Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: itamar101 on January 22, 2012, 06:21:01 PM
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hey guys,
ive been looking at upgrading my strat pickups and ive come to the decision that im either getting BKP mothers milk pups or seymour duncan antiquity texas hots with an antiquity custom in the bridge.
but i cant find many demos of them so i would like to know what would suit me better. please no biased opinions seeing as this is the bkp forum.
i play blues rock, alt rock, funk rock, hard rock and a bit of metal (but my les paul can cover metal well enough).
i would love to get some frusciante-esque tones but i am wondering how much low end either of the pickups will get me as i want a bit of that too. i want to be able to reach hard rock amounts of overdrive with a beefy sound and lot of clarity and hopefully the bridge pickups could have a bit of that "tele twang".
the neck pickup must be warm and beefy, reminiscent of '54 fenders and such.
tl;dr which pickups should i get?
should i get a telecaster and put BKP yardbirds in it?
thanks in advanc for any advice :)
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just bear in mind no-one here's likely to say to get the seymour duncans :lol: Just like no-one at teh duncan forum would say to get the bareknuckles
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i thought that that would be likely.
but do you have any advice yourself?
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I don't really think there is a better. Just a matter of preference really.
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Quite a few folks on the SD forum recommend other manufacturer's pickups (including BKs), it's a very tolerant forum in that respect. I've never used SDs single coils but a lot of top players use them so they should be pretty good. I have an IT bridge in my Strat and it's a superb pup with plenty of beef.
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whats an IT bridge?
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Irish Tour - inspired by the sound Rory Gallagher had on the live album of the same name. It really captures Rory's sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w0kQ74kZcw
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Ahhh... Rory!!
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If you're looking for Texas hot then IT's. Order a baseplate for the bridge for some extra oomph. I have both the Mother's Milk and Irish Tours. The IT's are a sort of overwound MM's. Fatter and grittier. But, if you turn the vol.knob on the guitar a tad back, you will get in MM-terrority and close to the woody Frusciante-tones.
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I had a Strat with a set of Duncan Texas Hots with the Custom bridge, and replaced them with a set of Mother Milks :D
The difference in tone is night and day. I know it's a cliche', but the BKPs are so much clearer sounding and (to my ears atleast) just sound 'better'.
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i thought that that would be likely.
but do you have any advice yourself?
not really, i haven't tried bkp's single coils (nor duncan's custom shop) :lol:
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I had a Strat with a set of Duncan Texas Hots with the Custom bridge, and replaced them with a set of Mother Milks :D
The difference in tone is night and day. I know it's a cliche', but the BKPs are so much clearer sounding and (to my ears atleast) just sound 'better'.
Can you please explain this further? What are the differences in tone and clarity, what was beefier sounding, whats better for chords or leads. How is each one clean and distorted? Thanks.
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Now, while I only use an Irish Tour middle (which is bloody great for strat sounds), I can tell you that generally, BKPs will be clearer and more defined than other pickups as mentioned here.
What that means is for one, that they donīt have distortion coming from the pickups itself. A lot of others have dirt already in the DI signal that comes from the PUs, for example dimazios and duncans. This leads you to hear them as hotter, while the effectivly donīt really have more output. That means switching from those PUs to BKPs will usually involve turning up the gain, cause they seam to eat it. This will ultimatly give you a lot more detail and defintion in the sound, let me assure you. This makes them superiour for chords under gain and all.
Itīs hard to explain, but this is something you can expect from BKPs in general over duncan.
Btw, I think while biased we are still very tollerant here too. We tend not recommend anything but BKPs but sometimes a Duncan is just what works for you, so that is what we tell people looking to upgrade pickups sometimes if they did not like BKPs they tried out.
I for one also still love my Dimarzio Liquifire and Crunchlab (though I have not tried Ceramic Nailbomb and Coldsweat neck combo yet).
Oh yes, and I think you would do very nicely with an IT set (baseplate on the bridge probably).
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What that means is for one, that they donīt have distortion coming from the pickups itself. A lot of others have dirt already in the DI signal that comes from the PUs, for example dimazios and duncans. This leads you to hear them as hotter, while the effectivly donīt really have more output.
Sorry, can you explain that a bit more for me please as I'm not sure I follow.
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What that means is for one, that they donīt have distortion coming from the pickups itself. A lot of others have dirt already in the DI signal that comes from the PUs, for example dimazios and duncans. This leads you to hear them as hotter, while the effectivly donīt really have more output.
Sorry, can you explain that a bit more for me please as I'm not sure I follow.
I mean the thing that is mentioned on this forum quite often (I very much may have gotten something wrong about he output). Especially dimarzios have a certain kind of dirt in the high frequencys, the high end tends to be more fizzy you could say. One may call this sort of noise. This then leads to the final signal after it went through the amp sounding more distorted, because distortion is essentially adding unwanted overtones and such, which in this case the PU itself already begins doing. So BKPs give cleaner signal because they produce less unwanted overtones.
Now I think I got some things wrong, but maybe you understand what I mean....otherwise someone wiser than me will have to chime in (enough people to pick from ;))
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Are we talking compressed mud? It's true the clarity and stringseparation of BKP's are very good, even with much ampgain. Also the pickattack doesn't suffer with ampgain and a od-pedal in front of it. Your ears hear everything better, clearer, so it might seem they 'eat gain', which isn't the case. You have to get used to clarity and dynamics. Also soft-, medium- and hardpicking makes a difference in how the amp responds. I can only talk for the BKP's I have: Mules, VHII, Crawler, IT's, MM's and BG50's.
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This for making it clearer.
I've watched some of the very few demo there are of the Irish tour and mothers milk pickups and I think I liked the mothers milks better cos the Irish tour seemed way to trebly but on the bkp when I compare both it says that the Irish tour has more bass and less treble than the mothers milk. Also, no demos showed the pickups with anything more than light blues overdrive and I would like to know how chords sound on each pickups with high gain. I would like the. To sound powerful but clear which I saw that the Seymour duncans really excelled at. How are the bkp MM & IT in these situation?
Which of them do you like better?
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Itamar, I think you're going to have to bite the bullet and buy something. There's only so much that can be conveyed by words and sound clips. I would go for BK myself because I think Tim and his colleagues have gone beyond what SD are capable of making.
The talk of clarity, string separation and dynamics are largely a result of scatter winding pickups and SD don't do this.
If you can't decided which BK you can take advantage of the 14 day return policy.
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Thanks, it seems like that's the case.
I think I might end up with a mothers milk neck and middle and IT bridge in order to keep some bass frequencies.
Thanks for you help guys :)
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Thanks, it seems like that's the case.
I think I might end up with a mothers milk neck and middle and IT bridge in order to keep some bass frequencies.
Thanks for you help guys :)
I wouldn't say the ITs are overly trebley or that the Mothers Milks lack bass at all, but as someone already said, there's far too many variables to take into account when listening to clips.
In your position I'd be tempted to go for a set of Mothers Milks and possibly have a baseplate on the bridger pickup if you're worried about it not being fat sounding enough.
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Thanks, I'll take a look.
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Itamar, I think you're going to have to bite the bullet and buy something. There's only so much that can be conveyed by words and sound clips. I would go for BK myself because I think Tim and his colleagues have gone beyond what SD are capable of making.
The talk of clarity, string separation and dynamics are largely a result of scatter winding pickups and SD don't do this.
If you can't decided which BK you can take advantage of the 14 day return policy.
Itīs not only the scatter winding though. Count in very high quality parts, custom made for BK, the extreme knowledge and dedecation of Tim (things can hardly ever be good enough for him it seems to me) and high quality controll.
Also the BK customer service is the best I have ever seen in any buisiness.
I too would say that MM bridge with baseplate will probably be better than an IT, though that is more of an somewhat educated guess than experience.
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Thanks, I just took a look at what baseplates do and they seem to have solved and founts I had. I'll be getting a set of MM pups with a bridge baseplate then it seems.
Once again, thanks a lot for the help guys.
I'm a long time ultimate guitar forum user but you guys have really helped inform my pickups desicion.
I'll be sure to start using this forum a lot more now. Thanks. Also, is there, by any chance, a way to stop the forum from constantly logging me out?
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Thanks, I just took a look at what baseplates do and they seem to have solved and founts I had. I'll be getting a set of MM pups with a bridge baseplate then it seems.
If you have any doubt just AskTim(tm). The guy really knows it's products and as far as I can tell seems to have some mind-reading abilities - or is it just experience ?-)
Once again, thanks a lot for the help guys.
I'm a long time ultimate guitar forum user but you guys have really helped inform my pickups desicion.
I'll be sure to start using this forum a lot more now. Thanks. Also, is there, by any chance, a way to stop the forum from constantly logging me out?
Instead of using the small loging form at the top-right corner of the forum, click the "login" link above and you'll get a full form with an "always stay logged in" checkbox.
And well, yes, this is one of the (few) civilized and educated guitar forum on the net - possibly a bit biased but mostly honest ;)
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I second that: ask Tim for a recommendation.
Just to keep in mind: I have the MM's and IT's in two different strats, the MM's in ash and the IT's in swampash. On the same amp the MM's have less bass then the IT's. The MM's being a tad brighter to my ears. I you wanna rock out with vintage(hot)pickups I would pick the IT's. If woodiness is important, then MM's. The neckpickup is a bonbon. Both are not designed for ultra heavy rock, but handle gain well, with the IT's a tad smoother under highgain. If you pick the MM's you can sculpt the sound with the toneknob, just a tad back will help to keep things smooth with highgain.
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Thanks, I just took a look at what baseplates do and they seem to have solved and founts I had. I'll be getting a set of MM pups with a bridge baseplate then it seems.
If you have any doubt just AskTim(tm). The guy really knows it's products and as far as I can tell seems to have some mind-reading abilities - or is it just experience ?-)
Once again, thanks a lot for the help guys.
I'm a long time ultimate guitar forum user but you guys have really helped inform my pickups desicion.
I'll be sure to start using this forum a lot more now. Thanks. Also, is there, by any chance, a way to stop the forum from constantly logging me out?
Instead of using the small loging form at the top-right corner of the forum, click the "login" link above and you'll get a full form with an "always stay logged in" checkbox.
And well, yes, this is one of the (few) civilized and educated guitar forum on the net - possibly a bit biased but mostly honest ;)
How can I get in touch with Tim?
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Just mail the BKP-team via the site.
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It's really hard to get past BKPs in my experience as they're just so damn good. BKP are certainly my favourite but if I couldn't have those, I'd take DiMarzio over Seymour Duncan any day. The Holydiver I put in my Jackson is night and day better than the JB that came out and the Hotrails that were in there were simply horrible, though in fairness they did sound a lot better when not in a maple neck-thru. Unfortunately my only experience of BKP single coils are Trilogy Suites so I can't comment on your choice but I can tell you that they are VERY impressive and far more versatile than I'd expected.