Opinions on HIGH OHMAGE, UFO's and conspiracies.....

[madialex]

No, no, and no. Dave and I went around and around on this a while back on another thread. While Dave's pickups ARE essentially a Dirty Fingers encapsulated under a cover, Gibson had another name for them which escapes me at the moment- I remember recently reading an article recently where the name was mentioned, but I think the particular brain cell remembering that fact might have been culled from the herd last weekend Anyhoo....every shred of credible evidence I have ever seen(which includes examining a lot of original Gibson guitars and pickups from that time period), backs my assertion that the original DF pickups were T-Tops WITHOUT covers and most did not have coil taps. FWIW, a great many models of gibson electrics in the late 70's were spec'd with "Super Humbucking" pickups with adjustable poles:

http://www.vintageguitars.org.uk/gib78p8.php

There was a model called the Velvet Brick that had 3 thin ceramics in them that sounded pretty good as well. I had one of them and sold it on ebay for some crazy price. It looked like a Bill Lawrence design to me by the way he did the hookup wires and other little things common to BL. How are the hookups from the coils? The one i'm talking about had a weird bobbin with a little tab that had a metal piece in it that the coil wire was soldered to, kinda like the original Fender Tele custom humbucker from 72, with 3 slim ceramics in it and it was around 14 to 16K if I remember right.

PS.. This wasnt the one with the circut board bottom....

[Possum]

another one...

I think the encapsulated one might be the Super Humbucker, there's also one call True Blues but I don't find mention of it being in epoxy....

[Mystic]

here's a picture of one I've got. It shows the copper tape.

[Satamax]

Huh guys, what about thoses XL500 series from Bill Lawrence? Pretty high output as well? No?

[madialex]

here's a picture of one I've got. It shows the copper tape.

Hey Mystic, can you show an end veiw? maybe where the coils hookup.

[soundmasterg]

David, I agree about Duncan's pickups, although I'd say that I had a set of Duncan '59s that were very average.

Possum is very dedicated to getting great sounding pickups and I haven't heard very many that I wouldn't buy....but then since I get to hear them in the planning and proto stages at the local jam I get to hear them as works in progress. If he comes up with one that isn't 'there', then he puts in the effort to redesign and rewind until it IS 'there', and only then does he add it to his line and put it up for sale. Wolfe and Jason are like that too from what I've seen. Its nice to have such dedicated professionals in the biz working hard for their customers.

Greg

[David Schwab]

No, no, and no. Dave and I went around and around on this a while back on another thread. While Dave's pickups ARE essentially a Dirty Fingers encapsulated under a cover, Gibson had another name for them which escapes me at the moment- I remember recently reading an article recently where the name was mentioned, but I think the particular brain cell remembering that fact might have been culled from the herd last weekend Anyhoo....every shred of credible evidence I have ever seen(which includes examining a lot of original Gibson guitars and pickups from that time period), backs my assertion that the original DF pickups were T-Tops WITHOUT covers and most did not have coil taps. FWIW, a great many models of gibson electrics in the late 70's were spec'd with "Super Humbucking" pickups with adjustable poles:

http://www.vintageguitars.org.uk/gib78p8.php

Yes we went through this before, but as I said the last time the Super Humbuckers were not 16K. The only 16K pickup Gibson made are the Dirty Fingers. The other name for these particular pickups are "Series 7".

The pickups I had were from a 1984 ES-347 that belonged to the late Clay Smith from Kool and the Gang. Clay had like a zillion guitars in his closet! He gave it to Kelton Cooper who played in their touring band. Kelton brought the guitar to me, which had all the original tags and stuff in the case. It said they were Dirty Fingers.

Gibson's own website says this:

The original Dirty Fingers pickups were available on just a few select models in the early 1980s, including the Flying V, Explorer, ES-347 and 335-S. They were all but forgotten for two decades, until an international distributor ordered a special run of reissue Dirty Fingers pickups for their market in 1997.

This ES-347 was one of those guitars. The ES-347 only came with covered gold plated pickups, and at this time only came with Dirty Fingers. The ES-347 also had a coil cut switch, and the Dirty Fingers had two braided coax cables coming out of the case, one was the series connection for splitting. To my knowledge Super Humbuckers never had this.

Here's a photo of an ES-347 with Dirty Fingers:

http://www.zen-pharaohs.com/guitars/Gibson/es347.htm

You can see on this page he says "the pickups are the original 'Dirty Fingers'". He also mentions:

According to Brosnac, Gibson Dirty Fingers pickups have twelve adjustable pole pieces each (two rows of six) but this is not entirely true. Gibson did make replacement pickups with this distinguishing characteristic, but the original Dirty Fingers pickups on the ES-347 were covered and had only one row of adjustable pole pieces.

Anyone who's read Brosnac's book knows it's rife with errors.

Here's a bunch of Harmony Central reviews for the ES-347, many saying the guitar has Dirty Fingers. How do they know? The guitar had a sticker that said so.

http://reviews.harmony-central.com/r...on/ES-347/10/1

ES 347 man. in 1982 with lam. maple body, ebony fretboard, gold hardware, tunable tailpeace. 2 dirty-fingers HB's with coil-tap-switch, 3-way-toggleswitch.

The two dirty finger humbucking pickups are fantastic.

2 volume, 2 tone, pickup select, 2 way tap coil switch, Covered
"Dirty fingers" pups, stop tail piece, Antique Sunburst, Ebony fretbooard, Gold hardware incluing Gibson tuners, double bound maple
body, and neck. Sweet 335 sound with great Gibson action and playability.

The pickups are covered Dirty Fingers, otherwise known in that format as "Series 7" humbuckers. The pickups (16K! Super hot!) are quite indistinct and tubby in my opinion.

Supposed to have "Dirty Fingers" high output pickups. Not sure if they are but they do drive my amp setup pretty hard and get great distorted, although not particularly bright tones.

Here's a whole thread about the ES-347 and Dirty Fingers at the GibsonTalk forum.

Dirty ES347

So here we have Gibson saying that early 80's ES-347 had Dirty Fingers, and another page showing essentially the same guitar I took those pickups out of with Dirty Fingers, and I had a set of 16K pickups from a 1984 ES-347 that had paper work saying they were Dirty Fingers, and a bunch of other people saying the ES-347 had covered Dirty Fingers.

Also... on that link you provided they have an add for pickups. They list the Dirty Fingers and every pickup in the add has covers on it...

http://www.vintageguitars.org.uk/adDetails/26

So Gibson took these and put covers on them for this guitar...

Good enough for me!

[David Schwab]

Huh guys, what about thoses XL500 series from Bill Lawrence? Pretty high output as well? No?

Yes, and VERY bright sounding pickups.

[Sweetfinger]

So here we have Gibson saying that early 80's ES-347 had Dirty Fingers, and another page showing essentially the same guitar I took those pickups out of with Dirty Fingers, and I had a set of 16K pickups from a 1984 ES-347 that had paper work saying they were Dirty Fingers, and a bunch of other people saying the ES-347 had covered Dirty Fingers.

Here's the Gibson literature that says they came with "Super Humbucking" pickups:

http://www.vintageguitars.org.uk/gib78p16.php

Gibson made pickups with coil taps as needed. If the particular model needed it, it got a tapped pickup, otherwise it just got the regular version. I've seen an old encapsulated super hum w/ a coil tap.

I don't doubt that your 347 pickups were covered DF's and were likely touted as such with stickers, but If you ordered a replacement, you needed to order a series 7, which is the proper name for a covered DF. I disagree with your assertion that all Dirty Fingers pickups were encapsulated and originally came with covers. That's just plain wrong. Also, just because the old pickup ad didn't clearly show any exposed coil pickups has nothing to do with actual models. Look in an old Mesa/Boogie catalog, some of the items you see pictured are empty chassis with the knobs GLUED ON! (from a friend who worked there). Who knows why there aren't any exposed coil pups in that ad? Maybe there aren't any COILS under the covers so that they could run a steel rod up through the stack to hold them in place for the photo.

[Possum]

DF info....

here is some info anyway that is correct, I'm getting lost here in the details :-) This is from a recent Ebay auction, and includes the catalog page or the info from the box for the pickups.....

[soundmasterg]

16k DCR and 8 henries......sounds like the Duncan JB, but the Duncan uses A5 magnets. Looks like an interesting pickup anyway!

Greg

[corduroyew]

Here's the Gibson literature that says they came with "Super Humbucking" pickups:

http://www.vintageguitars.org.uk/gib78p16.php

Consistency has never been a strong point for Gibson. Isn’t it possible that Gibson used 1 type of pickup on some of their guitars and another type of pickup on others. Changing a product design midrun is quite common. I think David has given us more than enough information to believe that there is a possibility that some dirty fingers pickups had covers. Were the pickups David is talking about DF’s? I don’t know and I don’t care. If you look at all the available facts is it possible? Yes! Is it possible that the were not Dirty Fingers? The answer is also yes. You can quote vintage specs from all the books and magazines in the world but at the end of the day it doesn’t prove anything. The experts don’t agree with each other and Gibson doesn’t agree with themselves.

[NightWinder]

Poo Poo Possum Specs

Consistency has never been a strong point for Gibson. Isn’t it possible that Gibson used 1 type of pickup on some of their guitars and another type of pickup on others. Changing a product design midrun is quite common. I think David has given us more than enough information to believe that there is a possibility that some dirty fingers pickups had covers. Were the pickups David is talking about DF’s? I don’t know and I don’t care. If you look at all the available facts is it possible? Yes! Is it possible that the were not Dirty Fingers? The answer is also yes. You can quote vintage specs from all the books and magazines in the world but at the end of the day it doesn’t prove anything. The experts don’t agree with each other and Gibson doesn’t agree with themselves.

The specs off the box are wrong too (Possum). Every single dirty finger I have ever seen was different in DC. I posted the specs here some time back, as the dirty finger was the better sounding of the bunch.

[David Schwab]

I don't doubt that your 347 pickups were covered DF's and were likely touted as such with stickers, but If you ordered a replacement, you needed to order a series 7, which is the proper name for a covered DF.

OK.. so the covered DF is a Series 7 (which I said) and the stock 347 had covered DF's... which is also what I said!

I never said they all had covers, because the ones on the Flying V and such didn't.

I simply said I had a set of covered DF's. Then talk went on about how DF's didn't have covers, and that I had something else.

This is simply some miscommunication.

Either way.. I had some covered Dirty Fingers/Series 7 pickups. When I put them in a Charvel Strat they sounded quite good! I particularly liked the midrange. It was very vocal.

You can hear them here

Both the rhythm and lead parts is a Dirty Finger in the bridge position.

[David Schwab]

Consistency has never been a strong point for Gibson. Isn’t it possible that Gibson used 1 type of pickup on some of their guitars and another type of pickup on others....

Also Gibson liked to use names over again. They called half of their bass pickups "Super Humbuckers" at one time or another... such as the four coil unit on one of the EB basses, and the Ripper sidewinders. Then we had the closed cover Super Humbuckers on the L-6S and the open ones on some of the other guitars. I doubt many people would have wanted the Dirty Fingers on an ES style guitar anyway. I know my customer sure didn't.

It's all market speak.. they had their trademark names and they liked to use 'em!

It's puzzling why they would encapsulate some and not the others.