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Today I installed a set of these pickups into my Gretsch Duo Jet. It's an '08, with a Bigsby bridge. The previous owner had already shimmed the stock pickups. I even managed to keep the strings intact, which is particularly convenient, since the Jet's strung with Thomastik-Infeld George Benson flatwound 12s, which are not cheap.
The installation was straightforward. The pickups came with six foam spacers, which work extremely well and allow the pickups to be adjusted in a way that most Dyna's aren't. The package insert suggested installing both pickups with the magnets oriented the same way, towards north. I took the advice, and, since the pickup wire emerges from the corner that would make it most convenient to orient the pickups in the suggested manner, it's a no brainer. (There was enough lead to orient them the way the the stock pickups are oriented; I checked.)
Here they are:
The pickguard's back on it now; that was right after I first plugged it in to make sure all was well & good.
Which, needless to say, it was.
General impressions:
I've never played a vintage Dynasonic, so I can only compare to the stock Gretsch versions. The T-As feel much more like P-90s, and react to volume & tone knobs in a similar way, although brighter and more articulate. They sound less like Telecaster pickups than the stock pickups sound; it's hard to get a shrill sound out of them, but they sure can cut. They have the same great thump of the stock Dynas, but it's tighter. There seems to be less hum overall. I could never get the stock pickups to sound great overdriven, except on my Clark (which is why I chose to use it.) The T-Armonds, however, have absolutely no trouble in this regard. They certainly have more output, but, at the same time, they're clearer & don't fall apart (that tighter bass response, I suspect.)
I'm finding it a little more challenging to dial in my clean tones, because these pups are just fatter and heavier. However, when the volume is rolled back, they get much clearer and brighter sounding. Like some P-90s, in my experience, rolling back the tone a bit to cut off some of the higher frequencies and the messy distortion they can introduce can focus the sound even more. However, they never got shrill, even when I had both the amp & guitar tone knobs wide open.
I do have clips of both before & after, using the same rig and recording set-up. They're a bit slap dash, but, honestly, I want to get back to playing.
Anyway -- I used the bright channel of my Clark Beaufort for all of the clips. For the clean clips, I set the knobs to: V2: 10 V1: 3 T: 7. For the OD clips, they were at V2: 8 V1: 9 T: 12.
I recorded using a Senn e906 through a Duet and into Garageband. No compression, eq, etc. I did use a short loop on my M13 for the OD clips.
Here are the clips:
Stock Dynasonics, clean
T-Armonds, clean
Stock Dynasonics, OD
T-Armonds, OD
The installation was straightforward. The pickups came with six foam spacers, which work extremely well and allow the pickups to be adjusted in a way that most Dyna's aren't. The package insert suggested installing both pickups with the magnets oriented the same way, towards north. I took the advice, and, since the pickup wire emerges from the corner that would make it most convenient to orient the pickups in the suggested manner, it's a no brainer. (There was enough lead to orient them the way the the stock pickups are oriented; I checked.)
Here they are:
The pickguard's back on it now; that was right after I first plugged it in to make sure all was well & good.
Which, needless to say, it was.
General impressions:
I've never played a vintage Dynasonic, so I can only compare to the stock Gretsch versions. The T-As feel much more like P-90s, and react to volume & tone knobs in a similar way, although brighter and more articulate. They sound less like Telecaster pickups than the stock pickups sound; it's hard to get a shrill sound out of them, but they sure can cut. They have the same great thump of the stock Dynas, but it's tighter. There seems to be less hum overall. I could never get the stock pickups to sound great overdriven, except on my Clark (which is why I chose to use it.) The T-Armonds, however, have absolutely no trouble in this regard. They certainly have more output, but, at the same time, they're clearer & don't fall apart (that tighter bass response, I suspect.)
I'm finding it a little more challenging to dial in my clean tones, because these pups are just fatter and heavier. However, when the volume is rolled back, they get much clearer and brighter sounding. Like some P-90s, in my experience, rolling back the tone a bit to cut off some of the higher frequencies and the messy distortion they can introduce can focus the sound even more. However, they never got shrill, even when I had both the amp & guitar tone knobs wide open.
I do have clips of both before & after, using the same rig and recording set-up. They're a bit slap dash, but, honestly, I want to get back to playing.
Anyway -- I used the bright channel of my Clark Beaufort for all of the clips. For the clean clips, I set the knobs to: V2: 10 V1: 3 T: 7. For the OD clips, they were at V2: 8 V1: 9 T: 12.
I recorded using a Senn e906 through a Duet and into Garageband. No compression, eq, etc. I did use a short loop on my M13 for the OD clips.
Here are the clips:
Stock Dynasonics, clean
T-Armonds, clean
Stock Dynasonics, OD
T-Armonds, OD
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