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How did Django get his electric tone on the 1947 radio recordings?
Stamos666
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does anyone know what his setup was? his tone on these are great, especially Belleville and Crepuscule.
thank you!!
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I love Django's 1947 stuff. He plays Proto-Rock on Place de Brouckere and Peche a la Mouche. His setup in 1947 was a DeArmond pickup on his Selmer going to a small amp. This version of Peche a la Mouche has never even been uploaded to Youtube! It's a shame because Django's playing is stellar on this cut, and on Place de Brouckere he plays some really metal chords at one point.
Here's Django in 1949 with a different screw-on pickup, you can see the small amp next to Django which is probably similar if not the same one he used in 1947.
thank you!! how do you know this was his setup?? that’s amazing.
obvious next questions: where can i buy this DeArmond pickup (do we know if there is a specific model?) and do we know what the amp is?
@Svanis1337 It is on YouTube, I uploaded it on my channel back in 2016
As for this sound, you can get it with a magnetic pickup and any small tube amp. You have to crank the volume up so that it's overdriven, and it won't "growl" until the tubes are glowing red hot, so don't expect it to sound like that as soon as you plug in.
My setup is peche a la mouche pickup + peche a la mouche amp, sounds great on peche a la mouche 1947!
This is the amp, but I think the pickup in this video is a Stimer (Dupont reissue), not 100% sure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr5o6rZ1kFU
Yep got a better look at the pickup here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAbOJIXoIVo
It's a DeArmond "Monkey on a stick" pickup. The ones made after 1945 had two slots in the pickup cover, so Django has one of these earlier ones. There's a comparison video of different pickups here and you can instantly compare the cleaner sound of the Stimer with the more distorted sound of the DeArmond. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b__7Ty9JNh4
I've tried to find the amp on google images but haven't been able to. There are similar models from RCA, Telefunken, Knight, and more. The 1949 one seems to have a tube cage on the top part. In 1944 he was spotted using using another one, similar with the same small rectangular form factor but with vents instead of a tube cage.
I don't think they had internal speakers, they seem to be PA or microphone amps since the controls are on the front, and Django is probably connected to an external PA system, at these concerts anyway.
oh man, is there anything similar on the market? i hear in reality these kind of pickups have bad string balance besides the peche a la mouche (or whatever it’s called) but i hear that’s more on the clean side
That dirty overdrive sound comes more from your amp than the pickup.
It does seem as though the DeArmond in that demo video is more distorted than all the others, although maybe the effect is exaggerated a little because he's playing double stops there
I think the Gabojo Kleio pickups are well balanced. I agree with Wim the overdrive sound comes more from the amp as most of the modern pickups are not high output. I've gone down a different road and have just mounted a humbucker in a wooden frame and this simply sticks to the guitar top with blu tac/magic putty. That way I have the ability to balance out the strings by adjusting the pole pieces. The down sides are that it will only fit on a d hole and I had to cut off the last two frets to get enough space to fit it in. But then I was never up that end of the fingerboard anyway.