Bare Knuckle Pickups

Choosing a pickup can be one of the hardest yet most rewarding jobs when searching for the ultimate tone. Weather you're searching for blistering leads or a simple blues overdrive, you can be sure that the best place to start is with a decent pickup.

I have changed the stock pickups in every guitar I have ever owned, not because they were bad (although some cases they were) but because I wanted a specific sound. The first pickups I ever bought was the Evolution set from DiMarzio and since then I have also used the Tone Zone, Air Norton, Air Zone, Virtual PAF, HS-2, Blue Velvet and the Bluesbucker. At the time, I thought that DiMarzio was the ultimate in tone. At that point, I had no idea that little known brand from right here in the UK would be blowing me away.

I contacted Tim Mills at Bareknuckle about the need for a powerfull bridge with strong mids and a mild neck with a vintage punch and he suggested the Nailbomb Bridge and Mule (PAF) for the neck. They're quite pricey pickups but in the end, the pull of hand made, scatter wound pickups was too much to resist so I ordered them.

They arrived promptly and the only drawbacks I found with the fitting were the feet. The mounting feet themselves are wide and square shaped which means that if you plan to fit these into a guitar that has tight fitting cavities, you may need to grind down the edges of the mounting feet around the screw hole. It's quite a nerve racking process to do on an expensive pickup but It's better than trying to cut into your guitar. A dremel or other rotary tool works wonders here but I did use a grinder on one set.

After a mildly tedious mounting experience, they were wired up and plugged directly into my JTM45. After a few hours of noodling, I took a look at my ever growing guitar collection and knew that I was about to become a lot poorer.

The first thing I noticed was how vibrant and clear they were. I've seen a few reviews complain about the top end but to me it sounds simply heavenly. The Mule neck is warm yet extremely vintage sounding and screames for blues every time its used. The Nailbomb is a completely different story and yields a seriously powerful mid range with just the right touch of bass and treble. They're not noisy pickups at all but I did notice that they are a little more suceptable to interference from surrounding equipment than the DiMarzio pickups that I was used to and if you're not careful about where you're standing, you could end up with a bit of unwanted noise.

Try them out, but be warned... You WILL end up fitting every guitar you own with Bareknuckes!

www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk