Over the years I’ve read a number of comments on this forum from people looking for single coil sized pickups that sound like humbuckers. I’m one of them as, truth be told, over the years I’ve discovered I’m not really a huge fan of single coils. That turns out to be a pain when you have an HSS guitar! Although this is a review of Sinners for the neck and middle positions of a guitar, I feel I should point out from the outset that this review may be of limited use to a lot of people because I haven’t used the correct neck and middle position Sinners. Instead, I’ve fitted bridge versions of the pickups and what’s more, I’ve had the baseplates fitted on both of them too. Daft? Perhaps, but as always it followed a consultation with Tim and even though his suggestions haven’t always worked out perfectly for me, I still feel that only a fool would ignore his advice as he’s right more often than not. He suggested using a bridge version of the Sinner with a baseplate and fitting it to the neck as that would give a tone that was ‘extremely fat, fluid and precise’ as well as easily having enough power to keep up with the Miracle Man. This sounded very encouraging in my search for humbucker tone. It certainly sounded like a description of a humbucker and while it could obviously never sound like a real humbucker, it sounded like a very promising idea. I was so excited about this that I then decided to change the middle pickup at the same time and do exactly the same thing with reversed polarity. The order was placed and a week later, my new beauties arrived to be swiftly installed. This was the longest I’d had to wait for Bare Knuckles to arrive but I get the impression these had to be made specially as Ben told me that if I ever wanted a bridge Sinner to go with them, I had to remind them what I’d done with the neck and middle so that they could allow for that in the construction of a bridge Sinner.
So, what are they like? Well, the first thing to say is that they are naturally hot being bridge versions of the hottest single coils BKP make. In terms of DC resistance the numbers come in at 21.5 for the middle pickup and 21 for the neck but their output is enhanced by the baseplates that have been added. I’ve never tried Sinners without baseplates so I have no way of making a direct comparison but checking out the BKP instructional video on the use of baseplates makes it quite clear that they do make a pickup that bit hotter than it would be normally.
All well and good but do they work as I wanted them to? Not really. No. That’s probably a bit unfair as a more accurate answer might be yes and no. Let’s explore why they don’t work first of all. Listening to them in the neck and middle, they’re still quite obviously single coils and there’s no getting away from that, especially as I was after a humbucker sound. If you want a humbucker, you simply have to get a humbucker but in fairness, I could probably make the same comment about single coil sized humbuckers. This guitar originally came with Hotrails in the neck and middle and while they were less like single coils than the Sinners, I can’t honestly say they sounded like humbuckers either. Tim also described a bridge Sinner fitted to the neck as an ‘absolutely bonkers’ pickup with endless sustain and frankly, I don’t find them ‘bonkers’ and I don’t think they give masses more sustain than any other pickup I’ve ever tried. To be honest, they’re nothing like as hot as I was expecting, although they are hotter than the Trilogy Suites that used to be in there. As a result, there is still a perceptible drop in volume when switching from the bridge Miracle Man to the neck Sinner and that was something I really wasn’t expecting. The pickups are actually quite open sounding, being nothing like as compressed as you might expect from such a ‘hot’ pickup and although they’ve moved me a step in the right direction, I find I still want them to be hotter, fatter and more fluid as well as more compressed.
Doesn’t sound good does it, so what’s good about them? Well, they do have that trademark BKP articulation so note separation is superb even with loads of gain and I do mean LOTS of gain as I kept pushing the gain up to see when they’d give up but they never did. While they will certainly do the Metal music they’re associated with, they’re actually remarkably versatile. They clean up beautifully and will cover a range of styles quite easily. Because they’re a thicker sound than the Trilogy Suites, I much prefer the clean tone on these sinners. The luthier who was doing a set up on my guitar and installing the pickups was playing some Dire Straits on them when I arrived and they were far more convincing in that style than I would have expected. I swear I could happily play Blues on these things all day long. While still clearly being single coils, the sound is quite a bit fatter and darker than I normally associate with single coils and in that respect it is certainly a lot closer to the sound in my head. Like all Bare Knuckle pickups, they’re also very sensitive to height adjustment and moving them closer to the strings does bring out more power and create a bit more compression so at the moment I have the neck pickup as close to the strings as it can get before I run out of spring. I’m going to put a bigger spring in there to get them even closer but I’ll need to be careful in case the magnet starts pulling at the string too much. The middle pickup is still a bit further away but that’s fine as it then doesn’t interfere with my pick and it means the middle pup is that bit more open sounding and gives me a slightly different flavour.
So what can I say in conclusion? Well, it’s a mixed bag really. For those of you out there who, like me, are looking for a single coil sized pickup that sounds like a humbucker from BKP and have heard that the Sinner fits the bill – don’t raise your hopes too high. It’s not a humbucker and never will be, even using bridge models with baseplates. However, once I got past the fact that they weren’t as ‘bonkers’ as Tim suggested, I was left with a really nice pair of pickups. True, they’re still obviously single coils but not like you’d imagine single coils to be. The tone is thick, fluid and highly articulate and when you’re really giving it the beans, it can be very convincing as a screaming lead pickup in a way that normal single coils never are in my experience. The description of the Sinner on the website makes it sound like a brutal monster and it isn’t, or at least it doesn’t have to be. It retains its single coil roots while offering something a bit different. Back down the gain a little or roll off a bit of volume on your guitar and you’ll have a great clean tone and a highly versatile pickup that is capable of a very wide range of styles. There is certainly no need to be worried about the power of these beasts. These are a lot hotter than normal neck and middle Sinners but they don’t over-power the bridge at all. Against a Miracle Man they just about keep up and I’d have no qualms about using these with either a Cold Sweat or Emerald in the bridge. I’ve used both of those before and neither would be swamped by Sinners even this powerful. If you want great single coil tone that’s a bit different to the conventional single coil sound and you like your tone to be fat, fluid and articulate while offering great versatility then this could well be an option for you, especially if you’re using quite a hot bridge humbucker. If you prefer a humbucker sound – buy a guitar with an H-H configuration.
These haven’t turned out to be exactly what I was looking for so I could just send them back but I won’t. While I’m still a humbucker fan, I’m not totally against the idea of single coils when they sound like this. Tim once told me that he didn’t do single coil sized humbuckers because he felt they weren’t convincing as either single coils or humbuckers and my experience with Hotrails suggests he’s possibly right. This doesn’t attempt to be a humbucker but you do end up with a single coil tone that gives quite a significant nod in the direction of humbuckers and perhaps that’s good enough. I’ve also found that the power of these pups opens up new possibilities with the middle pickup. I’ve rarely used the middle pickup before but there’s enough power in these to make it a very usable option and playing the neck and middle together creates a lovely thick and powerful tone that other single coils I’ve used don’t. I’ve been using position 4 quite a bit as a result of this and I never bothered with it before. I feel I now have single coils in my Jackson that are about as close as I can realistically get to the tone I’m after so they’ll stay there until Tim decides to make a single coil sized humbucker, which I wish he’d do as I’m sure he’d do it better than any other manufacturer.
