Variations in manufacture.

I talked about the facing of the pickups when we were in Chanute. Here is what I know about them. Kustom guitars used DeArmond pickups. The three model guitars were the, K200A which had mother of pearl 4 dot inlays at the first fret and eventually went down to 2 and 1 after the 12th fret. Bigsby B5 vibrato and the two DeArmond Special Design Anti-hum Adjustable pole piece pickups.

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The K200C model used the same dot pattern of the K200A, DeArmond Special Design sustaining adjustable pickups, (basic single coil) which I don’t know about adjustable other than shimming up the whole pickup from the top of the guitar. I never saw the back side of that pickup so maybe there was some kind of adjustment, but you’d have to remove the pickup to do it. It has a hanger type tailpiece Kustom called Non-slip tailpiece. The K200A guitar has screws that will actually raise or lower the magnet pole piece of what I would call the better pickup of the two offered on the guitars. The K200D bass guitar had single pole piece that was not adjustable from the top of the pickup.

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The K200B was pretty much the same as the K200C except it had 2 dots at the first fret and body and electronics were the same as the K200C.

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Here is where it get’s a bit strange and interesting. The 67/68 catalog that first introduced the Kustom guitar is the K200A shown with the rectangle case. It was billed as two-piece neck with adjustable truss rod. The head stock shape was less pointed or horned.

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In the 69/70 catalog the less pronounced headstock was billed as Short horned semi-professional head on the K200C guitar. The K200A & K200B models had headstocks that were more horned but no mention of it. So my guess is they had more necks made up in the old style head stock design with the 4 dot necks they used as the C model. Another interesting fact is the K200C had a retail price of 195.00 and it had more mother of pearl dot inlays. The K200B retailed for 245.00 less dots and had the pointed headstock. The K200A retailed for 395.00 in 67/68 with the smaller headstock and by 69/70 they dropped the price to 295.00 so it was apparent that they weren’t selling by that time.

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Here is another oddity, Bryan asked me about the facing of the pickups. The black area that the adjusting screws and pole pieces have a chrome cover piece over the pickup that mounts the pickup to the body. The chrome piece is slanted at each end of the pickup The red guitar in the 67/68 catalog the slants go opposite. Same catalog showing the black guitar the pickups look like they are same as the red.

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The sunburst and blue guitar shows the same direction on the pickups but the bridge pickup is closer to the neck pickup. So it appears that who ever installed the bridge pickups, it depended on how much training they had. The Better of the DeArmond pickups that were on the K200A guitars had a rectangle slot through the body for the adjustment screws and pole piece to go into the body. The pickup would fit in either direction, but once the mounting screws were drilled, it couldn’t be turned the other direction. So depending on who installed the pickups you might have a guitar with the pickups set closer together than the next guitar. By the 69/70 catalog they did mention that they were two-piece neck, two-piece top and two piece back. So there is a lot of mystery as to why some pickups face the same direction and other guitars with the same pickups faced the opposite direction. You will also notice that the direction of the back pickup determines the distance from the the edge of the pickup to the bridge. Some are really close and other guitars there is a big gap between the edge of the pickup and the bridge. So some guitars will sound brighter on the back pickup if it was installed closer to the bridge.

Pleat, on the Kustom Amp forum