Review: Nantucket and Sinner bridge!

[Alfi27]

After quite a long time I finally got these two bad boys! The turnaround after Christmas was a bit longer than I expected (understandable though), but they were worth the wait and more! Great pickups!

Nantucket: This one is one of Bare Knuckle's hidden diamonds! I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical, not a single review on the interwebz as I could find. It was also a bit weaker on paper (judging from DC resistance) compared to other P90s like Lollar and Wolfetone. My Gibson Les Paul Junior Billie Joe Armstrong sig desperately needed a new pickup, the H-90 was honestly a piece of shiteeee... It was marketed as hum cancelling. Well, it was not, as well as sounding nothing like a P90 should. The guitar is really great so it needs a great pickup, and I was ready to pull the trigger on a Lollar P90 several times. However, I gave the Nantucket a shot, trusting the BKP quality that haven't let me down one single time! People tend to use the phrase "that amp/guitar/pickup just blew me away!!" a bit more often than they probably should, but this thing did in fact blow me away! After the first chord I knew this was the shiteeee! I also got my Marshall SL-5 today, and that combination was just epic! With gain on about 12 o'clock I reached that tone, pretty f'in close to «the sound in my head». The LP Jr is not particularly known for its versatility, but with this pickup it can do close to everything! I should also mention that I replaced the pots and cap as well, with the Bare Knuckle CTS 550k as volum pot and 280k as tone, as well as the 0.022 Jensen BKP cap. The volume pot has a lot smoother torque than the stock volume pot, and of course improving tone! Especially dynamics and the ability to clean up are improved. I love the simplicity of the LP Jr, it is just so freakin' awesome! And now it is probably the best sounding guitar I own too!

Sinner: I have experience with this one from before, actually the entire Sinner set that I stupidly sold... There is nothing like a good strat, and I personally think a «real» strat has to be SSS, but regular single coil bridge pickups sounds so shrill and just, well.. Bad. The pickup went into a Fender Classic Player 50's Strat, a great guitar with nice pickups (except for the bridge). Fender 57/62 I believe. I ordered the Sinner with stagger and cream cover, so if you do not study the pole pieces it looks dead stock, but it does indeed not sound stock... I have to admit that I have been a humbucker man ever since I got my first Les Paul, maybe because I felt so relieved. I played a shiteeeety strat the first year of my time as guitarist when my biggest inspiration was Slash... Haha. However, I have always prefered the playability and nice feel of a good strat, and I was on the chase for a strat that sounded like a Les Paul for years, until I realized that there is no such thing... Well, I did come painstakingly close with my Mayones Setius, as well as the Suhr Modern with the Diver, but now I am getting off topic. My point being, the Sinner sounds, in my head, closer to what I want than an actual humbucker. The reason for that, I really do not know, maybe because my head expects the Les Paul sound when it sees a humbucker, haha! The Sinner has a baseplate as well, so it does not lack bass. When I play it through the SL-5 on lower gain levels it actually sounds more humbucker-ish than the Nantucket (playing chords). Playing single note riffs on the lower strings with lower levels of gain you can hear that it is in fact a single coil.

Well, no review is complete without a sound clip! Here it is, through the Kemper with a profile of the great Suhr/CAA PT-100! And to make this even more fun, I won't tell you which one is which! I want you to guess, don't be shy! 
https://soundcloud.com/alfi27/nantucketsinner-demo/s-6VBNP
PS: It was not very visible on the graph on Soundcloud, but I change guitar at about 1:06-07!
PS2: nevermind, It is visible now 

[Kiichi]

Thanks for writing it up mate. Added it to the big sticky!

People often tend to overlook P90s in general, but especially the classics. I love how freaking versatile they are when you use the guitar´s controlls. From scream to sing, it´s all there. Plus, especially the BKPs tend to really be a best of both worlds between SC and HB, having the power and bottom end fullness of a HB, but having a more naturally defined bottom end, more open, roarier mids, and an open, detailed topend that SCs are so famous for.

Any further detailed thoughts would be much oblidged after you have had a bit more time with them, but especially the Nantucket. More info and experience helps spread the P90 love.

[Alfi27]

I have played the Junior almost exclusively these days, it sounds so great! Powerful sound with plenty of bite, without ever sounding thin. The mid range is raw and throaty, and the bass is very balanced and tight. Not overpowering bass, but certainly not lacking either. Depends on the amp really. It sounds much rawer and wild than a humbucker, it simply «can't be tamed»! Although with the right amp and settings, and higher levels of gain it can sound more refined and smoother like a humbucker (best displayed in the first clip). I do however have another clip, that maybe shows a more classic approach of the P90 sound through a few profiles I made of my SL-5! Take a look at it, I think it sounds great!
https://soundcloud.com/alfi27/sl-5-kemper-profiles

[Andrew W]

The Nantucket is one of my favourite Bareknuckle pickups. Jonathan from Feline recommended it to me in combination with a BlueNote for the neck position of a 90s Hamer Special I acquired and it's a fabulous combination. There's a thread about it from the way back when here:

https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=31038.msg400041#msg400041

[Alfi27]

Alright, so I got a set of Nantuckets for my Les Paul Special as well! Normally I am always looking for different pickups for different guitars, trying to cover the largest tonal spectrum possible with my six-strings. But I figured that there is only one P90 sound for me, and that is the Nantucket! With humbuckers I like both low and high output pickups. The Riff Raff is very open sounding and has a lot of bite, while the Holydiver is more compressed and have more muscular, powerful mids with a smooth top end. I considered going hotter, but I just could not do it. The two guitars will have very similar tones from the bridge pickup, but the Special will have some added versatility with the additional neck pickup. Unfortunately I cannot comment to much on the neck pickup at this time, because the switch cr@pped out and the guitar is now a Junior with a killswitch until I get the new switch in the mail... But the bridge pickup sounds almost exactly the same as the Junior, in other words $%&#in awesome
Like I wrote to my mate earlier this evening, it sounds like a Les Paul furiously raping a Telecaster... I apologize in advance if someone feel offended by that description

[Telerocker]

Good review Alfi. We didn't see much shared experiences of those two pickups yet. Very helpful. Thanks!

[Alfi27]

Thanks man! Had a friend over today, who is an electrician, and it turned out that my soldering was not flawless... I have very limited experience soldering pickups with braided wire, and he saw that there was a few places where the braided wire touched things that it should not touch. Long story short, the switch is fortunately not broken! I would like to extend the review quite a bit, including some of my new experience and also a comparison between the two guitars:
The Nantucket and especially the bridge pickup is,  I would dare to say the most underrated pickup in the BKP line! In my head the definition of a versatile pickup is a pickup that sounds great for one thing but can do other stuff as well (often not quite as well). This pickup takes versatility to the next level, I have a really hard time deciding what it does best because it does everything I throw at it equally great! When I ordered the Nantucket set for my LP Special I decided to upgrade the pots and caps as well, and I wanted to copy the LP Jr on the bridge pickup. I ordered three 550k pots and one 280k, but I got four 550k pots instead. At first I was worried that it might be too bright, due to the bright nature of the pickup and P90s in general, but it turned out to be no problem. The Special sounds darker naturally, so that proves that the BKP guys' expertise never should be questioned, haha! The Special has a bit less of that tele spank playing lower single notes, and the Junior sounds more snarly and rawer. I am tempted to say "even more P90" while the Special kind of moves a bit more toward humbucker territory. When it comes to the Nantucket neck, it sounds beautiful! That one really make me scratch my head and wonder if this really (technically) is a single coil! However, the in-between position sounds like a fatter Telecaster and almost has a little bit quack too! I would seriously recommend everyone who play anything between blues and heavy metal to try a guitar loaded with these bad boys, you won't be sorry!

[Alfi27]

Time to update the Sinner-part of the review as well! The first time I plugged it in I really liked it, but it started to sound thin for some reason. I tried putting a humbucker in the bridge (Suhr DSH+) and it helped a bit, but one night I noticed the sustain was really bad as well.. Guess what? The action was waay too low, stealing all the tone. After I raised it the humbucker suddenly started to sound a bit muddy and too round (250k pots), so I tried again with the Sinner. Well, it sounded a hell of a lot better! One year ago I would probably get depressed switching from a fat and heavy Les Paul to an SSS strat, but now I think I actually prefer the strat even for heavier stuff! A really good option for anyone out there looking for an HSS sound with SSS looks.

[Telerocker]

Scatterwound pickups are enormously height-sensitive. Every mm makes a difference.

[Alfi27]

Yeah, that is also true! Because of the G and D-poles being so much taller than the rest I made sure to mount it as low as possible without the screw slipping inside the mounting holes, and that was a really great sound «right out of the box»