Cold Sweat review

[JimmyMoorby]

First of all please skip the first 2 paragraphs to start to get to the actual review of this pup but to me this is relevant to my journey in arriving at this pickup and being delighted with it.
The story starts with me buying and EVH 5150 iii which I absolutely love and later a Les Paul Custom which I love.  The amp has so much power and clarity on it’s own even without the BKP magic but it’s taken me a while to figure out how to get the very best out of it.  It has a blue channel which is like a hot rod jcm800 and a red channel which is just insane thick, powerful, clear, dripping with gain and also a tendency to get fizzy/harsh if you misuse it.  No bridge pickups were really doing it for me with this red channel for some reason.

My prejudices going in to using the amp made me want to use the blue channel as a rhythm sound and the red channel for a lead/solo sound.  The thing was the blue channel needed an overdrive to get the metal tone I wanted which was all good it sounded great.
I went through many different pickups just for the hell of it and I will say all of them sounded good because it’s just a great guitar and a great amp.  Started with the stock Gibson 498t and I have to say most people would be delighted with this but let’s face it we’re cork sniffers here wanting to go the extra mile.  I then went to the Duncan Distortion, then the painkiller but I was chasing a tone but I didn’t know what and I kind of felt the 498t was as good as either replacements so for some reason I stumped for an EMG 81.  I tired of that and went for an alnico black hawk and I settled on this for a while because it sounded monsterous so powerful and aggressive but tuneful I loved it.  I started playing in a band and the tone was heaven but I was having noise issues…looking back this was just down to my rig as a whole not the fault of the black hawk.  I was panicing because noise gates weren’t solving it and we had gigs coming up so I opted to some Seymour Duncan blackouts because they are the best pups for noise reduction.  In this regard the blackouts worked well big riffs and solos, no noise tone satisfactory happy days did a few good gigs with them.  We had a bit of a break as a band though and I decided I wanted to have one last crack at getting a better tone but also permanently using the red channel for a lead and rhythm sound meaning less footswitching when playing live and hopefully a better more powerful tone any way.  The red channel plus the blackouts just had no tone.

Cold Sweat

It was immediately obvious this pickup is just perfect for a Les Paul.  It could be described as a scooped pickup but I’d say in a Les Paul it knows how to compliment the complex mids of this fine instrument and get out the way.  The description of this pickup as always is spot on.

The bass/lowend feels powerful but it feels as if it’s the tightest pickup I’ve had in terms of low end picking response.  As described tight and percussive spot on.  Tighter than many modern pickups let alone vintage ones.

The hi end is there but it’s just enough to get that bite for a John Sykes/Dimebag/Nuno style tones and nothing more.  It’s not a treble spike for the sake of having one it’s more like a healthy dose of clear treble with extra presence under hi gain it just makes everything clearer.
What I like about the cold sweat most of all is the output.  If you’re really happy with your amplifer for hard rock/metal applications then this is perfect because it perfectly pushes your amp ever so slightly to a better level again as per the description.
I just feel as if the cold sweat is a very safe bet for any hard rock/metal guitarist if you know how to use it and know what you want.

All in all bloody awesome but for the sake balance I’ll make speculative criticism which may not even be right…. I do wonder if this pickup is more for a guitarist who doesn’t play with another guitarist though. How it would battle against another guitar to get heard in the mix I don't know because it's a sophisticated complex sound no nasty spikes just for instant gratification or being heard for the sake of it and as I say reminiscent of players like Sykes, Nuno, Dimebag etc but more Sykes for sure....instant Sykes!
Playing live though as a standalone guitarist playing rythm and lead I’ve had so many compliments on my sound with this several people remarking it’s the best metal guitar tone they’ve heard.

Can the cold sweat pull of any style ranging from hard rock to metal? YES if you can, your amp can and your guitar can.

I’m still waiting for my bands EP to be mixed and mastered.  We did it in 2 days but the ‘‘producer’’ was gone AWOL but if any one wants any clips let me know. 

10/10 in a Les Paul for hard rock to metal can’t see how you can improve on this trust me I know you can see how many options I've tried!
As a standalone pickup wouldn’t like to say one mans cheese is another mans meat although I would strongly suspect in an alder super strat (From the BKP range) this would be good for Nuno type tones.

[Slartibartfarst42]

Great review and the bit at the start providing context was well worth the effort of writing. Having owned a Cold Sweat set some years ago, I wouldn't really argue with anything you've said. It sits perfectly between being at home with Hard Rock and powerful modern Metal, providing the amp is up to the job. Unfortunately, while the neck CS is much loved, the bridge CS has been sadly overlooked and that's a great shame because it's remarkably versatile, drips tone and even has decent cleans, none of which I naturally expect from a ceramic pickup. More people should give this a go, they really should and I'll add something else too; while I've mixed and matched virtually every bridge and neck pickup I've owned, I can't think of anything to go with a bridge CS other than the neck CS. This isn't just an incredible bridge pickup or neck pickup, it's also the best match set that BKP do in my opinion.

[JimmyMoorby]

Horses for courses ain't it I'd consider the cold sweat in any Gibson that's for sure.

[Alfi27]

Very good review! The Cold Sweat bridge pickup is definitely one of my favourite bridge pickups, and I think it deserves much more hype than the respective neck model, which I honestly did not care too much for. Despite being ceramic it sounds surprisingly organic like you said, and it has some similarities with the Rebel Yell tonally I would say. They are both very tight and organic pickups, despite different magnets. If I was not set on the RY set for my Les Paul, I would most likely give the Cold Sweat (bridge model at least) a chance!

[JimmyMoorby]

I've read here that the cold sweat and rebel yell aren't a million miles apart to be fair

[Kiichi]

Ahhh yes. Was a bit slow on this one, but now it is up in the sticky. Thanks for writing this up and making me thirsty for a CS bridge. Gotta get me some one day. Sounds like I would really like it in a LP.