Going Bare Knuckle: Part 2

On Friday night my bandmates in Brontosaurus Chorus and I jumped into our trusty driver come sound engineers brand-new second-hand tour bus/van and headed to a pub called The Hobbit in Southampton to peddle our Indie Pop wares. The gig went as well as could be expected my only complaint being the lack of an audience but when you play in a band doing original material in a town that hasn't really heard of you this is considered the Norm.

What excited me most was that two days previously my friend Nick replaced the stock pickups in my '62 Reissue Telecaster with a set of Bare Knuckle 'The Boss' pickups. The blurb on the box promised 'Classic Tele sound with extra weight in the mid range for driving rhythm and cutting lead' and it wasn't wrong. Earlier in the day I set up all my pedals and amp the same as how I usually have them at a gig so that I could get used to the new sound and dynamic response of my guitar. I feared that I may have chosen a set of pickups with too high an output for my tastes despite the fact that it was a higher output that I so desired but I was frightened that I would loose the vintage characteristics that made my Tele a Tele.

In the end it turns out there was no need for it, when clean the dynamics and response had improved no end although to my ears the overall sound of the instrument seemed darker, which was probably to do with the more distinguished mids and fatter low end. The real icing on the cake came when I kicked on my overdrive (for the record I'm currently using a Boss SD-1 and a Pro-Co Rat II but I'm currently in the market for both a new overdrive and a distortion unit so all suggestions are welcome!) and found that the lacklustre sound that once plagued me was no more and instead the overdrive was not only thicker and richer but the tonal characteristics of my pickups shone through much more than before. Satisfied I packed up my gear and headed off to the gig.

After the gig I chatted with our sound engineer Joe about whether or not he noticed any difference and he said that the sound seemed instantly more open and full but he also noticed a lot more top end cut that lent itself to the mix. In my band I have a string section a keyboard and a trumpet to compete with so I can never be quite as loud as I would like but now with my new pickups I can be a little bit more confident that I'll be heard playing at a slightly lower volume than usual.

So, am I one step closer in my never ending quest for the ultimate guitar tone? Probably, but the search for that perfect guitar sound is an eternal one and the next step for me is to replace my overdrive pedal and I'm currently thinking that a Fulltone Full Drive II MOSFET is the way to go.

The photo in this post was taken by my friend Di and used with her permission, you can see more of her photos at her Flickr.

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.