Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: Doadman on December 21, 2010, 07:54:30 PM
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OK, you may all be fed up of my deliberations about pickups but I've decided to simplify a way of isolating what I want in my guitar. I've thought about all sorts of sounds, players, bands etc. and it's bloody difficult to describe such a diverse range of sounds so I've decided to give up trying. Instead, I thought I'd try to pick just one sound and one player that would typify the sound I want even if it wasn't exact. That player is John Sykes and the sound is from the Gibson 'Dirty Fingers' pickup that he has used for most of his career, though I believe he switched a few years ago to a Gibson PAF reissue.
Why do I like it? The tone is powerful, cutting and articulate like you might expect from a ceramic pickup but it also has a fatness, warmth and richness to it that is more commonly associated with Alnico pups. Listening to Sykes' tone, it always sounds surprisingly organic to me for a ceramic pickup. These are all the qualities I want.
Now it makes sense that the 'Cold Sweat' is the equivilant Bare Knuckle pickup and in a mahogany guitar I can certainly testify that it does have many similar characteristics as I've owned one but the trouble is that my current guitar is very different as it's a Jackson SL3 so it's maple neck-thru with alder wings and OFR. If it helps, from what I've found out online, the original had a DC resistance of 16.6, used three ceramic magnets and double pole pieces. I haven't been able to find out for sure the gauge of wire yet but I think it's 44awg. So, which Bare Knuckle pickup will help to give me the John Sykes 'Dirty Fingers' tone in an SL3 or would I need to modify a stock BKP in some way to achieve the sound I want?
Simples!
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the cold sweat is no near as high output and grindy as a dirty fingers or even a 500t
but what you're really missing is a big fat les paul
the cold sweat sounds huge in my '73 les paul custom, although is not a fat or grindy pickup
I guess the best bet from BKP would be the c-bomb in a les paul or the c-pig if you're using a skinny non-mahogany guitar
the painkiller has the closest specs, but it's not as fat and grainy (and muddy) as a dirty fingers
maybe an overwound version of it...
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To be honest, I half expected to get a Nailbomb suggested, either ceramic or Alnico, but I thought that might be OK for my guitar. I never even considered a C-Pig as it's so powerful and I never associate it with any kind of versatility, which is something I: do associate with Sykes. Nevertheless, I'll try listening to some clips.
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To be honest, I half expected to get a Nailbomb suggested, either ceramic or Alnico, but I thought that might be OK for my guitar. I never even considered a C-Pig as it's so powerful and I never associate it with any kind of versatility, which is something I: do associate with Sykes. Nevertheless, I'll try listening to some clips.
i think you should send TIM a message he will be able to give the best guidance for you
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I'm just doing R&D on a new set of 'Cold Sweat' humbuckers- a mid powered distortion humbucker in the vein of the early Dirty Fingers.What I've done is try to get rid of the mid spikes but retain the power.
I'm gigging them at the moment and I'm really pleased with them.
More soon! PDT_045
There are several things that usually get done to Dirty Fingers to make them sound better. One is remove the two flanking magnets which cleans the tone up, and the second is to remove the copper screening tape from around the coils which plays hell with the inductance. The answer is Cold Sweat!
OK, thought I'd chime in here..........SD Custom and the Cold Sweat are very different pickups-the CS has asymmetrical coils of plain enamel wire, the SDC is symmetrically wound with polysol.Secondly the ceramic magnet we use is way bigger so there's much more power on tap.A/B them side to side and tonally they're poles apart.
Dirty Fingers, well it depends if it's the original or reissue model but again it's polysol wound, symmetrical coils and 3 ceramic magnets, one in the centre and 2 flankers-totally different again to the Cold Sweat.
Incidently a SD custom shop pickup is marginally more than a regular BKP but one things for sure you'll have to wait a helluva lot longer for it and even then it won't be handwound.
Yes, like I said, he used the Dirty Fingers for most of his career and only recently changed to the PAF style...............not sure when though, his site isn't specific about the period. John does like to use enormous amounts of gain though and even a PAF, something like a Mule, will really wail 8)
Having used the Aftermath now in a 6 string I'd say it is similar ballpark to the dirty fingers but way tighter and with maybe a more controlled treble e a much tighter bass response - it loses the flabbiness that the gibson DF could have
think if I could find a hybrid between the Aftermath and Cold Sweat I would be a very happy boy
the CS doesn't have particularly strong mids IMO. they don't sound that like the DFs after all I reckon, though there is a cerain je ne ce quoi. they sound like the sykes DF tone, but they clearly aren't DF clones.
like zakk and priest use the same EMG, but they have very different BKPs named after them
i like the original 80s dirty fingers, i haven't tried the reissues. they're cool pickups, and clean up really well - though not as precise/clear as BKPs with gain. i think the originals have a certain cool 'fukked up' sound with high gain, which is almost a bit punky. if you like this characteristic, perhaps the nailbombs would be a good choice from what i hear in the clips.
cold sweats are alot more organic sounding that most ceramic pickups, the dirty fingers are similar like that... something like the painkiller revels in 'synthetic' (?!) sounding fatness.
My 80s Dirty Fingers, although extremely cool pickups, are pretty compressed and don't really do blues. I must say this is not the case for the Cold Sweat, which can do the breakup thing very well.
These Cold Sweats laugh sarcastically at the 500T/496R set that was in there from the top of a very high building. Not that that set is bad, but the Cold Sweats really fit this guitar exceptionally well. The tone is in another league now.
As for Painkiller vs Cold Sweat, I think they are pretty similar. Though as one could guess the Painkiller is alot more modern sounding with extra mids. Not that the Cold Sweats are short on mids - oh no!
If we talk Priest albums - obviously the Painkiller sounds like the 'Painkiller' album. I think in a mahogany V, the Cold Sweat would be similar to 'Screaming For Vengence', the sycamore of my V probably moves the tone with extra mids firmly in the 'Defenders of the Faith' period.
Please get cold sweats, so you can compare them to DF for me please :D
Still unresolved issue of my bridge P'up and what to do with it
They have an overall similar EQ and vibe, but just very generally - actually they are quite different pickups and I don't think you'd mistake them.
The Dirty Fingers have a certain 'messed up-ness' to them, which I think can be cool in some situations. I also think the Dirty Fingers have alot more mid range grind. Cold Sweat has a very mild mid range.
Cold Sweat has a rather extended treble response, which I think is pretty nice. I'd say both pups have a similar bass response.
Dirty Fingers is quite compressed - it sounds good dirty and clean, but 'breaking up' tones are not very good in my opinion. Cold Sweat is alot more versatile in this regard, handles all gain levels... Maybe the DF bridge sounds a bit nicer clean than the CS though, but very hard to say.
In terms of output I find them both to be similar levels.
DFs are the best commercial pickups I tried, i have a set of early 80s ones. they didn't come potted are were very microphonic before I potted them. CSs are 'better' than the DFs in quite a few ways, but they are not really that close.
500T is closer to DF than CS.
Soon I will have a Painkiller bridge in a guitar... I'm interested to hear the difference on my rig. Previously I just heard them through Feline's rig.
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lots of quote from me there :)
the cold sweats sound, for me, like the mesa boogie sykes tone on blue murder tracks ("we all fall down" etc).
if i stick a set of dirty fingers in a V and whack it through a jcm800, i can expect a nasty meltdowny tone which is very addictive, and that i'll always like.. having said that, subtlety isn't the strong point (though bizarrely they do roll-down cleans well). dirty fingers use polysol coating of some kind, and the cold sweat uses enamel coated wire.
i read your initial post - take the cold sweat, it sounds like just what you want.
these days i hear more differences between the cold sweat and painkiller than i do between a 500t and a dirty fingers. the DF and the 500t aren't so far apart actually.
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the cold sweat is no near as high output and grindy as a dirty fingers or even a 500t
but what you're really missing is a big fat les paul
the cold sweat sounds huge in my '73 les paul custom, although is not a fat or grindy pickup
I guess the best bet from BKP would be the c-bomb in a les paul or the c-pig if you're using a skinny non-mahogany guitar
the painkiller has the closest specs, but it's not as fat and grainy (and muddy) as a dirty fingers
maybe an overwound version of it...
great post, fully agree. the dirty fingers are what they are, which isn't always good, but it can be just the ticket. as i said earlier, if you want an organic sounding ceramic pickup, the CS will deliver.
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more anecdotes, just because :) i remember when i first plugged a V with dirty fingers into a JCM800, it felt like i was home. i love that punk metal style, and there it was! you can do alot of eq tweaks with the double screw poles. they are great pickups, but they can be utter muddy bollocks too!
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Well, it seems I was right that the Cold Sweat is the nearest obvious candidate to a Dirty Fingers and it's certainly the sound I first thought of when I had a set in a mahogany guitar. I loved it because it was exactly what I wanted: ceramic tightness with the rich, organic tone of an Alnico and pretty versatile to boot. Perfect. I remember the first time I heard the song 'Cold Sweat' and even though I didn't play guitar at that stage, I immediately knew it was a sound I loved. It was everything I liked about Gibson tone but more so. It was aggression that no other Gibson seemed to produce yet still had a quality to it that made me think of PAF tone. In that respect I find John Sykes' move to a PAF pickup to be totally understandable, though I still prefer his Dirty Fingers tone.
However, I'd be very surprised if a bright pickup like a Cold Sweat would produce the same response in a guitar like an SL3; hence my question. A Cold Sweat in a mahogany guitar IS that Sykes, Dirty Fingers tone but as this guitar is so different, it seems reasonable to me that it will take a different pickup to achieve the same thing. I know I have a few threads on this but new pickups are a lot of money and I want to get it right. I did contact Tim but he said it would be easier to talk about it on the phone rather than email but due to work, I haven't been able to call yet. I'm hoping to catch him today but until I do get him I have to rely on the combined wisdom of the forum.
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Well, it seems I was right that the Cold Sweat is the nearest obvious candidate to a Dirty Fingers and it's certainly the sound I first thought of when I had a set in a mahogany guitar. I loved it because it was exactly what I wanted: ceramic tightness with the rich, organic tone of an Alnico and pretty versatile to boot. Perfect. I remember the first time I heard the song 'Cold Sweat' and even though I didn't play guitar at that stage, I immediately knew it was a sound I loved. It was everything I liked about Gibson tone but more so. It was aggression that no other Gibson seemed to produce yet still had a quality to it that made me think of PAF tone. In that respect I find John Sykes' move to a PAF pickup to be totally understandable, though I still prefer his Dirty Fingers tone.
However, I'd be very surprised if a bright pickup like a Cold Sweat would produce the same response in a guitar like an SL3; hence my question. A Cold Sweat in a mahogany guitar IS that Sykes, Dirty Fingers tone but as this guitar is so different, it seems reasonable to me that it will take a different pickup to achieve the same thing. I know I have a few threads on this but new pickups are a lot of money and I want to get it right. I did contact Tim but he said it would be easier to talk about it on the phone rather than email but due to work, I haven't been able to call yet. I'm hoping to catch him today but until I do get him I have to rely on the combined wisdom of the forum.
I suspect that the Aftermath will add a lot of midrange that may be otherwise missing if you dont have a Les Paul
However does sound a lot tighter and less sloppy than a Dirty Fingers can and it's 43 gauge wire (same as Cold Sweat)
Cold Sweat is my favourite pickup in mahogany guitars, but I have been enjoying the AM in it's place lately - been experimenting. The Aftermath is certainly not just for modern Tech metal players - it works well for 80s hard rock too (guess it may be down to someone like myself to throw down a clip at some point to prove it)
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The Aftermath is certainly not just for modern Tech metal players - it works well for 80s hard rock too (guess it may be down to someone like myself to throw down a clip at some point to prove it)
i've suddenly become interested in the Aftermath :) I thought it would be a one-trick br00talz pony.
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I like this kind of tone challenges. Tough isn't it?
Anyway tone is a multi-dimentional thing involving guitar type, woods, construction, pickups, amp etc so I think you can't get exactly what you got with your LP. It's different woods, different construction (set neck vs neck thru), different response due to the woods AND construction, different scale and different feel. I guess you can construct a similar EQ but the voicing and response are difficult to duplicate. Or you can get close to the response but you'll loose on EQ and voicing, or even you could get close to the voicing you want but with a different feel and EQ. To get ALL three there with a different guitar it's what it makes it so hard.
I can't help you with BKPs as I haven't tried enough yet. I have a couple in my mind by other manufacturers that might suit the case but I wouldn't suggest them here because it's the BKP forum and also I consider them inferior to BKPs in any way.
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Well, I don't expect it to sound exactly the same and indeed, my previous guitar didn't either as it wasn't a Les Paul; it was a maple/walnut neck-thru with mahogany wings but it did at least get me into the right ballpark by giving me some of the characteristics. Obviously my current guitar is brighter so I need a pickup that is darker than the Cold Sweat to compensate but I agree it's a difficult balancing act when there are so many variables.
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Ah sorry! I thought you had a Les Paul before. Then that makes it easier I guess. ;)
Edit: As it was a neck-thru I think it shouldn't be that different from your SL3. What kind of bridge (your previous guitar)?
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Well, it seems I was right that the Cold Sweat is the nearest obvious candidate to a Dirty Fingers and it's certainly the sound I first thought of when I had a set in a mahogany guitar. I loved it because it was exactly what I wanted: ceramic tightness with the rich, organic tone of an Alnico and pretty versatile to boot. Perfect. I remember the first time I heard the song 'Cold Sweat' and even though I didn't play guitar at that stage, I immediately knew it was a sound I loved. It was everything I liked about Gibson tone but more so. It was aggression that no other Gibson seemed to produce yet still had a quality to it that made me think of PAF tone. In that respect I find John Sykes' move to a PAF pickup to be totally understandable, though I still prefer his Dirty Fingers tone.
However, I'd be very surprised if a bright pickup like a Cold Sweat would produce the same response in a guitar like an SL3; hence my question. A Cold Sweat in a mahogany guitar IS that Sykes, Dirty Fingers tone but as this guitar is so different, it seems reasonable to me that it will take a different pickup to achieve the same thing. I know I have a few threads on this but new pickups are a lot of money and I want to get it right. I did contact Tim but he said it would be easier to talk about it on the phone rather than email but due to work, I haven't been able to call yet. I'm hoping to catch him today but until I do get him I have to rely on the combined wisdom of the forum.
I suspect that the Aftermath will add a lot of midrange that may be otherwise missing if you dont have a Les Paul
However does sound a lot tighter and less sloppy than a Dirty Fingers can and it's 43 gauge wire (same as Cold Sweat)
Cold Sweat is my favourite pickup in mahogany guitars, but I have been enjoying the AM in it's place lately - been experimenting. The Aftermath is certainly not just for modern Tech metal players - it works well for 80s hard rock too (guess it may be down to someone like myself to throw down a clip at some point to prove it)
i agree entirely on the aftermath not being just for modern players i find it to be absolute great for recreating 80s tones especially those mid 80s megadeth ones up to the current sound.
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Ah sorry! I thought you had a Les Paul before. Then that makes it easier I guess. ;)
Edit: As it was a neck-thru I think it shouldn't be that different from your SL3. What kind of bridge (your previous guitar)?
Yes, in theory I think you're right but the vague impression I have is that there is a sonic difference between the two. It's difficult as the SL3 is using a JB, which I think accounts for the thin tone this one has but I don't think it's the pickup that entirely accounts for the brighter tone. They're both maple neck-thru guitars it is true and I'm not sure of the effect the walnut had on the Ibanez but I'm pretty sure the mahogany had an impact as acoustically it was certainly darker. I also read somewhere that Jackson neck-thru guitars are actually more like a very long tenon into the guitar with alder at the end but I'm not sure how accurate that is. Either way, this one is brighter and I don't think the Cold Sweat will work. I've listened to dozens of clips and read hundreds of reviews/comments and based on that, my gut feeling is that the right pickup is either a Nailbomb (not sure between Alnico V and Ceramic) or a ceramic Warpig. Both are articulate pickups that avoid muddiness, both retain quite an organic tone and both are pretty versatile so both seem to remind me of the best aspects of a Dirty Fingers and John Sykes' tone. I tried calling Tim today but he was busy in the workshop so I didn't want to disturb him. It's not immediately pressing as my other guitar isn't sold yet so I'll catch him another time.
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Where does the name "Dirty Fingers" come from?
AFAIK, it's a 1970's Gary Moore album... Did Gibson name a pickup after that? Or vice-versa?
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Ah sorry! I thought you had a Les Paul before. Then that makes it easier I guess. ;)
Edit: As it was a neck-thru I think it shouldn't be that different from your SL3. What kind of bridge (your previous guitar)?
Yes, in theory I think you're right but the vague impression I have is that there is a sonic difference between the two. It's difficult as the SL3 is using a JB, which I think accounts for the thin tone this one has but I don't think it's the pickup that entirely accounts for the brighter tone. They're both maple neck-thru guitars it is true and I'm not sure of the effect the walnut had on the Ibanez but I'm pretty sure the mahogany had an impact as acoustically it was certainly darker. I also read somewhere that Jackson neck-thru guitars are actually more like a very long tenon into the guitar with alder at the end but I'm not sure how accurate that is. Either way, this one is brighter and I don't think the Cold Sweat will work. I've listened to dozens of clips and read hundreds of reviews/comments and based on that, my gut feeling is that the right pickup is either a Nailbomb (not sure between Alnico V and Ceramic) or a ceramic Warpig. Both are articulate pickups that avoid muddiness, both retain quite an organic tone and both are pretty versatile so both seem to remind me of the best aspects of a Dirty Fingers and John Sykes' tone. I tried calling Tim today but he was busy in the workshop so I didn't want to disturb him. It's not immediately pressing as my other guitar isn't sold yet so I'll catch him another time.
Well if you hear a difference in their acoustic sound then there is a difference. Actually in your case the 1st pickup I would think to try would be a Nailbomb too. Probably a Ceramic for me as I want tightness but the Alnico would still be an option.
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alnico pups just don't have that midrange grind
the nailbomb is quite aggressive, but its midrange is smooth
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well, i tried an aftermath (albeit with a screw coil and a slug coil) in Feline's workshop, and I indeed liked it very much for 80s hard rock. we compared it to a painkiller, and they are both very tight, with the aftermath having less synthetic sounding mids. its a very precise sounding pickup, and you can hear every note in the chord. but its full in the mids and rocks
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alnico pups just don't have that midrange grind
the nailbomb is quite aggressive, but its midrange is smooth
Yes, and that's exactly what keeps drawing me to ceramics but it has to be said that players that I like, such as John Sykes, Gary Moore and Slash, there is a strong element of PAF tone where an Alnico magnet would help. Having said that, the C-Bomb does sound far more organic (to my ears at least based on clips) than other ceramic pups like say Painkiller or Miracle Man. Either way, I think it's getting to the stage where it's pretty marginal. I think that any of the pups I've mentioned could work well so it's down to just fine tuning and for that I rely on Tim.
I'm thinking that if it's an Alnico Nailbomb I'll keep it open poled but if it's a ceramic Nailbomb I'll go with a cover.
There's a hell of a lot of positive comments about the versatility of a Warpig and it does have a kind of 'Dirty Fingers' thing going on so I can see why you suggested it but all the clips you hear tend to just be crushing distortion. Hell, the thing sounds detuned even in standard!! Nevertheless, it does sound good so if Tim says Warpig, that is what it will be. I even wondered about the possibility of an Alnico Warpig without the DSP feature to lose some of the dominating bass and keep it tight but I suspect I'm being silly now :? :shock: I'm convinced Tim will suggest either Nailbomb or Warpig, which probably means he'll suggest neither of them :D
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I was talking about the alnico nailbomb
never tried the ceramic version
the cold sweat sounds very ceramic to my ears, and I doubt an overwound version of it would sound "less ceramic"
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I was talking about the alnico nailbomb
never tried the ceramic version
the cold sweat sounds very ceramic to my ears, and I doubt an overwound version of it would sound "less ceramic"
Sorry, you're right of course - my mistake. So as far as you're concerned, the best choice for me would be either an Alnico Nailbomb or a Ceramic Warpig. I can see the wisdom in both of these suggestions and I like the sound of both pickups so I really don't care which one Tim ultimately thinks is best. The neck and middle pickup choice will have to be driven by the choice of bridge pup as that is more important. I like the sound of the Slowhands as I need a single coil that will get as close as possible to a DiMarzio PAF as I want that creamy lead tone that Dave Murray used to have before he switched to Hotrails. If Tim says Nailbomb then the Slowhands should be ok but if he says Warpig I'll just have to get something else, I'm guessing either Trilogy Suites or Sinners. Unfortunately, as Tim seems super busy at the moment, it looks like this question will have to wait until the new year but that's hardly the end of the world.
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why not a les paul instead? :D :D :D
that "sykes" edwards would do the job
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Unfortunately, while I love the sound of a Les Paul, I don't like playing them. Single cutaways have never appealed to me as I've never seen the point in making access to the upper frets more difficult than it needs to be. It's the same reason that I prefer a neck-thru construction. Once you add in my preference for a locking trem, my choices of guitar are actually quite limited. What makes it worse is that I am in no way a shredder but a guitar of that spec does tend to be a 'Metal' guitar. Perhaps in that respect the PRS Torero might have been a better choice for me as it's mahogany bodied and looks less 'Metal' but I can't really have any regrets as the Jackson is a lovely instrument to play and as they're both maple neck-thrus the mahogany body on the PRS probably would have made only a marginal difference to the tone. Either way I'd have been changing the pickups and at least with the Jackson I have pickups I can transfer to the Yamaha Pacifica I use as a backup :)
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Have you considered using lower value pots? Perhaps Cold Sweats with 300kΩ pots could be interesting..
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I confess I have absolutely no idea how the value of the pots affect the sound except that I normally see 500k pots suggested for the kind of pickups I seem to gravitate towards. I assume that as you've mentioned the Cold Sweat, changing the pots to 300k would make the guitar less bright. From what I understand, making something like a Cold Sweat or Rebel Yell DSP would have a similar effect but then it would lose some of its tightness as well. I think I might be better starting off with the pickup that is already closest to what suits me and my guitar and then use things like pots and DSP to only tweak things if needed.
I'm hopeless at making decisions so I'm actually quite grateful that a lot of the BKP range seems more tailored towards Les Paul style guitars because it limits my choice so much. It's also why I like having complete trust in Tim and the members of this forum :). The most popular suggestion has certainly been a Nailbomb with slightly more people siding with the Alnico version over the Ceramic for what I want. I'm also intrigued by Eric's suggestion of a C-Pig. The clips sound absolutely HUGE and one I listened to last night from the forum was ironically a recording of the song 'Cold Sweat' done with a Warpig in an Alder bodied Ran V and it actually produced a wonderful tone for that song. Heavier than the original for sure but not a billion miles away tonally. Unfortunately it used a Warpig for the rhythm and a Nailbomb for the lead and it would have been better if I could have heard the complete song done with a Warpig and then with the Nailbomb. The Nailbomb sounded a little thin next to the Warpig but if the rhythm had also used a Nailbomb I doubt it would have stood out as much. I can't wait for the new year to find out what Tim thinks. I know I'll be happy with whichever one I get but I equally know I'll feel a little disappointed at missing out on one of them. BKP just have so many good products!
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Yes, using a 300kΩ pot in place of a 500kΩ or higher will reduce the top end as though you've rolled your tone knob off a little. With a clear pickup like a Cold Sweat in a bright guitar, this shouldn't present any clarity issues but will prevent the top end from getting sibilant.
Either version of the Warpig would be suitable if you want a hot pickup that delivers a massive sound with tons of midrange grind.
Have you owned any BKPs yet? If not, I think you'll find the differences you are attempting to judge here are really rather small in that all of the range is extremely tight and clear.
However, no pickup is going to make your guitar sound like a Les Paul. The scale length, shape and construction are three incredibly important factors to the LP sound which you simply cannot replicate.
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The only Bare Knuckle pickups I've had are a calibrated set of Cold Sweats that I put in an Ibanez RGT42. That was a maple/walnut neck-thru with mahogany wings and while it was fairly bright, it wasn't intrusively so and seemed to work well. The Jackson I have at the moment is undoubtedly a brighter guitar, which is why I'm steering clear of the Cold Sweats this time and besides which, I want to try something new. It's a measure of how much I like BKP that I'm back again. I don't really want a single coil sound at all on the guitar (hence my earlier comment on the Slowhands) but I'd rather have a BKP single coil than anyone elses stacked humbucker. I'm sure they are all good pickups and in a way I feel like a bit of an arse dithering so much but the thick end of £250 on pickups is a hell of a lot of money for me so I want to make sure I get it right. I've listened to a lot of clips and it's confusing when the rigs obviously all differ but some do stand out for me:
http://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=19648.0
Both clean and distorted, the sound here seems very impressive and I'm guessing that a Jackson Kelly isn't a million miles away from my SL3 tonally, though I accept there are still a lot of variables.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef3kVURwCdw
I don't know for sure but my guess would be that the Charvel in this clip is similar to mine tonally and again it sounds impressive. VERY tight and articulate. I might equally say that the Fender in this clip has tonal similarities to my guitar due to the maple and alder. Again, the tone is mightily impressive. Compared to the Nailbomb, the word for the Warpig that leaps to mind is 'BIG'. I don't know if the pickups in this clip are Alnico or Ceramic but they're bloody tight whichever they are. If they're Alnico V, I can't imagine how ceramics could be any tighter than that!
http://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=20921.0
This is the clip I mentioned in my last post. Again, I like it because I'm guessing that the guitar used isn't a million miles away from mine tonally but it's equally confusing because I like both pickups and in this clip they're doing very different things. The rhythm part played with a C-Pig is crushingly huge and does remind me of the original recording of that song even if it is undoubtedly heavier. However, the squeals and lead done with the Nailbomb is also sublime. At first I thought it was a no-brainer because I assumed that the Nailbomb would be far more versatile and more likely to give me those Gibson PAF influenced tones that I seem to gravitate towards but the more I read about the Warpig, the more versatile it appears to be. I simply can't choose between them :?
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I think the best advice I could give would be to wait until the new site goes live on January 3rd at midnight GMT - there are the best part of 200 new clips to listen to, and while I can't claim to have covered every possible angle, there should be plenty to make a comparative assessment of the range. :)
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That sounds great, I'll make sure I check it out then. As far as what might be suggested to me as a possible pickup, some factors are worth mentioning.
1) I do not consider myself to be a good player so I don't want a pickup that punishes mistakes or sloppy playing.
2) At the moment I usually play through the clean channel of a Marshall DSL401 using a Hardwire Metal Distortion pedal. The sound is too thin for my taste so I usually engage an MXR Super Compressor with the output and sensitivity almost maxed out and the attack virtually on zero. This improves things a lot because it fattens things up a bit, it sounds better and seems to suit my playing better. Maybe all it does is mask my sloppy playing but either way, I like the sound better.
Whether that helps at all in thinking of the right pickup for me I have no idea but I thought it might be worth mentioning.
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In that case I stand by my Warpig recommendation - I personally think the alnico version would be spot on, but the ceramic would work too. With the high output they are very fluid to play, and their natural compression and fat voicing might mean you can forego the compressor in your signal path.
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Nolly mate, having you on the forum is like having another Tim! I think you're probably right about the Warpig as it seems to match the fat but articulate sound I'm after. The question now is what I use for the neck and middle positions. I was originally looking at Slowhands as I wanted a fat, creamy, almost humbucker-like tone and they seemed to fit the bill but even with a baseplate I can't imagine they'll live with a Warpig. My next thought was Sinners because I read they were also quite humbucker like but the shop says that they only do a bridge model. Does that mean that with a Warpig it just has to be Trilogy Suites? I was looking for something like the Dave Murray neck tone, ideally more like when he was using a DiMarzio PAF but I accept that's likely to be impossible with a single coil.
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Thanks mate, I've been lucky enough to play the full range so it's nice to be able to help people out.
Yes, the Slowhands would be underpowered, and besides are not humbucker-like in tone - they're still very much a strat sound, just with a much fuller mid.
However, the Sinners are available for the middle and neck position, the site is somewhat out of date. They are wound at 15kΩ and should produce a tone close to what you're looking for, though as you say, a strat single coil can never sound like humbucker.
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Final question here seeing as I'm now pretty settled on a Warpig and Sinners set. Having read a bit about the Warpig I've found it's not only extremely versatile, it's also good in different configurations such as being coil tapped and moving between series and parrellel wiring. I wasn't going to mess with the guitar in this way but I believe that I'll need to change the pots (I assume that means both volume and tone) to 1 meg anyway so I figure I may as well go the extra half mile when they're fitted. I have no idea about electronics so I need help as to how I do this. I want to keep the 5-way selector operating exactly as it does at the moment and I don't want to add any additional switches so I wondered if I could do something with the pots instead. For instance, can I have the 5-way switch select the same pickup configurations it does now, have a push-push or push-pull volume pot to activate the coil tapping and a push-push or push-pull tone pot to change between series and parrallel wiring on the Warpig. I assume that would mean that the series/parrallel control would only operate when the coil tap isn't engaged. Can this be done and is there an easier/better way of doing it?
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lots of quote from me there :)
subtlety isn't the strong point (though bizarrely they [Dirty Fingers] do roll-down cleans well).
I thought I was the only one who noticed that....