One of the most talked about pickups this year, Bare Knuckle’s Triptych set might just be what you need to cover all bases without losing those sounds
Can it really be two decades since Tim Mills kicked off Bare Knuckle Pickups? Since then, it’s not only become the pre-eminent pickup maker in the UK, inspiring many others to follow, but it’s also one of the most respected worldwide, by players and guitar makers from Fender downwards.
I’d struggle to name a Bare Knuckle pickup I haven’t enjoyed. Like many, I use them daily for gigs, recording and as a reference for comparison. 20 years on, the company offers an extensive range of models, but its most recent pickups have been signature models such as the Chris Robertson Peacemaker for the Black Stone Cherry guitarist, and Rabea Massaad’s Silo humbuckers. Joining them when it launched earlier this year is Rabea’s ultimate set for Stratocasters, the Triptych.
Rather than coming up with a radical new design, the Triptych set plays with the time-honoured recipe and creates what many players might consider a do-it-all set for Stratocasters. For example, the set uses plain enamel coil wire, which replaced heavy Formvar in Fender’s production from around 1964. You’ll find Alnico III rod magnets in the bridge position, as used in the first couple of years of the Stratocaster, while the middle and bridge use the more common Alnico V.
Both bridge and neck pickups use a zinc-plated steel baseplate, while the middle pickup is reverse-wound with reverse polarity (RWRP), which means positions 2 and 4 on your five-way selector are hum-cancelling. You also have a wide choice of cover colours and flat or staggered poles, and each pickup can be ordered with or without that inductor baseplate. Bare Knuckle supplied our set on a scratchplate with its full-size screening plate, CRL five-way lever switch, Bare Knuckle/CTS 10 per cent audio taper pots, and a Bare Knuckle .022μf PIO cap, all wired with cloth-covered push-back wire. I loaded the set onto a first-version Fender Road Worn 60s Strat. I also had a well-gigged partscaster with a Bare Knuckle’s ’63 Veneer Board set; the coils are heavy Formvar wire and use Alnico V rod magnets slightly smaller in diameter than those on the Triptych. With fresh strings and both sets adjusted to the same distance from the strings (fretted at the last fret the undersi
