Going Bare Knuckle: Part 1

So in my last post I mentioned that my go-to guitar was my very much loved American Vintage '62 Reissue Telecaster which I bought back in May 2008. The things which attracted me to this guitar included the gloriously dark rosewood fingerboard, the white binding which framed the black nitrocellulose lacquered solid alder body and the dynamic, open sounding pickups that produced that satisfying Tele' twang. Essentially this was evil embodied in a guitar but as the months drew on I kept getting the feeling that it just wasn't evil enough...

I've always been a bit funny about changing the pickups in a guitar because I always felt that if it doesn't sound right when you try it out in the shop then surely it's not the guitar for you but now that I'm in the position where I have a guitar which I love dearly that isn't quite cutting the mustard I suddenly understand why pickup changes are so commonplace.

I first heard of Bare Knuckle Pickups when I was trawling the 'net for information about Matt Bellamy's custom built Manson Guitars (he's particularly fond of the Nailbomb Humbuckers or so I am led to believe.) The guys at Bare Knuckle make pickups the old fashioned way, by hand, right here in the UK and a quick google search will reveal that they are regarded very highly by many all across the Globe. It was this that drew me towards them, not that fact that many players from all over the world were choosing them but the fact that they are made in England.

The guitar market is dominated by products made in the US, Japan and more recently we are seeing a great deal of quality products coming out of Korea and China. I found the fact that I could customise my guitar with a home grown product immensely appealing and with that it was simply a case of choosing the set that was right for me. I knew that I wanted a bigger and fatter clean sound and be able to push my amp harder when I kicked in some overdrive and thanks to the great descriptions on the site I almost instantly decided that 'The Boss' set was the one that looked like it would fit the bill. My only qualm here being that I couldn't find any audio clips for their single coils on the site but there are plenty of great clips for their more popular humbuckers.

So now I have the pickups in my possesion and my friend Nick will be installing them for me tomorrow so that I'll be able to road test them at my next gig this Friday! I'll be bringing a full report on how many faces I melted with my extra melty solos this weekend.