hey guys! (if this is the wrong forum, feel free to move it, Ol, I wasn't sure which to put it in, since there's bits about pickups and bits about fx!)
Anyway, as some of you may know, I was in London recently. So of course, I went on a marathon testing out session (over about 5 days)! EDIT: see my post below for the list of all I tried! If you want any info on anything I tried, my personal feelings about them, then post in here!
I'm not going to list even a fraction of what I tried, as it'd fill about 15 pages, but I will tell about the two things that people in this forum talk about a lot- BKP's and HBE (for Ben/TO!).
Anyway, the BKP. Andy's music shop in Denmark street had a Charlie Chandler strat with a single pickup strat, marked as having a
"bareknuckle pickup!"
I have to try that, I think. Anyway, I ask to try it. Needless to say, when I ask, the sales guy doesn't know what pickup it is. Grrr, foiled!
Anyway, he plugs me into a fender bassman amp. I haven't tried this amp before. Foiled again (I didn't see anything I was familiar with, amp-wise)!
As you can tell, this isn't going too well...
So I start to play. Cleans are a little dark, I think it's alnico V (seems a bit too modern sounding for alnico II, too warm for ceramic- of course, this could be cr@p, lol), so I'm guessing it's one of the higher gain pickups. Definitely very good cleans if it is one of the higher gain pickups. Very responsive to touch too.
Then he plugs me into an older line 6 amp, to try the distortion. To be honest, I couldn't tell very much, because I'm not used to the amp, and I was plugged into a very bass-heavy, modern sounding model (recto?). It did sound a lot better than a Duncan I tried to compare it too, but then I expected that. I wasn't impressed with Duncans even before I'd tried BK's.
So I'm thinking it was a nailbomb, or holy diver, something like that. If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate it. So yeah, I was pretty impressed, just it was unfortunate that I didn't get to try it in the best of circumstances. (according to charlie chandler's website, their guitars have fralin pickups, maybe someone got a BKP specially put in it? Oh, and I just realised I was looking at the CC guitar experience website, not the one at kew, before I went to London. And I decided not to go. The one in Kew has Mojave etc. cr@p. :( Ah well, I just have to go back some other time...)
On to the pedals. I tried the HBE big D, the power screamer (with fat boost mod) and the uno mos. I tried them head to head with some other od's.
The big D is awesome. So many options, etc. And sounded really good too- you could almost get an overdrive out of it, though it didn't quite match up to the standalone OD's I was trying it against. Now, to be fair I haven't really tried very many distortion pedals, but I thought this one ruled. Thumbs up.
Power screamer: really very good, but not just as jaw-droppingly so, in my opinion. It ruled because of the options, but there were other pedals that sounded as good for cheaper (blackbox x-ray, though it has nowhere near the options) or a bit better for a lot more cash (klon centaur).
So yeah, really very very good, but not amazing, perhaps. It's the one to buy if you want loads of options. I also thought the fat boost mod was worth the extra cash, if that's of use to anyone.
Uno mos: excellent. Does what it says on the tin- a transparent clean boost, which sounds awesome.
There you go, just thought I'd share...
:drink:
