Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: richardmca on July 02, 2007, 05:40:52 PM
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I'm posting this for anyone who might be considering a first set of BKPs, and especially if they are doing that because they are not happy with a guitar. I'm not trying to teach anyone to suck eggs here, so please excuse the enthusiasm of a newcomer to BKPs.
I've recently had my first set of BKPs put into a guitar that was a complete dud when I took delivery of it (a 2006 Gibson SG Custom Re-issue VOS). Not a particularly cheap guitar, but as delivered it had no tone, not much feel and no future in my guitar rack. I was so underwhelmed that I didn't bother with it for months, then I took it for some SG nuts to play and they thought it was great. So I came to the conclusion that I just wasn't an SG kind of guy.
Anyway, while pondering whether to sell it I thought I'd give it a chance with a set of BKPs. I read in some magazine that Tim reckons the majority of a guitar's tone comes from the pickups rather than the wood and construction (I think that's what he said anyway) so this one seemed like a good test, since acoustically it sounded like gnat playing a banjo and plugged in it managed the impossible trick of sounding muddy and tinny at the same time. On top of that it seemed a complete waste to have a guitar with three pickups wired to give only three combinations (Bridge, Bridge and Middle, and Neck).
So after talking it over with Tim, I had a set of PG Blues and a Mississippi Queen for the middle, and Tim did them in a very natty aged gold finish to match the existing hardware (you know the SG Custom with the Lyre Vibrato looks like a six-string Cadillac - all in the best possible taste...). Need I say Tim's finish looks much better?
But the sounds are something else again. From being a complete slapper, this guitar is a total siren now. I can't go anywhere near it without having to play it, and that can go on for hours before I realise what time it is. The combination of sounds with the out-of-phase PG set and the MQ P90 tones combined is just endless. There's so much air, body and subtlety in the sounds, I would neverhave believed it possible of the same guitar. OK, I did tighten up the screws on the tailpiece and get a TonePros bridge, so that might have improved the sustain, but really this thing is born again. I was sceptical about how much difference a new set of pickups (and a change of wiring) could make to a guitar that just seemed acoustically hopeless, but I've got to hand it to Tim. It feels great and sounds out of this world.
So, my point is, if you are unhappy with a guitar and thinking of dipping your toe in with Bare Knuckles for the first time, I reckon my experience ought to encourage you to give it a go. I'm certainly looking at some of my other guitars now - ones I'm very happy with - and wondering what might come of a little tweak or two from Tim.
I might get round to posting some sound samples if anyone's interested, because I think this combination gives some very distinctive tones. Really justifies the three-pickup layout.
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Welcome to the forum.That is a great story.
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I might get round to posting some sound samples if anyone's interested, because I think this combination gives some very distinctive tones. Really justifies the three-pickup layout.
Welcome - glad you're pleased with your BKP'd SG. :)
I'm sure there would be great interest in some sound clips. I can't remember anybody else having a set of PGs installed in an SG - definitely no 3PU SG clips on here.
Some photos would be appreciated - presumably it is white/gold with the long Vibrola?
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Enjoyed very much your story. Greetings from the Birthplace of the Blues.... :)
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as for it sounding muddy and tinny.. i bet there were issues with the soldering itself, not so much with the pickups.
buuuuuuuut... welcome to the fold :D i love my BKPd geetars :)
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Welcome!!
Looking forward to pics and clips! 8)
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as for it sounding muddy and tinny.. i bet there were issues with the soldering itself, not so much with the pickups.
Really? What sort of thing do you mean? Just bad joints? (My electrical knowledge is limited). Are we talking about loss of signal?
Some photos would be appreciated - presumably it is white/gold with the long Vibrola?
No it's a...what do they call it....aged red finish...can't remember the Gibson name for it. I wanted a white one, but this looks great. (Smells good too, if you like Turkish delight). Yes, long tailpiece, acres of gold-painted metal. I'll post a picture as soon as I can find the camera lead. So good now to have a guitar that sounds even better than it looks.
Enjoyed very much your story. Greetings from the Birthplace of the Blues....
Well, thanks! New Orleans is about my favourite city in the US, and source of a lot of my favourite music (having grown up with a jazz-mad father), not to mention favourite recipes. And thanks to all for the welcome. You're all BKP'ers of long-standing though, I think, so you know much more about all this than I do.
I'll get some sounds organised to demo the tones out of this thing. I don't know if there are any other PG Blues clips on the site - I couldn't find any. Might take me a few days.
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Welcome brother :)
I too got a BKP to liven up a dull guitar and it did wonders, its great to hear a similar story.
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Welcome and thanks for sharing the transformation of your SG.
For the record I don't adhere to the theory that guitar tone comes mostly from the pickups and not the wood. I personally believe most of the tone comes from the player first and foremost, after that it's a combination of pickups,strings, timber, construction, amp and speakers. Pickups do play a pivotal role in the translation of the tone from guitar to amp but they translate the string vibration into AC signal and can't pickup anything from the wood itself.The wood and construction effect the way the string vibrates and the harmonics produced along with sustain.The flux patterns of the magnets and the coil windings then determine which frequencies are conveyed through to the amp.
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Oh dear. Humble apologies for misrepresenting you Tim. I should have known better because I'm often irritated by journalists not checking their facts or writing what they 'thought they heard' my clients say (I'm a PR guy). Now I've done it myself after half-recalling something I thought I read somewhere - but obviously I wasn't paying full attention.
Anyway, it's still a fact that these pickups have somehow managed to overcome the unpromising acoustic sound of my guitar and produce a big range of full tones that I couldn't get out of it before - to a degree that I find really surprising. For which I am very grateful.
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Pickups do have a huge influence. A cr@ppy pickup can ruin a good guitar with a good amp even when played by a good player.
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So here's a slightly shaky shot of those gorgeous PG Blues and Mississippi Queen in the middle. What a great finishing job. I wonder if I took the rest of the metalwork down to Devon if Tim could give it the same treatment?
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I obviously can't say if that SG is/was a complete dud or not, but it looks fabulous. :o
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Glad you like the new pickups. :) Now you only need to age that pickguard or put on a black one. ;)
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Now you only need to age that pickguard or put on a black one.
...and practise saying "yeah, I've had this old thing since I was eight years old" with a straight face. :wink:
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Nice looking SG :D
When you changed the pickups, you say you changed the wiring as well? Pots and caps? They can have a dramatic effect on tone too...
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Nice looking SG :D
When you changed the pickups, you say you changed the wiring as well? Pots and caps? They can have a dramatic effect on tone too...
It was rewired so I could put the MQ on a separate volume pot, and have neck, neck and bridge, and bridge on the selector, rather than the original selections. The pots I think are still the same. They had to put in another cap to balance the loads between the pickups...can't remember the details of why they said that was necessary. Not sure the wiring is right because the bridge pickup on its own doesn't put out a lot of top end. But the interesting tones all come from combining two or three pickups in varying degrees of out-of-phaseness.
Judging by your avatar picture, you've got some experience with lyre tailpieces. Do they generally sit absolutely flush with the surface of the body, or is there sometimes a gap? Mine is lopsided: the lower edge has a gap but the upper edge is closer to the body. I wondered if it needed to be flush to help sustain?
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If you mean the bent metal part, it's usually clear of the body. It's lower on my Gibson SG than it is on my Epiphone. I'm not sure if there's more clearance on the treble or bass side on either guitar though. I can check the Epi later, but the Gibson is away having a setup.
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Now you only need to age that pickguard or put on a black one.
...and practise saying "yeah, I've had this old thing since I was eight years old" with a straight face. :wink:
Er...oh dear! I have had this one since 1968 (1964 model) .. honest. Must get round to putting the original bridge and bridge pickup back. (needs a rewire from Tim). .. Yes I did fall for the 'brass bridge' fad in the 70's and it originally looked like my avatar :roll:
The red insulation tape on the top three strings is to stop string breakage at this point (had problems with this).
(http://freespace.virgin.net/terry.tildesley/pics/SG1.jpg)
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That's a damnably lickable pair of lollies you've got there. I'm getting this SG thing now!
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is the black SG's neck really that BENT!? or is that just an illusion from the camera
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is the black SG's neck really that BENT!? or is that just an illusion from the camera
No perfectly straight - unfortunately it suffered a bad break at the joint - you may be able to see the small 'plastic' plate between the end of the fretboard and the neck pickup is in fact a 'metal' one with two bolts through it plus lots of 'araldite' :roll: . Picture of the back of it here http://www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=111422#111422
The other SG is a '62 reissue but there are a few 'inaccuracies'. e.g. the 'horns' on the original were more pointed, whereas the reissue ones are 'chisel' shaped. Also the headstock on the original is smaller than on the reissue. Thankfully the neck joint seems stronger - apparently when Gibson discovered how weak the joints were on early SGs they fitted 335 necks to some as a temporary measure before they modified it. Because the 'heel' on the 335 is a couple of frets further down the fretboard than the SG it looked absolute s**te.
I find the SG necks a dream to play - complete access to all the frets, short scale - suits me because I've got small hands. (Have you ever noticed how long Paul Gilbert's fingers are ? Mine seem to end at his second joint :( but then again he could play with a set of fag-ends on his hands)
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damn i need a sg again :o
i had a epi g400 custom and a 1976 brazilian giannini sg
i was planning to buy a gibson iommi (i prefer the factory version than the custom shop model) or a supreme this month, but i couldn't find an used one in a reasonable price, so i'm buying a framus half stack, cause i'm headless at the moment
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Judging by your avatar picture, you've got some experience with lyre tailpieces. Do they generally sit absolutely flush with the surface of the body, or is there sometimes a gap? Mine is lopsided: the lower edge has a gap but the upper edge is closer to the body. I wondered if it needed to be flush to help sustain?
I checked my Epi last night. The curved part of the tailpiece (underneath the string ball ends) sits on the body of the guitar, with a felt pad protecting the finish. The bridge is balanced and one end is not higher than the other.
Hope that helps?
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I checked my Epi last night. The curved part of the tailpiece (underneath the string ball ends) sits on the body of the guitar, with a felt pad protecting the finish. The bridge is balanced and one end is not higher than the other.
This is what I mean about mine. The edge of the tailpiece is not flush with the body. Don't know if that affects sustain - possibly not.
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Just a quick question about the installation. I have a PG blues set, and have also played Tim's, and I thought that the neck pickup was designed to be reversed (like Peter Green's). That's how I did mine and that's how Tim's is. Did he wire it differently for you because of the middle pickup?
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Just a quick question about the installation. I have a PG blues set, and have also played Tim's, and I thought that the neck pickup was designed to be reversed (like Peter Green's). That's how I did mine and that's how Tim's is. Did he wire it differently for you because of the middle pickup?
Tim supplied them as usual - wound out of phase. I had to persuade the guy wiring them in not to swap the wires over so they would be IN phase ('yes I REALLY want them like that...!'). I had the selector switch rewired to standard Les Paul type selections so I could get bridge and neck in the centre position. Then I had the MQ in the middle wired to a separate pot for volume, using one of the tone pots. The other tone pot became the master tone.
The way it's been done is not right because I can't get the full amount of top end out of the bridge pickup, but even so, there are great sounds to be had by mixing the three, and now I'm a bit reluctant to have the wiring 'corrected' in case I lose these sounds. Also I think there may be a bit of perverse fun to be had out of playing a guitar that's a bit buggered about electrically...and come to think of it, that's how Peter Green's mod happened - by accident.
In fact if you have any audio clips of yours, I'd be very interested to hear them so I can compare with mine and see what's missing.
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Just a quick question about the installation. I have a PG blues set, and have also played Tim's, and I thought that the neck pickup was designed to be reversed (like Peter Green's). That's how I did mine and that's how Tim's is. Did he wire it differently for you because of the middle pickup?
Just as an afterthought to that...
Because the neck and bridge are out of phase, and I can dial in the middle p/u independently of the selector switch, this gives me:
Bridge alone
Neck alone
N & B out of phase
Bridge blended with Middle in phase
Neck blended with middle out of phase
N & B together out of phase, blended with Middle in phase with bridge, but out of phase with neck.
Or Middle alone, of course.
Lots of tones to play with, without even a push-pull. In practice because the wiring is not correct, the in-phase sounds are lacking in top, but that aside, this is MUCH more versatile than the original wiring.
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Anyone up for buying this one?
http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-1960-GIBSON-SG-LES-PAUL-STANDARD-GUITAR_W0QQitemZ110147573424QQihZ001QQcategoryZ38086QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem
It's got the dreaded side to side trem and if you look at the pic showing the 'extra glue residue' that looks more than a crack in the nitro finish - exactly where my SG broke - I suppose I could always shove in a couple of bolts and a squirt of araldite although for $35,000 I would probably get it fixed properly this time :roll:
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Jeezoo. Best part of 400 quid to get that shipped to the UK!!!! let alone the what, £17 thousand or so price tag.
I would laugh, so much, if that was fake. It would make my year