BARE KNUCKLE PICKUPS

The alchemical blend of magnets and wire is responsible for some of the greatest guitar tones ever. Master pickup maker Tim Mills tells us how he does it

Bare Knuckle Pickups is a hive of activity. There are people busy winding, waxing and wiring throughout the company’s nest of workshops here in the Cornish countryside. We’re talking to the company boss, Tim Mills, in a room lined with guitars of many makes and designs, and we’re curious as to how he came to be one of the world’s premier makers of bespoke pickups. “Necessity,” he smiles. “It was through a job I got playing in a band where I had to reproduce a range of different players’ tones that I thought were quite varied and I started messing around changing pickups.”

Frustrated by the lack of information available with regards to spec and tone, Tim began taking pickups apart to see how they ticked. “I hit on this idea of trying to come up with pickups where each was named after a ballpark tone so you could cut to the chase much quicker,” he continues. “After a year of messing around in my studio with pickups and guitars, and doing countless recordings, I felt like I’d learned enough to help other people get to where they wanted to be and it took off.”

Bare Knuckle Pickups was launched in 2003 and today provides units for some of the world’s top guitar brands, including Fender and Ibanez. Does this basic understanding of wire gauges, magnet types and winding procedures come from any kind of scientific background? “I’ll be honest – I was thrown out of physics class when I was at school,” says Tim. “My teacher would turn in his grave if he knew what I was doing now. I’ve always been quite up front about the fact that I don’t approach anything I do at Bare Knuckle with any sort of physics or electronics background at all. It purely comes from a playing point of view and just using my ears. I just go chasing a sound, really.”

Follow The Tone

Is it difficult to recreate some of the sought after tones of yesteryear? “Pickups are not complicated things,” he affirms. “They’re very, very simple devices. What becomes complicated with making pickups is being consistent. You might create something one day and then never be able to do it again. So it’s about being able to create something and then continue to create it so that you can build your staff and your business and so on. That’s the tricky bit.”

We look around for notes and diagrams and find none. “Initially, I had a great big book and I’d write all my findings down. These days I don’t need to. It’s almost like learning to drive a car – after a while it becomes intuitive.”

Another facet of BKP is its work with artists on signature pickups. How does Tim capture a sound in someone else’s head? “What I tend to do is make five or six sets and number them, and we’ll set up some recording stuff and they can just record and I make them make notes as to what they think they’re playing. I know the pickup I think it’s going to be…”

And is he usually right? “Every time, touch wood!” he laughs. “But that’s more about interacting with the person properly to start with, and I’ve often said there’s no such thing as a rubbish pickup, there’s just the wrong one for the wrong player.”

What are the current best-selling single coils from the range? “It’s the hot vintage pickups. Most pickup makers will tell you this: the majority of their customers will come to you looking for something more than they have already, and people are always looking for a bit of extra muscle.”

And humbuckers? “The Mule, which is our patent-applied-for ’59 style, and the Nailbomb, which, despite its name, is a very classic-sounding pickup. Then, in the last few years, the Juggernaut, which we did with Misha Mansoor of Periphery.”

Tim obviously installs his pickups in his own guitars. “I’ve got Mules, Riff Raffs, Stormy Mondays… I like Mississippi Queen and Nantucket humbucker-size P-90s, and in my Strats I use ’63 Veneer Boards with the baseplate in the bridge and a stockwound middle. I have a Flat ’50 in my Tele and I use the Flat ’52 Tele neck, which is unusual because it’s wound with 42 gauge that sounds almost like a Strat.” www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk