Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: gwEm on November 28, 2016, 01:09:07 PM
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I question wether to post stuff here any more with so many people no longer regular, but I figure why not.
Heres a couple of new pedals I put through their paces on the weekend.
The Catalinbread Sabbra Cadabra is meant to be the Black Sabbath tone in a box. It has a treble booster and a JFET simulated Laney Supergroup head. Its now my favourite distortion pedal.
The other pedal is a Rangemaster from Joe Doc music in Berlin. It has adjustable frequency response and the switch is able to cut out some of the top end hiss if needed. I like it, and it has a very different character to my Thundertomate Phil Hilborne treble booster. The Joe Doc has more sustain, and a more raw/vintage sound to it. The Thundertomate is more hifi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh3X1ElmPpw
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Sweet, nice scores :grin:
with so many people no longer regular
not sure that was the best way to phrase that... :grin:
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I don't get too excited about pedals... but the Rangemaster attracted my attention (for the obvious Rory link).
Just checked out his vid - cool!
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Glad to hear you like the Sabbra Cadabra; I've been wanting to try one for ages!
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I don't get too excited about pedals... but the Rangemaster attracted my attention (for the obvious Rory link).
Just checked out his vid - cool!
I find it hard to believe you've never tried a Treble Booster Andy. If that's the case and you haven't, you owe it to yourself to give one a go. I must admit the name isn't very attractive - why would you need more treble? The effect works best on vintage humbuckers and many kinds of single coils. It adds drive and seems to make the guitar come alive. I don't particularly notice much more treble, maybe a bit more prescence
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Glad to hear you like the Sabbra Cadabra; I've been wanting to try one for ages!
I've never been a big fan of distortion pedals. The only one I kept using was the MI Audio Crunch Box. The DS-1 and Hyper Metal from boss have temporarily held my interest at various times. The Sabbra Cadabra is good because it has a hell of a lot more dynamics and subtlety to it than a Boss style distortion.
The way you dial in the tones is quite unusual. You start with the treble booster range - more range adds more low end but also fuzz and gain. The gain knob is clear how that works. Then there is the presence control which adjust the high end in quite a sweet way. The volume 4 control is just the output volume.
There is a load of gain on tap, but it has a vintage 1970s vibe to it. You could use it as a fuzz pedal, but I like it because you can dial in only a very small amount of fuzziness if you want, to make it sound big. The presence control helps preserve note attack.
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Interesting pedals. I have to try sooner or later a Rangemaster.
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Glad to hear you like the Sabbra Cadabra; I've been wanting to try one for ages!
I've never been a big fan of distortion pedals. The only one I kept using was the MI Audio Crunch Box. The DS-1 and Hyper Metal from boss have temporarily held my interest at various times. The Sabbra Cadabra is good because it has a hell of a lot more dynamics and subtlety to it than a Boss style distortion.
The way you dial in the tones is quite unusual. You start with the treble booster range - more range adds more low end but also fuzz and gain. The gain knob is clear how that works. Then there is the presence control which adjust the high end in quite a sweet way. The volume 4 control is just the output volume.
There is a load of gain on tap, but it has a vintage 1970s vibe to it. You could use it as a fuzz pedal, but I like it because you can dial in only a very small amount of fuzziness if you want, to make it sound big. The presence control helps preserve note attack.
Sounds like the setup for the Naga Viper (which I own and love), but with more gain on tap.
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I'm a big fan of treble boosters, with the right guitar and amp they are amazing things. That Sabbra Cadabra sounds pretty interesting.
I know what you mean about the forum. It was a thriving community for quite a while, but it seems very flat these days. Not quite sure how that happened
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^ I think it was gradually going that way for a while (facebook and similar stuff, I assume), but (and I could well be mistaken here :laugh: ) I think the big thing was that time the forum went down for a couple of weeks. It was down long enough that a lot of the regulars from here migrated to the fretboard forum (I was already on it before the forum here went down) and kind of stayed there and didn't come back here.
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^ All I would add to that is that the forum also lost months of posts when it came back up which was pretty demotivating.
I've signed up to the fretboard and had a look at the BKP Facebook group. But I think my preference so far for still preferring this forum is purely aesthetic - I like the look of it and the way it's laid out.
There was definitely a time here with lots of high quality advice and interesting chats about the music styles I prefer, from a bit of jazz through to NWOBHM. I don't quite see that going on elsewhere, and not here either any longer sadly.
Everything changes I guess.
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I got put on to some great pieces of gear on here I must say - treble boosters, Boss OD-1, coily cables, strat baseplates, Theile cabs, maple neck throughs, value for money vintage guitars and so on.
Also, I made some fine real life friends: Feline, Philking, WezV, Plenum n Heather and perhaps AndyR, PhillyQ, HeavierThanHell, AfganDave and DMoney also (actually, theres more than this from the meetings we had way back)
Plus I've expanded my musical tastes with some killer artists, John Sykes for example, and Rory Gallagher is now one of my favourite players.
Hopefully I've passed some tips on myself - although I must confess a lot has been learnt here over the years(!)
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being an anti-social media type of guy, I don't do Facebook or any of the other IM type sites. I am on the Fretboard, but don't really contribute much. I still like this site, and I've met a lot of the older members in real life.
Going back to your pedals, I've tried the SabraCadabra and liked it. Actually I have one in my Juansolo BriTon Bender (along with their AC30 booster and a clone of my Jumbo Treble booster). It does give that Tony Iommi sound (with the right amp and guitar of course). I like treble boosters and have an older Rangemaster clone, which has the original components, but has a range switch, to give a full range boost too.
The Joe Doc one sounds interesting. I've been using a J Rocket Archer Icon with the gain down for clean boosting, but just pulled out the Rangemester to replace it.
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Everything changes I guess.
Yep, it's kinda sad how the forum's gone so quiet compared to how it was... It's definitely one of my favourite corners of the interweb, but nothing lasts for ever.
I'm on theFretBoard too, been on there for ages, but only recently started posting. I'm getting used to it there, but it's still not quite as comfortable as it is here.
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^ All I would add to that is that the forum also lost months of posts when it came back up which was pretty demotivating.
I've signed up to the fretboard and had a look at the BKP Facebook group. But I think my preference so far for still preferring this forum is purely aesthetic - I like the look of it and the way it's laid out.
There was definitely a time here with lots of high quality advice and interesting chats about the music styles I prefer, from a bit of jazz through to NWOBHM. I don't quite see that going on elsewhere, and not here either any longer sadly.
Everything changes I guess.
Ah I didn't realise (or else forgot) that we lost a lot of posts too- that would be annoying.
And yeah definitely at one point this forum was great. Hasn't been like that for a while, unfortunately. That goes for a lot of other forums too, I guess, lots of them seem to be getting less traffic than they used to. :sad:
Hopefully I've passed some tips on myself - although I must confess a lot has been learnt here over the years(!)
Ditto (and elsewhere too). :grin: I knew very little about guitar (still don't, lol) before I found online forums.Everything changes I guess.
Yep, it's kinda sad how the forum's gone so quiet compared to how it was... It's definitely one of my favourite corners of the interweb, but nothing lasts for ever.
I'm on theFretBoard too, been on there for ages, but only recently started posting. I'm getting used to it there, but it's still not quite as comfortable as it is here.
Yeah. I mean, I do like the Fretboard, and some of the regulars are great, but you do need a bit of a thicker skin and it's not quite as friendly as some of the smaller forums. That being said I've seen people who've been on the Fretboard forum since it started (and from the MusicRadar forum before that) complain that it's not what it was, either. :laugh:
I guess the problem is, if you don't expand the membership, the forum gets smaller (since some people inevitably stop posting, or stop dropping in as often at least), but if you expand the membership the place is likely going to change...
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Nice looking pedals.
I have a love/hate relationship with treble boosters. I have come to the conclusion that they work best for getting more overdrive from an amp that is already breaking up - which means that it is going to get loud which is not appropriate everywhere. But they also work well into overdrive pedals.
Cheers Stephan
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I think some of the migration happened when BKPs product line started to become a little polarised towards Djent/tech metal in terms of it's new releases.
A big slice of the new intake of members were asking questions about post rock and post metal and other subdivisions of the ever fragmenting and evolving sub-genre's of metal and it all became a bit like a foreign language to many of the long term members who were maybe rooted in country, pop, blues, and classic rock and metal.
It would be nice to see a bit of a rebalancing in terms of discussion now the new sub-genres are more settled in and established...and many of the queries they might have can be assisted with the search function too!
We are still loving and fitting plenty of BKPs even though there are over 3 million variations available when you count all the covers and all the colours and other options, so we can't promise to keep every pickup in every colour etc
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The infrastucture of the forum itself is also an issue; we are beyond 'facelift' at this point -- just check your profile options ... AIM handle?! What?!! lol There is no embedding support, no Youtube/SoundCloud support, the avatar options are a joke, and no BKP employee presence that I can see. The forum is basically the land of the Lost Boys at this point!!
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I do have a couple of thoughts about the forum and it is based on my own experience so perhaps it's not entirely accurate. Firstly, I have to confess that I've been away from the forum since the end of August and only came back a week or so ago but that had nothing to do with the forum, it was because I've now moved to the Falkland Islands where internet access is very limited, very slow and very expensive. As for the forum itself, it is, without doubt, my favourite guitar forum because I never read silly comments from kids and the knowledge and friendliness here is without equal in my experience. There are, however, a couple of issues:
1) I think Feline is spot on that too many of the new pickups are focused on one particular genre or more accurately, one end of a genre. I never even bother looking for new products from BKP and news of a new pickup never excites me because it seems a foregone conclusion that it will be aimed at a Djent-style market. The whole range is biased towards that end of the market and I don't see why that particular style requires so much choice because it's not like the genre is the last word in tone!
2) When I started to use BKP they were something of a bespoke manufacturer so if I wanted a variation on a particular pickup or even something made to my own specification, it could be done. This hasn't been the case for a long time as now I either buy something off the shelf or I can't get it, other than perhaps some very minor alterations. BKP were special but now I see them as more of a mostly higher quality Seymour Duncan or DiMarzio. This perception undermines their USP so, for me at least, their appeal diminishes.
3) Over the years it has irked me a little that with some areas of the market, BKP simply stick their heads in the sand and I'm referring to noiseless singlecoils here. I appreciate the argument that their tone isn't the same as a true singlecoil but you know what, I really don't care. Sometimes I want a Strat-sized pickup that doesn't sound like a true singlecoil and even if I did, something like the Area series from DiMarzio are superb at giving the true tone of a single yet are completely noiseless, which is what I use now. There are also some magnets that BKP simply don't seem to want to use like A8 or some of the new exotic options and I can't see why. The bridge pickup in my PRS is very similar to a Juggernaut but uses an A8 flanked by two A5 magnets. It was built specially for me, to my ears sounds a lot better than the Juggernaut (personal preference I know) and cost a fraction of the price. In the old days I'd have come to BKP for these things but as they won't do what I want, I went elsewhere.
4) To a degree, this forum has been too successful with me because I've learned so much over the years that I'm now perfectly comfortable ordering something to my own specification. I would have been perfectly happy to give BKP this business but their business is no longer flexible enough to do that and it's also very expensive when there are a lot of other alternatives out there. It is certainly true that BKP are a lot better than Seymour Duncan and also a lot better than most DiMarzios but there are also now a lot of other people out there, offering handwound pickups that can be made to order. The set I bought for my Les Paul were made entirely to my specification, were a completely bespoke design, they're every bit as good or better than any BKP I've tried and cost me half the price! The one I have arriving later this week is the second time I've bought this model because for less money it's noticeably better than a Holydiver. When I started with BKP this never would have been the case so the forum had built-in loyalty because nothing else out there was as good.
This sounds like I'm very anti-BKP but I'm not. Tim's a great guy, the pickups are excellent and I'm happy to keep suggesting ideas to people on here because I know they're getting a great product but I'd have to be honest and say that I haven't personally bought a BKP product in some time and I have no intention at all of doing so in the future. The world has changed over the last few years and BKP are no longer the unique proposition they perhaps once were. They still make great pickups and I'm sure the business will continue to do well but these days there are plenty other people out there who can make something completely bespoke as well as offering their own designs and their product is at least as good as BKP for less money. This commercial reality is bound to have an impact on the number of people loyal to the BKP forum. I've spoken to quite a few people who used to regularly post on here but no longer contribute as they've moved away for similar reasons to me. The difference with me is that I still contribute to the forum even though I've personally moved on. I suppose one reason I stay around is that I'd LOVE to come back to BKP in the future but they'd have to offer a more flexible product and they'd have to be more competitive on price. I think the forum has died a bit because the more seasoned musicians who really appreciate tone and quality aren't naturally obsessed with Djent or anything like it and they are knowledgeable enough, like me, to know about alternatives. I don't have an issue with the format of the forum at all, I think it has more to do with the fact that the market most of the pickups are aimed at now is too young to have much loyalty to a forum or depth of knowledge. The problem with having so much of the range aimed at this style of music is that it's a young market that will eventually grow up and, to a degree at least, grow out of Djent. When I was a young guitarist it was all about Metal, distortion, volume, speed and tightness but I grew up. My tastes evolved and I want more from my pickups now and more from my music. BKP would go a long way to improving the forum by improving their product range, returning to a more flexible production model and being more competitively priced.
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My only real gripe with the forum setup is that you can't embed videos
As far as the range of BKP is concerned, I don't have the resources to buy another pickup at the moment (if I did it would be a Holy Diver neck & Miracle Man bridge combo) or another guitar to put them in but to me the issue with the pickups being geared to the djent and post-metal market is simply that most of the ground has already been covered. If you can't get the sounds you want with your guitar and one of the pickups on offer I am going to say that the issue might be more the wrong amp or the wrong hands. I wouldn't mind seeing something more like a DiMarzio Super Distortion or a Seymour Duncan Black Winter but seriously if I really wanted the sound of a Black Winter I would just go buy one from Seymour Duncan! It's probably the case that you have just reached a saturation point with the various models.
Personally I am intrigued by the Impulse in a way that I never was by the Juggernaut and I would love to have a guitar with those in it one day. I would probably not go for a baritone but I like how they sound in regular scale guitars
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Actually, for a while I wanted to change pickups on a guitar and I kept putting it off as I also had a lack of resources and I was very unsure about leaving the BKP fold as there was at least a guarantee of service and quality there. That changed when a band mate tried another company who makes handwound pickups and I was so impressed I decided to take a punt. I haven't looked back since.
I take the point about saturation and up to a point, I'd agree, but I still feel there is far more scope for broader development of the range. I've already mentioned various possibilities on noiseless Strat pickups so there's a whole range there that isn't being developed. You're also right that there are still some gaps in the BKP range, with the Super Distortion being an obvious example as there's nothing currently in the BKP range that does that job. I also feel that if you can have so many pickups in the Djent sector, there simply has to be more you can do to explore the gap between vintage PAF-style pickups and hot, modern pickups. The Vintage Hot section has always struck me as surprisingly small given the area it's actually covering. Then there's the whole field of experimenting with merging markets. The neck pickups I have made for me these days are usually AII magnets (vintage) or I might consider AIV (vintage - vintage hot) and are wound to anything from vintage to vintage hot output but the wire I specify is either 42.5AWG or 43AWG, which is a more modern approach. I've found by merging these categories I've been able to come up with some remarkable results. I've got a Strat-sized pickup arriving later in the week that is actually more like a P90 in its construction and tone. There's also the need to update and improve existing models. I liked the Holydiver but I eventually went elsewhere because it simply wasn't good enough at reproducing that 80's Metal tone I was after. The wire is too modern and it's wound too hot to accurately reproduce that tone. I actually think that they'd be better rethinking both the Holydiver and Abraxas because the Holydiver would work better using the existing Abraxas as a base and offering an AIV or AV option and then redoing the Abraxas as a slightly lighter wind with perhaps an AII or AIV option and possibly rethinking the wire being used on the neck version to make it 42.5AWG and therefore more distinct from the Mule and Crawler neck models. What is currently the Holydiver could then be renamed and possibly slightly reworked to bridge the gap between the new Holydiver and the Miracle Man.
There's certainly going to be a saturation point in the range but I don't think BKP have reached that point yet (except possibly for Djent pickups) when you consider how extensive the ranges of Seymour Duncan and DiMarzio are but then if they also returned to a more bespoke model, they wouldn't need that extensive a range anyway.
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Hi all, I haven't got much to say at the moment except hello to all but particularly to the old stagers. The last 18 months or so have brought some not-looked-for or wanted life changing events but in spite of that, I am still gigging and loving my BKP's. I don't seem to be able to drop in as much as I'd like but it is good to see a lot of familiar people posting.