Hammon Engineering - Dark Star Pickup

Background

The "Bi-Sonic" pickups were manufactured in Sweden by the Hagstrom company and have not been produced since the late '60s. Having a background in mechanical design, I decided to make them myself. A good friend, bassist Dan Schwartz introduced me to Rick Turner. Rick was really enthusiastic about the project and both mentored and encouraged me throughout the recreation process, mostly via email.

Courtesy: Rick Turner

Jack Casady & Phil Lesh did not play Starfires because there was a lot of room for Alembic electronics; they played them because of the combination of the original Hagstrom made single coil pickups (not the ones in the reissue Starfires) and the flexibility and sound of the flatwound Pyramid Gold strings which made the short scale Starfires sound huge.

Ron Wickersham devised a method for testing frequency response of magnetic pickup coils in around 1969, and found that the Hagstrom/Starfire pickups had the widest frequency response of anything he had tested. So Ron was documenting what Jack & Phil's ears had already told them.

Owsley "Bear" Stanley had already discovered that the pickups could be hot rodded by adding a second magnet, and so the sound was born. Ron further improved things by building transistorized emitter followers onto the pickups, thus creating what were probably the first active pickups (yes, 1969).

I was concurrently developing the concept of neck through instrument design and also starting to wind my own pickups. Ron tested them and found that they beat the Guilds & we were on our way to designing the Alembic sound.

Meanwhile, the Hagstrom/Guild pickups were discontinued by Guild & the rather pedestrian humbucker was substituted. That was the end of the cool Guild bass sound.