really hard to link with what you hear in you amp.
Anyways, those are very fine engineered pickups, and understanding their functioning is not easy, for sure :)
have a good one!