Official BKP Forum Q&A with Tim - Come in and submit your questions!

[Nolly]

Hi there lads,


Based off the success of the recent sevenstring.org interview with Tim, in which forum users got to have an input on the questions asked, Tim has agreed to go another round, this time with Bare Knuckle forumites asking the questions!


Go ahead and post any questions you'd like Tim to answer in this thread, and when there is a decent number I'll put them to him!


I should stress this is not the place for "what pickup should I choose?" questions (those should be directed through the regular BKP email channel as per normal), instead it is an opportunity to ask anything about the development of the company and the pickups, or to find out what goes on behind the scenes at BKP from the man himself, for example. See the linked ss.org interview above for examples of questions that were asked and answered.


Cheers guys, hopefully together we can make this into an informative and interesting resource for the forum!

[Afghan Dave]

Would you ever licence a "diffusion" line of mass market OEM pickups, possibly branded as "BKP designed" for use in a major manufacturers production guitars?

[FELINEGUITARS]

Which pickups in the range that are "hidden gems" - ones that are wonderful pickups but that players tend to overlook when choosing pickups and might later kick themselves for ignoring once they hear or try one out?

What are the biggest misconceptions about pickups or any one model in particular?

Are there any items of "internet folklore" about pickups that seem to get perpetuated that you would like to debunk?

[Kiichi]

Which pickup was the biggest challenge to design and why?

[hunter]

Your own preferences seem to sit with heavier styles (you even were sideman of Jon Schaffer in Iced Earth once). However your pickups, while being very popular in the metal scene, are also famous for vintage and clean tones. How do you manage to put so much passion into the development of these authentic and even improved vintage pickups?

[Poetic Justice]

When designing pickups, do you design the bridge pickup before the neck? And on the pickups in which you do design the bridge first; what is your process of making the neck pickup to calibrate it as a pair? Do you use the blueprints of the bridge pickup, or do you design it from scratch? And have you ever ran into a brick wall (not literally) when trying to calibrate 2 pickups?

[Alex]

How do you ensure consistency among pickups? It sounds like a very difficult thing to do considering that Bareknuckles are not only handwound, but also scatterwound. Is there some tolerance between individual pickups?

[FELINEGUITARS]

How do you ensure consistency among pickups? It sounds like a very difficult thing to do considering that Bareknuckles are not only handwound, but also scatterwound. Is there some tolerance between individual pickups?

Yes - i'm interested in that
how do you ensure that one Nailbomb or whatever will sound like the next one - especially considering the scatterwind
Is there a recipe for how the scatter or uneveness goes for each pickup?

[Philly Q]

What are the biggest misconceptions about pickups or any one model in particular?

That's a good question.

It's probably going into too much detail, but it would be good to hear more about individual pickup models and in particular how they compare with (and differ from) each other - over and above what the "product pages" tell us.

For example, there was a quote from Tim on a recent thread where he went into some detail about the VHII and the Riff Raff - the effect of magnets, the "offset" between coils, how much wire could be wound on each coil etc - it was nice (and unusual) to see somethng so specific.

[Philly Q]

Another question about designing calibrated sets (following on from Poetic Justice above):

Some sets seem to be designed to give a contrast between neck and bridge, whereas in others they're more like "variations on a theme", with a more subtle difference.  How do you decide which approach to take for a particular set?

[Nolly]

Great stuff chaps, keep them coming!

Don't be afraid to re-tread some of the same ground as the sevenstring.org interview - this is obviously going to be a completely separate, standalone article.

[Keven]

just how much do the non-metallic parts of a pickup (bobbins, spacers) add/change the sound of the pickup compared to the mass market?

[FELINEGUITARS]

I realise that commercial demand will drive decisions as to what products to develop first or next , and whilst I applaud the introduction of 8 and 9 string humbuckers to the range I was surprised that there would be so much demand for such , maybe compared to things like mini humbuckers, firebird pickups or maybe wide range humbuckers as you often see on thinline teles.

Have I missed a trend - is the 8 and 9 string market taking off?

Also how difficult is it developing & voicing pickups that have to deal with frequencies so low - especially when many amps will struggle to reproduce the sound particularly well?

[Philly Q]

^  Another bloody good question!   

I've accepted the "is there a demand?" argument on minibuckers, Jazzmasters etc but now that I think about it, it does seem surprising that there are so many multi-string pickups available.

[FELINEGUITARS]

^  Another bloody good question!  

I've accepted the "is there a demand?" argument on minibuckers, Jazzmasters etc but now that I think about it, it does seem surprising that there are so many multi-string pickups available.

I blame mothers making their unborn babies listen to "Whale-song" in the womb - they get a taste for those low frequencies.
Mind you - if you go far the other way in the frequency spectrum then you will make music that only bats will enjoy.....


Tim - do you ever have to take proposed scale lengths of the guitars into account when designing pickups.
Do you ever think that a 24" or 24.75" scale could do with an altered wind compared to a similar guitar that was 25.5" or more?