Need help identifying Airline H46 stratotone pick ups

For guitars of the straight waisted variety (or reverse offset).
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ohm-men
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Need help identifying Airline H46 stratotone pick ups

Post by ohm-men » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:25 am

I bought a set of the following vintage Airline pick ups, but I can't find anything about them.
I asume they are mid 60's and come from a Airline H46 Stratone.
I honnestly have no knowledge of vintage Airline guitars, but they don't look like re-issue pick ups to me.

These are the pick ups.
Front;
Image
Back;
Image
From what I can see on the bottom side of these pick ups is that they have an Alnico bar magnet.
I guess these are single coil pick up (as you can see a bit of the coil on the lower pictured pick up.

I could only find the following pic of these pick ups in an actual Airline (although I'm not sure it's a H46...)
on the Audiofanzine website. All other H46 Stratotone's I researched had different styles of pickups in them.
Image
Close up of the pick ups (same guitar) The look exactly the same as the ones I bought.
Image

Does anyone has any additional info on these pick ups? Most Airline guitars had Dearmond pick ups, but I don't think these are Dearmonds.
They look like silverfoils in some kind of Rickenbacker toaster casing...
If it weren't for the pictures of the actual Airline guitar, I would never guessed these are actual Airline guitar pick ups.
I'm also interested in what other guitars these pick ups were used in.

I'm thinking to put these in a Squier Jaguar. (If the pole spacing lines up somewhat)

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Re: Need help identifying Airline H46 stratotone pick ups

Post by Sweetfinger » Tue Jun 15, 2021 4:21 am

Not original. That Stratotone in the pic has been reworked with new tuners, knobs, pickguard, bridge, and pickups, that I can see. Only one brand of pickup ever came on Harmony manufactured Stratotone variants: Dearmond. Not all Airline instruments were made by Harmony, but the only pickups that look like yours are either Rickenbacker, or import knockoffs of Rick toasters.
Those pickups are giving me an "older" vibe, so they either have a little added grime, or might be from an old copy era knockoff. Allparts sold toaster copies for about ten minutes back in the late 1990s, and someone could have taken them apart and inserted the silver foil. What I do know for absolute certain, is that they did not pass through the Harmony factory.

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Re: Need help identifying Airline H46 stratotone pick ups

Post by fuzzjunkie » Tue Jun 15, 2021 10:21 am

Sweetfinger wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 4:21 am
Not original. That Stratotone in the pic has been reworked with new tuners, knobs, pickguard, bridge, and pickups, that I can see. Only one brand of pickup ever came on Harmony manufactured Stratotone variants: Dearmond. Not all Airline instruments were made by Harmony, but the only pickups that look like yours are either Rickenbacker, or import knockoffs of Rick toasters.
Those pickups are giving me an "older" vibe, so they either have a little added grime, or might be from an old copy era knockoff. Allparts sold toaster copies for about ten minutes back in the late 1990s, and someone could have taken them apart and inserted the silver foil. What I do know for absolute certain, is that they did not pass through the Harmony factory.
I agree. They look like Rickenbacker Toasters on the outside, but they are not. Rickenbacker pickups have different construction. Some sort of knock-off.

Possibly these:

https://retrovibe.co.uk/product/retrov ... -coil-tap/

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Re: Need help identifying Airline H46 stratotone pick ups

Post by Sweetfinger » Tue Jun 15, 2021 5:47 pm

I'd almost wager someone bought the guitar in the pic you found, stripped it, and sold you the pickups. Another thing that makes me think they might have been lifted from a foreign copy, is the Ricky lookin' bridge, that definitely never came on any Harmony. Did someone rob a bunch of parts from an import copy to fill out this Airline husk? Did the person who sold you the pickups also have the other parts for sale? It's not important, just food for thought.

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Re: Need help identifying Airline H46 stratotone pick ups

Post by fuzzjunkie » Wed Jun 16, 2021 9:07 am

Sweetfinger wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 5:47 pm
I'd almost wager someone bought the guitar in the pic you found, stripped it, and sold you the pickups. Another thing that makes me think they might have been lifted from a foreign copy, is the Ricky lookin' bridge, that definitely never came on any Harmony. Did someone rob a bunch of parts from an import copy to fill out this Airline husk? Did the person who sold you the pickups also have the other parts for sale? It's not important, just food for thought.
I think you might be right on that too. I zoomed in looking to see any matching scratches, and didn’t find any.

But, both top photos show one pickup with corner screws and the other without. The pickups are mounted with a center screw on the guitar shown, so not sure why there are corner screws on one and not the other, but that matches what the OP has.

Edit: the extra screws are just filling holes. They look like they have been chopped or ground down. At least you know the one with the screws is the bridge pickup!

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