DeArmond model 2000 the mighty Dynasonic ... a labour of love.

OilCityPickups

Several years ago some pickups came into my possession. They were the worse case of water/dampness damage I've ever seen, and told the owners that frankly they weren't an economic proposition to repair/restore. There would be dozens of hours just to get them stripped down, and then with replacement parts they wouldn't be original. Good, unmolested examples of original DeArmond model 2000s - later known as Gretsch Dynasonics fetch around £450-500 - and this rather sad pair were never going to look right again without many many hours of love and care. I recommended a more modern replacement in the Gretsch that already had cost them a lot to restore and refinish, and I offered to send them the pickups back, but I was told to dispose of them how I wanted.
And so they sat on my shelves for four or five years ... I couldn't bring myself to bin them, but very little of the original pickups looked salvageable. It took two years just for them to stop stinking!    
Kinda look okay from the front  ... well not too bad ... 
but from the back .... 



All the springs were corroded beyond hope some of the brass 'magnet yokes' were split. The coils of course were stuffed, and all the clips and wiring leafing to them simply crumbling. 



As you can see it's not simple to get these apart ... the 'valve gear' height screws are flattened at the ends so removing the brass magnet yokes to clean them would involve destroying the the screws ... and this pickup really wasn't worth sourcing new screws and yokes as well as replacing the springs.

This was from here on in, disassembly was a dirty and rather brutal job, I had to use a wooden plug to drift the bobbins out of the pickup surrounds ... where the 50s glue and corrosion had welded them. This was then followed by cutting the remainder of the borked springs away and drifting the magnets out of the yokes with some pipe around the magnet to catch it. 
The magnets are huge 1/4 inch alnico jobs over an inch long ... 
Work with a fine wire brush got me this far 

Note the repair on the left-hand yoke. Originally the magnets would have been crimped onto the magnets in a press, before the height screws were put through the pickups and the yokes screwed onto them. Then the ends of the screws would have been flattened to stop the magnets being able to be screwed down and out of the pickup - to rattle around inside the guitar body! 
I want to save the yokes and screws, so on reassembly modern CA glue will seat the magnets and be gentle on the several re soldered yokes. 
So ... I can't tell you how dirty I got, or how much hand cleaner it took to get me paws looking pristine again ...  
But finally I could rewind .... 



While the rewind was happening on one pickup I attacked the output cables and their odd mountings ... more like an old radio than a pickup. 
One cleaned up quite well, However cable exactly like the original is like rocking horse poop. So I made some! Gibson style braided cable covered in a layer of shrink tube looks pretty much right! 



Sadly the other cable clamp was so corroded that the tube just fell apart in my hands. 



But seeing as I'm keeping these pickups ... and my labour is free to me ... I took some brass sheet ...



And a blowlamp ... 


And repaired the original ...


So the pair are rewound ... I had guessed they were early ones, so they got 13k of 44awg wire for that thicker, snarly rockabilly tone the early ones had. Later they were wound with 43awg and became a bit more 'hi-fi'. 

Now I'm awaiting the delivery of the springs ... so I can build a guitar around them ... yep that will be turning up in making and modding soon - I'm going to try and put this pair in a Telecaster! 

Anyway more of this thread when the springs arrive! 

roberty

Amazing work. Thanks for sharing, I always enjoy these 

Winny_Pooh

Nice work

TheMarlin

Is that just years of gigging sweat that’s caused the corrosion?

Great to see these saved. 

OilCityPickups

TheMarlin said:

Is that just years of gigging sweat that’s caused the corrosion?

Great to see these saved. 

Nope ... at least not in the end.  The whole guitar had been stored in such damp conditions that it more or less fell apart! 

Funkfingers

Fiendishly complex assembly compared to Leo Fender's two vulcanised fibre plates and six magnets. OTOH, nothing else sounds quite the same - not even a Gibson "staple" model.

I have a cheap G&B imitation in my PRS S2 Vela semi-hollow. Strat-like output but "chewier" sounds. If that makes sense.

These pickup restoration threads remind me of the BBC Radio 4 series, Wild Inside. (Veterinarians perform autopsies on wildlife and reveal unexpected details about how the critters function.)

pumkin

Great post …. Thanks for sharing…. I have a 63 Guild Starfire with the same
pick ups and when I took them out the guitar to take a look I couldn’t help but have admiration for whoever had designed and built them … looking forward to your next update . 

Kittyfrisk

Funkfingers said:

Fiendishly complex assembly compared to Leo Fender's two vulcanised fibre plates and six magnets. OTOH, nothing else sounds quite the same - not even a Gibson "staple" model.

I have a cheap G&B imitation in my PRS S2 Vela semi-hollow. Strat-like output but "chewier" sounds. If that makes sense.

These pickup restoration threads remind me of the BBC Radio 4 series, Wild Inside. (Veterinarians perform autopsies on wildlife and reveal unexpected details about how the critters function.)

I reckon dissecting aphids is a doddle compared to such a DeArmond repair 

OilCityPickups

Kittyfrisk said:

Funkfingers said:

Fiendishly complex assembly compared to Leo Fender's two vulcanised fibre plates and six magnets. OTOH, nothing else sounds quite the same - not even a Gibson "staple" model.

I have a cheap G&B imitation in my PRS S2 Vela semi-hollow. Strat-like output but "chewier" sounds. If that makes sense.

These pickup restoration threads remind me of the BBC Radio 4 series, Wild Inside. (Veterinarians perform autopsies on wildlife and reveal unexpected details about how the critters function.)

I reckon dissecting aphids is a doddle compared to such a DeArmond repair 

DeArmonds are on a par with genuine old Charlie Cristian's to work on.
Full restoration is tricky and can be very expensive. Of course some early Staples have their own 'valve gear'