I received it on Monday 10 days after I ordered it direct from BK. The packaging was nice and the free set of strings is a nice touch. The pickup I ordered was to go into the bridge position of a 06 R8 VOS LP. I ordered the Black Dog model with the aged nickel cover with classic 2 strand wiring. The aging is really nice and looks better than the Gibson Covers that came with the VOS.
I put it in yesterday. I played the guitar last night and then really put it through the paces this morning. I have been a hard core Duncan user for the last 25 years and all of my guitars have a Duncan (Super D or Custom 5) in the bridge position. The reason I began looking into Bare Knuckles was because I have noticed that with all of the Duncan’s I have purchased in the last couple of years there is this weird overtone thing happening with them in the high end side of my tone when they are really pushed. It doesn’t matter which of my amps I use it is there. So after some troubleshooting I came to realize something is different in the pups. My older Duncan’s do not have this overtone thing happening, it is only the newer ones. So I figured I’d try BK after some recommendations from a friend of mine.
The other thing I was interested in was using a lower gain PUP as my amps have plenty of gain if I need it. I have tried this route in the past but the lower gain models seem to cr@p out completely when really pushed hard. But I still think in theory that using a lower output pup is a good tone idea, it’s just whenever I tried it myself I ran into “issues” which forced me back into the higher gain pup.
So after researching all of the models that BK offers I was totally confused and emailed Tim . He responded quickly with a lot of details in helping me make a decision. The customer service was first rate. Then I heard those mules and they are really impressive. Killer tone and cover many styles.
http://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/foru...opic.php?t=143 I love this clip. It also gave me the confidence that one of Tim’s lower gain pups could handled being pushed into high gain territory….
Anyways I played the guitar into 3 different amps:
1) 2061 Marshall
2) Straub Cantus
3) 73 Marshall 100 watt Superlead
The pup sounds really great, it is hard to put it into words but it just sounds really musical. It easily handles being pushed hard and responds without any flubbiness or muddiness. Really nice tone and really thick sounding.
Now I am not a Jimmy Page tone guy and I didn’t buy this pup because of LZ. I bought it because I liked the Mules a lot but this Black Dog pup has more mids (which I like a lot) and a tad more gain. So I figured it would be a good match. When I first was playing the guitar with the Black Dog, it never once dawned on me that the pup sounded like JP, that is until I plugged it into the Super Lead without any effects. It really does have a nice Page like tone to it, especially in that amp. I didn’t notice it at all with the other 2 but the Black Dog with the Superlead does give you a very similar sound. I would bet that if you had the calibrated set of the Black Dogs you could get many of the tones that are associated to the sounds of Jimmy Page especially if you are using a SL.
Overall the pup sounds way better than I expected it too and it can be described as open and musical sounding. It is definitely “biting”.
My only problem is now I have a feeling I will be wanting some other BK’s for my other LPS…….
SBS
