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FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
CHARLIE CHRISTIAN BAR PICKUPS
by Phil Emerson of Phil's Guitars

Have you noticed how profound the influence that the old Gibson Charlie Christian bar magnet pickup has had on tone? It is a pickup that is instantly identifiable when heard. Everybody (including me) just goes crazy for that light, but dark, warm but steely, hot but mellow tone. Warm - but clean, punchy - but transparent, it's all the above and more. (I could go on because it really is a pickup of diverse description). Isn't it curious that the greatest sounding jazz guitar pickup was developed at the very beginning of electric guitar evolution, and was in existence before 99% of the rest of of electric guitars and pickups were even developed!

Watch this pickup start having a bigger and bigger influence on what what happens to pickups from this point on. The Golden Age of arch-top guitars is just starting. There are 100 or more luthiers making arch-tops, more and more showing up all the time. Yet no one has really tried to develope the Charlie Christian Pickup sound at all. Certain pickups have a really cool sound ø the DeArmond Model 1100 "Super Chief" pickup has a punchy, clean, classic tone, and is the 2nd of the three holy tones for archtops. (The Gibson P-90 being the 3rd). Notice that all three are single coil, not humbuckers. There's something in the design of a humbucker that causes the loss of the "direction" and "transparency" of the sound. It is harder to hear the "center" of each note. With a Charlie Christian pickup, the pitch is dead on, and each note sounds separate from the other, not a muddy blending of notes together.

The Charlie Christian pickup was used by the likes of Charlie Christian (of course!), Jimmy Raney, Barney Kessell, Dennis Budimer, Oscar Moore, Hank Garland, Kenny Burrell (on an L-5), among others. Listen to the sound these guys got. It just doesn't get any better! The DeArmond 1100 was used by Billy Bean, Billy Bower, John Collins, Chris Flory (on an L-7). Killer sound! The P-90 was used by Herb Ellis & Jim Hall, both on ES-175's. Early on Kenny Burrell used an old blonde ES-175 with 2 P-90s. Then he had a Charlie Christian installed in the neck position for a tighter, more mid-range kind of sound than his L-5 had with the same pickup, mostly because of the shorter scale length of the neck. Hank Garland had an even tighter clean sound, because he used a Byrdland with a Charlie Christian pickup which had an even shorter neck (23 ý scale), but the shorter the neck the harder to tune, and keep in tune.

Physics always gets you somehow: you improve one thing and give up another, you never get it all. The single coil pickups have the sound, but they also have the buzz. Lose the buzz, e.g., humbucker, and you lose the special thing that makes the single coil so incredible. It will be interesting to see how pickups develope from now on. For years the emphasis in archtop pickups has been to lessen the buzz with a clean top end, e.g., the Johnny Smith. But now these gorgeous new archtops sound tinny and irritating by comparison to the old bar pickups. Hopefully, someone will capture the old sound as it's too important to be ignored any longer. Then the new Golden Age of archtops will be complete.