Hello everyone, I wanted to know if it was possible to know precisely the date of manufacture or in general the year of a vintage pickup, filtertron or supertron.
From the outside there seems to be only the pat number U.S PAT 2892371.
They're like phenolic DIN plugs but they only use 2 of the 3 connectors. When I was redoing the wiring on my Tennessean the first time I thought "Wow these hings are great!"
My understanding was that there was only a year or so of Filtertrons with no Patent number
Sometime around '62/3 Gretsch started using white 3-wire wiring harness that looked a lot like lamp cord. Most - if not all - pickups from this era had push-on pin connectors. Switching pickups is as easy as a string change, which is why I get suspicious from sellers claiming to have original odd pickup configurations on their '60's Gretsches. I have no idea if the 3-wire harnesses persisted into the '70's.
Edit: Roughly, the '58 Filtertrons had a blank cover; '59 to mid '60 you had the PAF or "Patent Applied For" then the Pat# ones. They all sound the same.
DuoJet55 did a cool tutorial a little ways back on Supertrons. The laminated blades were (IIRC) Supertron 1 and the solid bladed were Supertron 2. The 2's were on Gents and the 1's were on the more "rock" oriented models.
Roughly, the '58 Filtertrons had a blank cover; '59 to mid '60 you had the PAF or "Patent Applied For" then the Pat# ones. They all sound the same.
In addition the early filtertrons--up to some point in the early 60s--had longer pole piece screws.
On the Supertrons, I don't recall the tutorial, but I always thought the difference in blades was reverse, first solid then layered. I could be wrong on this, though, I haven't really looked into it.
Hello everyone, I wanted to know if it was possible to know precisely the date of manufacture or in general the year of a vintage pickup, filtertron or supertron.
From the outside there seems to be only the pat number U.S PAT 2892371.
Grazie
If the pickup has push-on connectors then it was likely made in the '60's. Aside from that, there is no way to tell the specific year of manufacture.
Push-on connectors???????
You mean those pin connectors to the wiring harness, I think... Hi Lo Trons had them also
They're like phenolic DIN plugs but they only use 2 of the 3 connectors. When I was redoing the wiring on my Tennessean the first time I thought "Wow these hings are great!"
My understanding was that there was only a year or so of Filtertrons with no Patent number
Sometime around '62/3 Gretsch started using white 3-wire wiring harness that looked a lot like lamp cord. Most - if not all - pickups from this era had push-on pin connectors. Switching pickups is as easy as a string change, which is why I get suspicious from sellers claiming to have original odd pickup configurations on their '60's Gretsches. I have no idea if the 3-wire harnesses persisted into the '70's.
Edit: Roughly, the '58 Filtertrons had a blank cover; '59 to mid '60 you had the PAF or "Patent Applied For" then the Pat# ones. They all sound the same.
DuoJet55 did a cool tutorial a little ways back on Supertrons. The laminated blades were (IIRC) Supertron 1 and the solid bladed were Supertron 2. The 2's were on Gents and the 1's were on the more "rock" oriented models.
In addition the early filtertrons--up to some point in the early 60s--had longer pole piece screws.
On the Supertrons, I don't recall the tutorial, but I always thought the difference in blades was reverse, first solid then layered. I could be wrong on this, though, I haven't really looked into it.
ON the viking I had it had layered blades in one position(I think neck?) and solid in the other. I saw another like that too.
My 68 Streamliner 6103 has layered blades.
I suppose? I mean it’s strange but in this modern world pretty much anything goes!