I've used a number of BK pickups and I like them. However I think there is a bit too much hype around them. Not that they don't sound great either, because they certainly can. I think Tim is making very good products, different sounding pickups that fit in the market nicely for what they specialize in. What I don't agree with is the seemingly constant insistence that BK pickups are "better than everything else", or that the Painkiller "always sounds tight and aggressive". That last bit in particular has driven me batty. I've used the Painkiller in 10 guitars, varying in their cuts of wood and thus sounding different, and sometimes the Painkiller has sounded very dull and dark--because the guitar has sounded very dull and dark. It's not been due to a wiring problem or "the wrong pots" etc. (as some suggested, perhaps I don't know how to wire a pickup or troubleshoot a guitar's wiring? lol!), it's a plain fact. This is about how the pickup works for the guitar, period. The pickup does *not* solely dictate how a guitar sounds. The sound starts at the guitar and is *translated* by the pickup. The pickup's job is important but in my opinion not nearly as important as the guitar's. I say this because there are lots of good pickups out there and a really good sounding guitar will sound really good with lots of different pickups. Some say with electric guitar, the sound is all about the electronics (or 90%, whatever), that the guitar's wood hardly matters. I'd say that doesn't make sense unless you're using two fuzz pedals chained in series, I guess.
Also, some people think the Nailbomb sounds really aggressive. My experience in all my guitars was otherwise. It was solid sounding but not very edgy on the attack like the Painkiller was. And again the Painkiller might have sounded aggressive in my guitars, but it sounded dark and woofy in a few others. And I stopped using Painkillers in my guitars because they were so punchy (my guitars are very resonant) that it was hard to control my amps' EQ/gain settings. In my roommate's guitars though (Ibanez with floating bridges, a bit more dull sounding than my guitars), they sound excellent. Does that make me the problem, or does it make my guitars "crappy" because the BK pickups weren't making them amazing sounding? No. It means they weren't a good match for my guitars, for my tastes.
People can learn to calm down a little about BK pickups, that they're not always "the best" for every guitar and that if they don't sound right for peoples' guitars, "they're doing something wrong". It's absurd already how many people have said things to that effect.
Rogueleader":3on5i7dv said:
One thing I have noticed about them is they are really picky about height.
A lot of pickups are, if you want to get the best sound for your tastes. I recently enlightened someone as to their Les Paul (Jon, are you reading? lol) not sounding as bad as they thought, that the guitar didn't need to be sold and new pickups didn't have to be installed to hopefully fix the nasty sound issue. The cure: lowering the stock pickup about 1/8". That was enough to clear up the sound for him (which personally, I thought was fine to start with, but "horses for courses"). It was actually a night-and-day difference, making the guitar sound "incredibly good" to his ears. 1/8" of height difference, problem solved.
Even EMG pickups...sigh...EMG pickups... Their installation manual suggests smashing the pickup right against the strings (well not quite, but you know) because "there's no string pull" and "it won't affect intonation" yeah yeah yeah, that's all great, super...but 99% of the time that sounds like crap. In some guitars I've had EMGs over 3/8" away from the strings and it sounded awesome. (Yes, I'm admitting sometimes I like EMG pickups, in the right guitar of course, like my roommate's Jackson.)
And the Dimarzio X2N is one of the worst for this. It even comes with a slip of paper explaining how you should lower the bass side a lot to keep the response clear/focused. Yet so many people have tried that pickup and never bothered with this, whether they had that slip of paper with the pickup or not (got it used, for instance) and automatically dismissed the pickup as sounding bad.
ericsabbath":3on5i7dv said:
you could never say that without trying them in the same guitar
Exactly! It's all about how it works for the guitar, how the cuts of wood resonate (and not what kind of wood it is so much as just how the individual cuts of wood sound). In some guitars, a pickup will work well and in another it won't (even if it's "the same model" with "the same wood used", because the individual cuts sound different).
