Bare Knuckle Buyers Guide



 

 
 
 
 

BAREKNUCKLE PICKUP BUYERS GUIDE

VINTAGE TONE MONSTERS TO CONTEMPORARY WAR MACHINES

Wound, made and played the traditional way --- by hand !

Read about BKP Options

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

Stormy Mondays are just that classic tone - you'll get gorgeous jangly clean tones to sweet vintage rock. These pickups are based on the original Gibson PAF unpatented pickups. They really sound sweet and can go from smooth to crunchy. They get a great Cream Crossroads sound when you have the gain turned up. Players who use the un-potted versions generally do not have feedback problems. If you really want to focus on clean tones, the Stormy Monday is for you as it is a bit lower output and a bit more balanced and warm. This is an excellent pickup for the neck position. It produces a mild or light overdrive. If you wanted a sonic upgrade to a Gibson Classic '57s then Stormy Mondays would be first choice.

PG BLUES

This is the Peter Green PAF

THE MULE

A good all round vintage style humbucker is the Mule. Choose the Mule if you want to use more than a light overdrive. IF you want to upgrade a Gibson 57 Classic Plus ( i.e., like 57 Classic but with more output) the Mule would be your first choice. It’s a standard PAF type pickup.

RIFF RAFF

Classic PAF sound with a little bit of extra strident edge.

If you want an AC/DC aggressive cut this is the perfect choice.

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

The VHIIs will give you a more hi end sparkle in our clean tone, a less flubby neck tone,. There is a lot more drive when you kick in the overdrive as compared to the Stormy Monday. Very WARM pickup. Powerful in the lows but very articulate. You can really dig in and hear the percussive nature of a guitar. The sustain is surprising--really well suited for a Floyd axe. Clean powerful sustain that Ed Has--legato style sounds good with it because as your fingures hammer on, you hear the plunkiness/percussiveness.

ABRAXAS

The Abraxas is a fair bit hotter. Similar in output to the Gibson 498T pickup fitted to Les Paul Studios and older Standards. They have clarity and tone that is missing a bit from stock pickups. They can go from early Santana (Samba Pa Ti, Black Magic Woman) to newer stuff like Smooth. In between those tones are all the rock sounds you could want.

CONTEMPORY SERIES

HOLYDIVER

Great dynamics, sorta like Van Halens first album or the Vivian Campbell tones which is where this pickip gets its name. Classic Early British Metal.

COLD SWEAT

Cold Sweat if you want a little more of that traditional Gibson warmth to the tone. If your amp has the least bit of snarl in the clean channel (like most Marshall's), the Cold Sweat will push the front-end into overdrive if the guitar's volume is full up. It has plenty bite and handles loads of distortion with good pinched harmonics but it is warmer and more organic sounding than the Miracle Man. The Cold Sweat is great for a mahogany guitar.

MIRACLE MAN

The Miracle Man is the way to go if you want something hot and edgy like active EMG's but retain the warmth of a real analogue pickup. These are not active pickups but they can produce Zack Wylde's over the top tone, harmonics and all.

NAILBOMB

Aggressive, high output with natural organic qualities.Nailbombs do pinch harmonics very well. Good mid definition, clear highs and a healthy output. Great 'pup for fast staccato alternate picking runs because it has very good articulation with a very tight bottom end. Great pickup for thrash metal.

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

The Painkiller is tighter and more aggressive. Very full sounding. Great pickup for detuning.

SIGNATURE SERIES

REBEL YELL, Steve Stevens Signature

They have a tonal resemblance to PAFs in many ways but are a bit hotter and thus more versatile. Beefy and aggressive. Rebel Yells produce controlled feedback quite easily and clean up very well. Sweet warm tone with definition and punch. You will love the way they sound when lowering the volume of the guitar; a nice thick warm tone. Players who like the original Burstbuckers say they sound a bit harsh compared to the Rebel Yell's. The Rebel Yell’s are far more versatile because they sound great with any volume setting on the guitar. Rebels Yell’s can well do any kind of rock. These pickups are dynamic and respond very well to your pick attack. Thus, bringing out the subtleties of your playing. Awesome mids, and highs with presence.

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.

 

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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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