Bare Knuckle Buyers Guide
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BAREKNUCKLE PICKUP BUYERS GUIDE VINTAGE TONE MONSTERS TO CONTEMPORARY WAR MACHINES Any Bare Knuckle pickup is going to sound very musical and can be considered a sonic upgrade to your current stock or mass produced pickup. All these pickups sound very good. I cannot state that plainly enough. There are inherent similarities across all Bare Knuckle pickups. Bare Knuckle's have a 'soul' with sensitivity, liveliness and great natural overtones. This organic nature is largely due to the fact that they're scatter-wound by hand and the high quality components used. HUMBUCKERS VINTAGE HUMBUCKER SERIES When Gibson scatterwound pickups back in the 50's the machine that released the wire to the person winding the pickup sometimes went over the number of winds it was supposed to stop at. The Bare knuckle Vintage Hot series are reproductions of these overwound PAFs. The sound of all of these sets gives great classic rock and excellent blues tones with no lack of clarity at all. STORMY MONDAY PG BLUES THE MULE RIFF RAFF BLACK DOGS BKP Black Dogs are based on the original PAF humbuckers that have been overwound. A straight up Bare Knuckle PAF is called the Mule. The black dogs are a more muscular take on this design. It's a hotter PAF pickup. I really do think of the Mules as being equivalents to the Gibson PAFs (unaged of course). I mean they are duplicates in every way and they are scatterwound by someone who knows how to wind very well. A PAF pickup like the Mule can be every bit is versatile as the original pickups in vintage Les Pauls. The Black Dogs are based on this pickup but they are hotter and their eq curve or frequency spectrum is voiced different. The Black dogs are full bodied and strong with classic mid range detail. You can also think of the Black Dog as a PAF specially wound to achieve the classic tones of Led Zepplin (ie the sound of Jimmy Pages guitar on the song Black Dog). VINTAGE HOT SERIES VHII ABRAXAS CONTEMPORY SERIES HOLYDIVER COLD SWEAT MIRACLE MAN NAILBOMB Metal players start with the Nailbombs. If you want something fuller, go for the Painkillers, and fuller still, the Warpig. WARPIG "Brutal" is too simplistic a word for the dirty tones produced by the Warpig. It's like calling an exquisite, complex ale "tasty." With a distortion signal engaged, the Warpigs have shown themselves capable of gorgeously wailing lead tones and hammerstriking chord voicing, with lengthy and singing sustain. Good for detuning. With a simple scale-back on the volume knob, kate 70's/early 80's true Heavy Metal territory, evoking shades of Schenker and early Vivian Campbell, but with more harmonic character than those guys or most of their contemporaries were ever able to achieve back in the day. On a clean channel, with a Les Paul pickup selector switch in the middle and both volumes at about 8 o'clock, very organic clean tones, like a deep bell being chimed softly in a canyon. "Recently, I wrote a comparison article pitting my Charvel/Warpig combination against a friends Gibson Les Paul Custom with Seymour Duncan Blackouts; one of the hottest active pickups around. The Duncans shook the ground a little more, but mine maintained much greater clarity and individual note definition. It shakes the ground, too; just not quite as much as the Blackouts. At the end of the test, I liked the Warpig better and my friend liked his Blackouts. So we both won! [Ed. from Harmony Central User Review]". PAINKILLER SIGNATURE SERIES REBEL YELL, Steve Stevens Signature CRAWLER, Geoff Whitehorn You can really make your amp roar with CRAWLERS, though the vintage characteristic is still present. Very versatile and effective. They've got a bottom which is pretty much what you would expect from a hot PAF, though more mid-range than a real hot PAF (like an Abraxas) would have. SINGLE COIL PICKUPS VINTAGE SERIES SINGLE COILS Apache Bare Knuckle Apache single coils are based on the original Fender Stratocaster single coils (1954 -1959). Hank Marvin being a fine point of sonic reference. These pickups are true to the orignals in everyway. Construction materials are as close as possible to the orignals. If the orignal componets could not be sourced them BKP made it themselves. No retrofit pickup manufacture comes this close. That's a fact. For instance the cloth covered wire comes from the same vendor and is of the same spec as Fender used in the 50's.Using Alnico III magnets with a 1956-style polepiece stagger,these are truly authentic 'pups get better sustain, less string pull and less colouration. Expressive and dynamic, with a set of transparent tones that sing sweetly when played clean and dirty up magically. Words don’t quite manage, to describe this excellent set of pickups. Mother's Milk Bare Knuckle Mother's Milk single coils are based on the single coils in John Frusciante 1962 Fender Stratocaster. These pickups give the ultimate classic sixty's strat vintage tone. Mother's Milk are probably the best all around choice for your strat. These pickups will go beyond your expectations. No gimmicks, just pure tone. You can cover a lot of sonic ground with a set of Mother's Milk pickups. The sweet clean tones of Hendrix, the growl of SRV, or the crystal sophistication of Knopler. Afer putting these pickups in your strat you will understand why your guitar has a 5-way switch. Each position will come alive and is sonicly distinct from the next. VINTAGE HOT SERIES SINGLE COILS Irish Tours Bare Knuckle Irish Tour single coils are based on the legendary tone of Rory Gallagher's battered Fender Stratocaster as heard on the infamous Irish Tour CD. These pickups give the ultimate overwound strat tone. These are the pickups for achieving the hot Texas Blues sound. A lot of players going for the SRV tone use Irish Tours. Dig in with these and rip somebody's head off! CONTEMPORARY SERIES SINGLE COILS Sinner (Bridge) The Sinner is a very special pickup to say the least. Do you love the sound of your stratocaster but you find the bridge position/pickup to be to thin and weak? Ultimately a bridge single coil falls short to providing the gain structure needed for hard rock under many circumstances. You can use a humbucker type pickup in this position but then you lose the single coil clarity. Overwound single coils intended to beef up the bridge also suffer from a drop in clarity and the frequency response is not as wide. The solution: The Bare Knuckle Sinner. This single coil pickup can bury most humbuckers when it comes to tone and distortion. Yet, it still sounds like a single coil! It retains all the clarity and warmth of single coils, but provides tons of output and sonic character without putting an ice pick in your ears. This pickup is truly amazing. The Sinner cleans up very well. It can go from clean, to classic rock, or brutal. Do not think of this as a modern sounding pickup verses a vintage sounding pickup. This Sinner coil can do either amazingly well depending on the rest of your gear. That, my friend, is a cardinal feature of a great pickup. Think of the Sinner as a high output single coil that does not compromise on clarity and definition.
-- Still can't make up your mind or have other questions? CONTACT US at Peerlesstone and ask for our opinion. Include an accurate description of your rig and what sort of sounds you want.
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