Post by antigua on Apr 4, 2020 18:24:36 GMT -5
I bought a Gretsch GT5622T a few months back when there was a crazy sale on Adorama, like this one. The quality is really high, for an $800 guitar, or the $500 I paid for it. It looks and feels even more premium than a comparably priced Epiphone. It's essentially an 335 type guitar, but the center block only extends around the bridge, the area in and around the pickups is completely hollow, so it retains a lot of hollow body character and is very light weight.
The GT5622T is an imported guitar, and the HiLo Supers are the typical "BHK" type pickups found in other FMIC imports. Supposedly BHK stands for "BooHeung Precision Machinery in Korea" , who make musical instrument and automotive parts. They tend to be high quality pickups, with real AlNiCo magnets and attention to details where it counts.
I didn't really love the look of the Super HiLo trons though, and I had some Fireli'trons sitting around, so I put them in and took the Supers out, which gives me a chance to see what they're all about. I analyzed standard HiLo'Trons here www.gretsch-talk.com/threads/gretsch-hilotron-analysis-and-review.159653/ , those are true single coil pickups with an massive AlNiCo magnet beside the coil.
These Super HiLo'trons are actually humbuckers, a lot like a PAF style humbucker, with one row of screws and one with slugs, and a slim sized AlNiCo 5 bar. That's the end of the similarity though, the inductance of the Super HiLo'tron is very low, less than half of a PAF, and very much like a typical Filter'tron. The coil bobbins are much smaller than PAF bobbins and can only hold a fraction of the wire by mass.
The main difference between the Super and a Filter'tron, aside from the appearance, is just that the Super has a much weaker magnetic profile, in terms of the completeness of the magnetic circuit and the strength of the magnetic field. If you take a standard Filter'tron and lower it a few millimetres and raise one row of the screws, it should sound identical to a Super HiLo'tron.
Interestingly, where as a PAF has screws that stop at the base plate, the Super HiLo's slugs are more like rivets, with a flat head at the top, and a long shaft that protrudes out the bottom, also similar to the shape of a screw. The extra steel that sticks out of the bottom causes the overall magnetic field to be weaker, the output would increase slightly if they were snipped off with wire cutters.
The bridge and neck pickups are nearly identical spec-wise, and physically. The bridge pickup is taller, as is tradition, but only because the cover is taller and the legs are longer. Even though the base plate leg length is neck and bridge specific, they nevertheless put lead wire holes at either end of the base plate, so that it could be used easily in either spot.
As far as the sound goes, I thought they sounded more single coil than humbucker, and that might be because the row of screws is so much closer to the strings than are the slugs. The Gretsch style filister screws sit a lot higher than PAF filister screws.
Gretsch Super HiLo'Tron
Bridge
- DC Resistance: 4.450K ohms
- Measured L: 1.8002H
- Calculated C: 122.22pF
- Gauss: 250G (AlNiCo 5?)
Neck
- DC Resistance: 4.254K ohms
- Measured L: 1.7296H
- Calculated C: 136.29pF
- Gauss: 250G (AlNiCo 5?)
Bridge unloaded: dV: 4.3dB f: 13.3kHz (black)
Bridge loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 1.1dB f: 5.61kHz (blue)
Neck unloaded: dV: 4.6dB f: 12.8kHz (red)
Neck loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 1.7dB f: 5.61kHz (green)
The G5622T with Filter'trons swapped in:
