Dearmonds vs Littlebucker, what do you prefer?

[Smeigel_12000]

Title says it all. I'm curious if anyone here tested the real (old) ones back to back. I personally have a NS Starfire with the modern minibuckers and an old starfire with 60's P2000's. Imho the sounds of these two are quite close to each other, witch made me wonder if the minibuckers were designed to create similar tones but with hum canceling capability's.

The Dearmonds are a bit brighter but not much, and do have the slight tendency for squealing feedback (maybe need some wax potting?). I love both pickups but slightly prefer the minibuckers at this moment.

Curious about your thoughts.

 

[nmiller]

The mini-humbuckers are easily my least favorite of Guild's 50s/60s/70s pickups. The only guitar I've liked them on is the Starfire XII.

I don't think they sound anything at all like the DeArmonds. Granted, the original DeArmonds were quite inconsistent, but I have never heard one that truly sounded bad. I doubt Guild designed the anti-hum pickups to sound like any of their previous pickups; if they did, then they definitely failed! I'm pretty sure they just did their own take on Gibson's designs.

 

[matsickma]

I also don't find the DeA 2000 and Guild '60's pickups to sound alike.I I perfer the smaller Guild humbucker on semihollow guitars.

Don't think Guild copied Gibson pickup design. The '60's into '70's saw a lot of pickup innovation and for the most part it seemed like copying wasn't as common as it is today. In those days there wasn't a pickup size or shape standard like there is now (or has been since the 80's).

The Guild '60's pickup is a pretty unique sound. Not being the most popular pickup tone but distinctive. The grunge era could have been a great matchup for the Guild smaller humbucker. However those pickups were so limited in availability that they never got the chance to become well known. In hindsight that is my view but I wouldn't have realized that back then.
M

 

[parker_knoll]

Dearmond x20 in my case.

I find single coils to have a stronger attack in general and DeArmonds especially so. They also have a nice wide frequency response.

 

[Shakeylee]

i always prefer large bobbin single coils to buckers.
i love dearmond 2000s but also like P90s.P13s, CC's. GFS surf 90's , franz , etc

 

[GGJaguar]

I'm a single coil guy, so given the choice I would go with DeArmonds.

 

[Smiert Spionam]

I know some people love them, but the mini humbuckers really don't do it for me, either.