Bare Knuckle Pickups PG Blues Humbuckers

Features: Humbuckers, passive

Impedance: Not sure of the impedance

Model: Installed on a Gary Moore signature Les Paul

Position: Installed in Bridge & Neck positions

Replacing: Burstbuckers

Reason for change: The Burstbuckers are good pickups, but a bit thin sounding

The output level would appear to be slightly lower than most humbuckers I've tried.

I'm using a re-issue Marshall JTM45, but these pickups work great through a Line6 PodXT too. The Neck pickup sounds excellent through a Vox wah pedal.

I think the tone is really well balanced. The bass on the neck pickup is a little bit high at the moment, but I'm sure it will fall in line when I adjust the pickup height.

I play Blues Rock & hard rock, and I find these to be among the best pickups I've ever come across for this type of music. The bridge cuts through really well & the neck is fatter than a standard Les Paul neck humbucker. The in between setting gives the closest Peter Green tone that I've heard anywhere, due to the reverse wound neck pickup that sounds 'out of phase' when the two pickups are selected. I've tried the reverse magnet mod that everyone talks about, and while it was mildly enjoyable, the mod doesn't compare to what Bare Knuckle have come up with in the design of these pickups. Another thing that I really like about these 'buckers is that when you roll the volume slightly off (on either PU), the sound clears really well. I don't know a lot about pickups, but I find this to be a necessary requirement for ANY pickup. When using the tone controls, there are a lot more variations in sound, From Bluesbreakers era Clapton to Boogie style ZZ Top!. If you want to play all-out death metal, these are probably not for you, but I think the 'blues' in the title is underselling these pickups. They sound great playing hard/classic rock, definitely with a vintage touch!

If these PU's were stolen, I'd hunt the perpetrator down and beat him to death with the guitar he was going to put them in! Seriously, I'd be straight onto Bare knuckle to order another set.

I've been playing 25 years, and my other guitars are a standard strat & an Aria ProII les paul from the Matsumoku factory era. I might even put a set in the Aria!

There's nothing I 'hate' about these PU's - they do exactly what they claim to do!

I really like the 'woody' tone of my GMLP, but these pickups have literally brought it to life. They take a bit of getting used to, but the more you play them the more sounds you can coax out of them.

Pickup features: Humbucker, passive
Impedance or other specs: Neck impedance around 7.0, bridge around 7.5. Alnico II magnet, electrically out of phase.

Model of guitar or bass: Installed on a 2003 Gibson LPPP
Position: Calibrated Neck and Bridge set
Pickup being replaced: Originals Burstbuckers PRO
Reason for pickup change: I want to ear the true voice of my guitar

The output is vintage

I use Orange Amps. My overdrive/distortion are Fulltone, MI Audio, Barber. FX effect are Dunlop Crybaby, MXR Phase 90 and T-REX Replica.

I play in a italian rock band, Pearl Jam style. I have also played for years classic blues like P. Green, J.L. Hooker and B. Guy, and rock and roll like Led Zep and AC-DC.
This pickups is a good match for all music played with feeling.

Comments: At home I play my Les Paul unplugged. I write my songs and play my riffs without amps. My guitar have a balanced and resonant woods, and I love it's sound.
I changed a lot of pickups: Gibson, Duncan and others, and no one of this pickups have taken the true voice of my guitar.
The PG Blues have nothing of special. It don't pumps mids, bass or hight and don't have lot of output. If I put my LP in a good clean tube amp, the sound is clear and clean.
This pickups simply keep the sound of your guitar and send it to the amp.
I also own a Rory Gallagher Stratocaster, that are made of excellent woods. This guitar is lucky to have a set of Fender pickups that really translate his good voice.
If you don't like the sound of your guitar unplugged, you can try to set the EQ with the right pickup. But, for me, if you buy a good guitar and not a piece of shit, it's hard to find a totally umbalanced instrument. You will find in a good guitar a little emphasis of bass, hights or mids.
Many pickups dramatically changes the original voice of a instrument.
For example, the Burstbucker PRO have lots of bass and hights. It sounds good with a guitar that have only mids, but do you know a good guitar with only mids?
In my LP the neck Burstbucker PRO sounds very muddy on the bass strings and the bridge too sharp on the high strings. It's not the real sound.
I have finally found the right pickups. With the PG Blues you can play clean, dirty or all you want. Do you want to play blues? Plug in a Barber Direct Drive and then in a Plexi or a Twin Reverb. Do you want to play rock? Switch on a MI Audio Crunch Box in face to a Orange Rockerverb.
You can play all style of music and find your own sound with a lots of amps and effects, with a good guitar and this pickups.
Before order this beauty, I asked some question to Tim Mills of Bare Knuckle. He help me to find the right pickup.
Thank you, Tim

Humbucker

Intalled on 1990 Gibson Les Paul Standard
Bridge and Neck
Replacing a Les Paul Studio neck and Seymoor Duncan 59 bridge.

Reason: Didn't like the bridge pickup and wanted to try the out of phase sound.

Amp: Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue
Style: Blues, Blues-Rock

Totally delighted with the sound :-) To be honest I wasn't expecting such a dramatic inprovment. Treble pickups is finally usable with plenty of character. Rhythm pickup(usually my favourite) sounds amazing especially for clean sounds.
I also really like the out of phase middle setting.
Best of the lot, the notes on the low strings now sound incredibly defined and clear.

Would definitely replace with the same if damaged or stolen
Playing for 30 years. Also own Strat with Rio-Grande(OK) pickups.

These pickups are all I need, tone is very important to me as I don't play fast.

ALnico II magnet.
Neck pickup wound permenantly out of pahse with bridge so out of phase peter green sound when in middle position.

7.2 neck impedance
7.7 bridge impedance

unpotted

Installed a calibrated aged nickel cover set in 2oo3 les paul classic.

The sound is phenomanal for all rock and blues. amazing clarity and warmth. great clean and overdriven. exact 50's paf sound and in a league of there own. I try to be critical when writing reviews but these rly are VERY good

brilliant and great customer service

Set of two humbucking pickups wound permanently out of phase with each other. Bridge 7.8, neck 7.3. Fitted to a Gibson SG Custom with a BKP Mississippi Queen in the middle position (I reviewed that separately, although my comments are really about all three together). Wired with four conductors (not standard) in case I wanted to tap coils, switch phase back in etc. Also finished to match Gibson VOS aged appearance, although the BKP version is much better!

Fitted as part of a heart transplant to a 61 Re-issue Custom Shop SG Custom which I found very disappointing. I was thinking of giving it the boot but decided to try a BKP makeover and that was a good decision. I've now got a guitar that gives me a real thrill and distorts the space-time continuum (ie. I play it for ten minutes and four hours disappear). The original Burstbuckers which Gibson makes a great play of sounded feeble and flabby, and I sort of decided I must just not be an SG kind of a guy. I thought it was the guitar's body that really made the tone, so I didn't really expect new pickups to salvage this one, but I was completely wrong. Obviously it's not going to sound like a guitar with different body woods and construction, but it sounds bloody brilliant and completely distinctive now.

Output is what you'd expect for vintage-style pickups. You wouldn't choose these for saturated shredding anyway. Tim at BKP steered me expertly towards pickups that would sound good with this guitar, and something hotter would have sounded too dark with an all-mahogany body. The tone from the PG Blues set is exactly what I wanted - yes I can get into that Peter Green zone, I can play James Brown type riffs with that quacky kind of sound, I love it!!! There's lots of air and space in the tone (something sadly lacking in the Gibbos which were somehow muddy and thin-sounding at the same time), and now the guitar can do smooth, full-cream richness that encourages playing with a big dynamic range. Before, it just seemed to want to shout all the time. I'm pleased, in case it's not obvious!

The really interesting thing is how the PG Blues set works together with the P90-style Mississippi Queen on the neck and bridge. I pondered long and hard how to work enough switchery-pokery into the SG's tiny cavity and four-knob layout to give me the kind of combination options I wanted, and eventually resigned myself to just having three volume controls and one master tone. It may not be the ultimate wiring for me, but that can wait. Meanwhile what I have is a selector that gives Neck, Neck and Bridge (out of phase - that's how PG Blues are supplied), and Bridge - like a Les Paul, not like the original wiring, which just gave Neck, Bridge and Middle, and Bridge. BUT here's the good bit: with the middle P90 on a separate volume (not linked to the tone control) I can dial that one in to blend with the others on any selector position. This gets interesting: because the bridge and neck are out of phase, the middle pickup is also out of phase with the neck, and in practice the way it's currently wired, the interaction between the three pickups means that I have to have the P90 on all the time, even if it's only on about 2, and mostly overpowered by the other pickup(s). Otherwise it cuts the top end of the other pickups. So there is a continuously variable range of tones to be had by blending all three together in different degrees, and because for all but the neck selector position, there is an element of out-of-phase cancellation of frequencies, it's an incredible palette of sounds, going from the straight sound of the pickup, through all the subtle vowel-like inflections that come in as you balance the levels between pickups, right up to full-on out of phase quack. With the P90 and neck being so close, there's a kind of crystalline mid-scooped sound with those two on full together. If you've ever played a Jimmy Page signature Les Paul with all his custom-switching options, that would give you an idea of some of the sounds you can get with this setup, although because this is a 3-way *blend* rather than a set of push-pull switches, it's probably more versatile. It might not suit everyone because it's not a straight switch between one pickup and another, but I've never really been crazy about the tones I get with two humbuckers combined in phase anyway. In practice, I find I can balance the levels between the pickups so that I can use the switch to flip instantly between three very tasty tones, and there are always endless variations by tweaking the knobs when I've got time (great to change the 'vowels' between phrases on a slow blues for example). It's a really exciting blues and rock guitar now. You could do jazzy stuff with it too, although there's no substitute for an archtop there.

I don't use any effects with it unless I'm playing on someone else's amp, when I'd use a bit of overdrive. A bit of delay and reverb when I'm feeling like it. My own setup is a Fuchs ODS head and 2x12 cab, and that provides great overdrive boost to kick in with the more extreme out of phase sounds, which need a bit of a volume lift if you want to match levels with in-phase sounds.

I am completely thrilled with them. Just brilliant, especially since they've made the difference between wanting to sell a guitar and not being able to tear myself away from it. The BKP pickups have totally transformed a very disappointing instrument into something really exciting. There's nothing to dislike, other than having to re-consider my position on pickups v. body as the major factor in tone! I didn't compare these to anything other than the original Gibson pickups and there's no comparison. This is my first experience of BKPs but suffice it to say that I'm looking at a few of my other guitars that have been behaving themselves very well until now, and wondering what a bit of Mills magic might to do them.
I've been playing for decades and I've got some pretty special guitars, and this SG Custom was just not in the same league, but now it's a cracker. In my collection I've got guitars that cover a lot of ground tonally, but this is doing things none of the others can. I've found my grail!
Tim Mills advised me on the pickups to go for, wound them with four conductors in case I wanted more switching options (although I didn't go for the optional 'coil-tap' on the P90) and produced a superb aged gold finish which looks drop-dead gorgeous on the guitar. Very nice to deal with and really knows his stuff. I'd trust him to revive any guitar I felt needed it after this experience.

Humbuckers, haven't measured the exact impedence, standard fit, hand wound to Greeny's original specs - however accidental they were. Alnico III magnets.

Pickups went into a Honeyburst Gibson Les Paul Classic 1960 made in 2000, replacing the Alnico 490T's that were in there as standard. The sound of the 490T's might suit some guys but I wanted more character and warmth. I'd bought pickups from Tim before - even had them up against Burstbuckers and found them to be much more "real", very 3 dimensional, so we discussed the tone I was after as being authentic vintage Peter Green sound having listened to countless Live recordings of Greeny(I recommend the Boston Live and Otis Spann sessions as his best tone and playing ever)

They are reasonably low output but they scream tone - especially in the middle toggle position in the out of phase position. All notes are clear and distinct and have that 3D presence. I'm using the Les Paul with a Marshall JTM45 head that's been restored to original specs and a 4 x 12 cabinet loaded with Greenbacks so I sound now very much like the real thing.

I would replace immediately if lost, been playing for 35 years, I own a genuine 1960 Strat,Gibson Les Paul Classic 1960 reissue, Marshall JTM45 fully restored to 1965 Specs, Cornford MK50H head, four 1x12 Marshall cabs all loaded with Celestion Blues, one 4x12 cabinet loaded with 25W Greenbacks, Groovetube D75, Groovetube Trio, RMC Wah, Korg G4, DD20,Roger Mayer fuzz Octavia, Sweetsound Univibe.The beauty about these pickups is that they allow you to be yourself within the specs in other words don't expect to sound like PG(unless you really want to)my tone improved to the point of not having to change guitars all night, the pickups are a perfect match for this particular guitar, and I'm working my sound from the guitar instead of pedals. So far I'm satisfied with this pickup.