Product: Bare Knuckle Pickups Sultans Set
Price Paid: UNKNOWN
Submitted
04/21/2008
at
12:09pm
by
Dee Emm
Features
:
These are handmade, low output, passive, single coil pickups with Alnico II magnets. The emphasis is on vintage with these and they are hand-wound and the cabling is cloth-covered for a very retrovibe.
I purchased a set of 3 pre-installed into a pickguard & wired up to tone and volume controls. The only soldering I had to do was to connect to the jack socket and ground. Note the price for the pickups only without any upgrades is ??165.
I selected the magnet stagger option with the reverse wound reverse wound middle pickup, which allows humbucking in positions 2 and 4 on a 5 way selector. I also upgraded to the zinc plate steel baseplates.
Instrument
:
I installed the set as a complete pickup replacement in an American Series Fender Strat, circa 2004. Previously I'd been trying some Kinman Blues pickups. I found the sound of the Kinsmans quite muddy sounding and not particularly Strat-like. I was looking for something with more clarity.
Sound
:
10
The output is low and gives a very well balanced lively sound. I play predominantly blues and I prefer lower output pickups as they seem to allow me more tonal variation. I'm using a Fender hot rod..usually on clean channel with an Ibanez Tubescreamer (TS9).
The pickup is designed to keep the sound clean, but with some overdrive it does break up beautifully when you dig in.
The highs are sweet and clear, and the pickups give exactly the kind of glassy strat sound I was after.
Overall Rating
:
10
If these were destroyed or stolen I would absolutely definitely buy them again...it's hard to praise them highly enough actually.
As someone who is also not thrilled about the idea of soldering (and usually palms it off on someone else!) the ability to buy a pre-soldered and installed set is superb and even I was able to manage the minimal amount of soldering to the jack and ground!
Something else worthy of mention is how approachable Tim Mills (the owner of Bare Knuckle) is. He replies promptly and knowledgeably to any query and I really felt confident buying from him. I bought direct from him and the pickups were delivered 4 days later....so can only highly commend the service.
Price wise it compares well with Seymour Duncan pickups (which I've had before & I don't think are as good) in the UK and once you factor in the level of service you get I think Bare Knuckle are very good value indeed.
