Kent Armstrong Pickups

[Citrus]

I know a couple of guitar makers like Eastman use them in their guitars, and Reverend used their Lipstick pickups in their USA line.

I haven't heard much about using his line of replacement pickups, and was wondering if anyone has had experience with them.

Considering these http://www.wdmusic.com/VINTAGE_N_12.html for my Newport. Try as I might, I just don't get along with the Phat Cats. Would love to try Lollar or TV Jones, Filter style, but both are on the pricey side. These are about 50 bucks cheaper each.

KENT ARMSTRONG® MAGNUM - PATENT APPLIED FOR VINTAGE STYLE 12 POLE - NICKEL METAL COVER Item #: VINTAGE N 12 This Kent Armstrong Vintage Series design has sweet, soulful tones with a warm bass, punchy mids, and a bright, jangly treble response best describes this Kent Armstrong design. 12 individually adjustable pole pieces make this a very versatile pickup, giving better magnetic balance between the two coils. The reason why most people take the covers off their Pickups is to get more power because the slugs are too far from the strings in comparison the screw pole pieces. Now you can have full power, plus total shielding in a covered pickup. 4 conductor wiring allows coil splitting, series/parallel, phase inversion, and more. Nickel Cover Price: $69.95

[gorch]

Looks like a nice pickup. Why hesitate? You won't come around testing. Did you check the used market for Kent's on Ebay? That's mostly an indicator on popularity. The more they appear the more the brand is spread on the market.

[sonny o'hoolighan]

I had an Eastman jazz guitar at one point that had the Kent Armstrong pickups installed. If I remember correctly, Armstrong made a name for himself by custom winding pickups (which he apparently still does). However, the pickups in the Eastman were Korean made, if that kind of thing means anything to you- in the end, all that matters is the sound you are looking for I suppose. My Eastman always sounded a bit "thin" to me, but that could also have been due to the woods, construction, (etc.) of such a guitar.

[polara]

I have some of the hand-wound (I think they make mass-produced ones too) Kent Armstrong humbuckers in my custom shop First Act. Different model than what you're looking at, and in a solidbody so all I can say is they seem well made. These have a kinda old-fashioned, not-too-hot thing going, with some bite and upper-mids. Not a lot of bottom (fine with me) but like I said, you're looking at different pickups. KA has a good reputation from what I've seen.

[Bennyboy-UK]

Personal experience based on one guitar.

I had an expensive Patrick Eggle Berlin Pro (UK PRS equiv) quite a number of years ago with Kent Armstrong pickups. No matter what we tried, the thing had terrible overtones, I mean unusable sounds.

Problem was rectified to an extent by replacing with SD Custom Custom in the Bridge, and Pearly Gates in the neck. I might add this was carried out at the factory for no charge.

That's my only experience... But it is quite possiblyethat the guitar itself had evil mojo that made it behave badly and to be faitr, the SDs did not completely solve the problem.

I'm tainted by this experience I'm afraid, so my view is not impartial. But based on it, I wouldn't go for Kent Armstrongs as any sort of pickup choice in the future.

[Jackass]

In the mid-late 80's when I was at Guild Guitars, we were using Kent Armstrong pickups in our Nightbird/Nightingale guitars when they came out. We quickly switched to EMG's. Just saying.

BowlMovement