Gemini Pickups Danelectro Lipstick Replacement

Jun 27

Jun 27 Gemini Pickups Danelectro Lipstick Replacement

My first memory of a Danelectro guitar is watching footage of Led Zeppelin from the Earls Court concert in 1975. I was intrigued by the unique look of the black body and white pickguard.

The pickups also caught my eye. They seemed similar to Telecaster neck pickups, but they weren't an exact match.

I decided to research Danelectro guitars, which was a little more time-consuming then than it is today. Now Google is always at our fingertips.

After some digging and asking local guitarists about Danelectro guitars, I stumbled upon the Sears catalog line of guitars called Silvertone.

Silvertone and Danelectro guitars looked very similar. The reason was that Sears licensed Danelectro's designs for the Silvertone.

Silvertone guitars were many aspiring guitarists’ first instrument in the 1950s and 1960s. Silvertone electric guitars even had a hardshell case with a built-in amplifier.

Danelectro-branded guitars were a bit higher quality than the Silvertone models. Neither was a high-end instrument. But that doesn't mean they didn't have a lot of charm and a unique tone.

Because of their lower build quality (which made them affordable), they didn't age well. Guitarists loved the sound they made, which led Danelectro (which now had a new owner) to reissue some of the most popular models in the ‘90s.

Make the deal

Danelectro managed to keep the price low on the reissues. For the most part, these were good instruments. Some models even have truss rods and can be intonated.

A friend of mine had a DC 59 model he didn't want anymore. He offered me a price I couldn't resist. It was such a great deal I paid him on the spot before he came to his senses.

I spent the next couple of weeks recording with the DC 59. I was really into it, except there was a little harshness on the high end. It didn't sound bad. I just knew it could sound better.

Gemini

The search for a better tone led me to contact Rob Banta at Gemini Pickups. Rob made the Toaster pickups for my Rickenbacker 360/12 project. I was so blown away with his work on the Toasters I knew I wanted him to make me a set of lipstick pickups.

I mentioned earlier that I thought Dano pickups looked a bit like Telecaster pickups. They only share a slight resemblance. Even though they are both single-coil pickups, they vary in their design.

Lipstick pickups were originally built with surplus lipstick tubes. A lipstick tube pickup’s coil wraps around an Alnico 6 bar magnet, which in turn is wrapped in tape—usually cellophane tape on vintage units—and inserted into the metal tube casing.

Lipstick pickups tend to be low-output and have a jangly tone.

I spoke to Rob after he wound the new lipsticks, and he told me the Danelectro pickups used the correct Alnico 6 magnet and 42 gauge wire on my reissue.

“The reissue Danelectro pickups were wound with polyurethane-insulated wire.”

The difference was the reissue Danelectro pickups were wound with polyurethane-insulated wire. They were also likely machine wound. Rob rewound them with plain enamel, like the original vintage pickups.

He also scatter wound them—the neck at 3.85k and the bridge at 4.3k, which is slightly hotter than they came on the reissue. But they’re still pretty low-output.

I'm sure some of you are wondering how much difference the wire and winding make. Well, you’d be surprised!

I've experienced this before with two sets of FSC pickups. Farhad made me a set of his '59 S pickups as well as a set of '60s. The difference is in the wire. The two sets of pickups sound entirely different.

“When I put Rob’s rewound lipsticks back in my DC 59, it was noticeably sweeter.”

When I put Rob's rewound lipsticks back in my DC 59, it was noticeably sweeter. The top end was silky and there was a roundness that had been missing. Rob even managed to use the same pickup covers and magnets, which meant less expense.

Gemini to the tone rescue! Now I can plug my Danelectro DC 59 into my Vox AC15 and jangle to my heart's desire.

Overall, this is a rather simple modification significantly improves the tone of a modern Danelectro guitar.

Let's listen to some examples:

In a mix

The final example below demonstrates the upgraded Danelectro in a mix. All electric guitars are the Gemini rewounds run into a Retro-Sonic Chorus into a Vox AC15 plugged into a BrownBox running 117V. I used three mics: A Sennheiser e906, a Shure SM57, and an AEA R84 as the room mic. I ran them into a UAD Apollo using the Neve Mic preamps and Studer A800 tape emulation. I recorded into UAD LUNA where I added Neve summing and a little of Waves Abbey Road Chambers to all the guitars.