Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: ayu135 on November 26, 2012, 07:07:02 PM
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I finally have the cash to buy new pickups, bare knuckle pickups have been rated highly by everyone so i thought i'd give it a go.
I dont have much experience with gear, my guitar Ibanez s570b is my first electric guitar. After reading around a bit on internet and listening to sound samples and youtube videos i think i am sure what i want out of my pickups. The current stock pickups dont sound too good to me. I use a Peavey vypyr 75 as my amplifier. I will try to list out what particular sounds i am after and what i feel lacks in my current pickups. I have been playing for a year now.
The neck pickup first, my current pickup sounds bad to me. I cannot exactly describe but it sounds a bit off not fluid like. Plus i'd like a bit more sustain from the pickup. The cleans are a bit dull sounding. Also harmonics are lacking. Some specific tones i'm after are Steve Vai's For The Love of God, Satch's Flying in a Blue Dream, Slash's first solo in Knocking on Heavens Doors, Iron maiden's various like The Trooper. I need good cleans for small intro sections and some songs like metallica's Nothing else matters. I really like steve vai's tone and playing style hence was looking at the Dimarzio Evolution. I heard Painkiller is similar to the evo.
The bridge pickup, well i know more specifically what i want from it. My current pickup has a really muddy and flabby low end, fast metal riffing doesnt sound good on it at all. It is very bassy. It was the tight and aggressive bass response that first bought me to BKP. They are also not clear and articulate. Some particular tones for reference are Godsmack's tone on Awake, Megadeth Public Enemy No.1, Green Day American Idiot, Iron Maiden The Trooper etc. I liked the painkiller bridge from the sound samples.
Well if it is any further help here is a list of bands i play. Metallica, Megadeth, Godsmack, Iron Maiden, Lamb of God, Pantera, Green Day, Blink 182, Guns n Roses, Steve vai, Joe Satriani, Pink Floyd, Judas Priest.
Please let me know if you need more information.
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I think you should have a look at the Cold Sweats - well at least the neck model as it has some great cleans and very fluid lead tones. You play a lot of different music and I don't think you'll find one pickup that'll be spot on for all of the bands you mention. Cold Sweat neck for sure and some of the other members will contribute soon with their opinions :D
And by the way. Welcome to the forum.
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As Mr Air said, the cold sweat neck sounds perfect for you. It's extremely fluid, can handle more distortion than you will ever be able to throw at it and is probably the best sounding pickup in the higher output range for cleans. As for the bridge, I'm tempted to tell you to go for a crawler as it can handle distortion well but since it''s one of the medium output pickups it can cover a much wider variety of tones. However, the tones you mentioned you wanted from the bridge make me think an aftermath might be good for you. Welcome to the forum! :)
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Hi and welcome!
I do think that the CS neck would be good here, but I personally would recommend neither the Crawler or Aftermath bridge here (although both are great PUs). Imho the crawler should only go into really bright guitars and here the bottom end might be too smooth. The Aftermath is more on track but it is uber dry, so that might be too much.
Bridge wise I would look at the alnico Nailbomb or Rebell Yell (the RY is somewhat of an underwound A-bomb). Probably even the Rebell Yell. Now this one is very tight, has an agressive rock voicing (upper mid spike), loads of harmonics and not too much bass, but enough to deliver some serious punch. Brings a lot of fine tuning possibilitys as it is very height dependent (more than any other PU Iīve seen). This thing can go from classic rock to modern metal without trouble. To me a best of both worlds thing between modern and vintage.
If you want more beef and more lower mid focus go alnico nailbomb.
Canīt comment on the PK.
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A-Bomb bridge/ CS-neck do the job for your styles. If you don't downtune, I would rule the Painkiller out, since it's quite bright in the topend.
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I was thinking of the painkiller bridge after listening to these demos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68EFY0I-SxE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T3hUk9CJtI&feature=plcp
I thought of the cold sweat neck, but different bridge and humbucker are going out of my budget. Callibrated set or Evo neck + BKP bridge is what i can get.
And my guitar has a middle single coil pickup so for the classic stuff i use that.