About Dearmond Pickups and this website

Site last updated October 14, 2022.

The musical instrument pickups, effects units and amplifiers designed and manufactured by Harry DeArmond and Bud Rowe and later by Steve Tosh in Toledo, Ohio, from the 1940s to the 1980s, through Rowe Industries Inc., H. N. Rowe & Company, Rowe DeArmond Inc., DeArmond Inc. and Tosh Electronics, all of Toledo, Ohio, USA.

A listing of the various versions of the Archtop guitar attachable pickups, the Models FH and FHC (suffix C here denotes volume controller) :

1. Rowe Industries’ earliest known (to me) archtop attachable pickup, as shown in their 1941 brochure Form D100:

1. This version has no metal tab on the side of the pickup head.  Instead, the spring-like cable protector is extended as a straight steel wire along the side of the pickup head and under the pickguard, terminating in a screwfixing to the pickup head;

no clamp at the bridge as on later versions; instead, a hook arrangement attached to the 6th string;

a cylindrical pot box with overlapping lid; the pot knob is domed, mottled brown plastic with milled edge, with slotted screw fixing to 1/4″ plain shaft of pot; all cables

Pickup interior.  Note screwfixed paper-wrapped coil and extended wire arrangement to secure pickup under pickguard.

Wire termination at pickup head, screwfixed.

The pot box for this pickup is cylindrical with an overlapping lid; the knob is domed mottled brown with a milled edge, secured with a slotted grubscrew; the pot shaft is plain, 1/4″ Dia..

The pot itself shows the numerals 3601053.  The pot manufacturer originally assigned the EIA code 360 is as yet unidentified.

2. This version has the metal tab on the side of the pickup head as seen; the pot is symmmetrical in plan, with an overlapping lid in chrome; a pot with a plain 1/4” shaft is used with a black ‘blunt’ chickenhead knob.

3. The Model FHC-B (B for ‘improved’ in terms of balanced output for all strings) single-slot version, otherwise as earlier pickup.  This was the last version to use the metal spring-type cable protector.

4. The Model FHC-B, two-slot version with rubber cable protector, otherwise as earlier pickup, introduced in 1949. 

From now on, all FH pickups would have two slots.  The two numbers stamped on some of the tabs denote the year of manufacture, in this case 54 for 1954.

Originally, the cables to and from the volume pot on the FHC pickup were hard-wired. 

Later, a disconnectable cable was introduced using a screwed connector. 

The early version of this connector at the volume pot as shown above, was larger than the later version (B0609 – photo copyright Terry Straker, Guitar Works Ltd., Evanston, IL, USA).  The later version is shown below:

5. The Model FHC-C pickup 1st version.  The C suffix denotes further improvements.  The date stamp on the tab denotes the year of manufacture as 1959.

6. The Model FHC-C pickup 2nd version,  showing the Patent Number 2455046.   This patent Number was granted on November 30, 1948, and refers to the single-slot version, which at this point had been superceded.

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