Bareknuckle Puckups - Nailbomb 7

I recently sold my Lundgren M7 to fund the purchase of the Nailbomb. The M7 was a nice pickup, but not for me.

BKP Customer support is top notch! I exchanged a few e-mails with Tim discussing my sound, what gear I use, and what I wanted out of a pickup. He recommended the Nailbomb. If you are unfamiliar with Bareknuckle Pickups, then send them an e-mail with what sound you're looking for and your gear and he will give you some well founded suggestions (The man makes these things himself, he knows them through and through!).

On to the sound!

I have this wired up with a push pull pot to split my pickups to get a single coil sound if I want to. The pickups come with 5 wires, and is pre wired for humbucker use, no soldering required!(Well, you still have to solder the wires to the guitar, but you don't have to attach any wires together) So all I had to do was snip the joint off of one and we were ready to go. I would have given it a 5 in features if the covers were an option for 7 string pickups.

Once it was all wired up, we plugged into my newly resurrected 5150 II (That I bought broken) and hooked it up to a Marshall cab loaded with G12k 65's. The first note I hit was tonal bliss. It added sparkle to the otherwise dark clean channel. So I went right to the lead channel. I hit a palm mute on the low Bb and got a beautiful, tight CHUNK out of her. It put a smile on my face. So then I started playing some Nevermore to put the pickup through it's paces, and it delivered! It never got muddy on the low notes, was crystal clear and nothing smeared together, and the highs were smooth and defined with plenty of sustain. Now, a lot of people recommend getting these with a ceramic magnet for metal, to make the low end 'tighter', but I disagree. My guitar has a mahogany body, and i'm tuned a half step down. Never did this pickup get muddy or out of control, it remained focused and punchy from top to bottom, and the clean tone was superb to boot!

Cleans out of this pickup are warm and have a gentle slap, but I certainly wasn't expecting how great the split tone was going to be. I split the coils, and put it into the middle position with the Duncan '59 neck. The combined split tone made it sound like an acoustic-electric, almost piezo in sound (to an extent, this was a bit fatter). I rolled off some treble and pulled the mids back, and was able to warm it up a ton and get even more wonderful clean tones. This pickup makes some sweet, smooth cleans.

All in all, this is a very versatile pickup. It can do screaming metal, but back the gain off and you got yourself a nice rock pickup. It can do a variety of cleans, and the Alnico magnet ensures they're never cold. If you want a pickup where you can pick up your guitar and be able to get any sound, this is the one.

I would highly recommend this pickup, and BKP's in general (Just talk to Tim!). You won't be disappointed.

Even though these are pricey for people in the American market, the value for what you're getting is great, i've yet to find a better pickup. And I want to give special thanks to our very own Zimbloth for hooking me (And many others) up with a great deal on BKPs! If you decide you want a BKP, definitely get them through him, you will NOT regret it! IMO He's the only way to go if you want BKPs in the US.

Now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go play my guitar some more!