The Mod Squad
We’re no strangers to swift pickup swaps here in The Mod Squad, but giving a valid opinion about a set’s performance, says Dave Burrluck, can take considerably longer
There’s little doubt that a new set of pickups will be the significant cost in any upgrade you plan, and there is no shortage of pickup makers, large and small, who are happy to relieve us of our hardearned. The pickup’s role as a transducer is remarkably simple, but in line with virtually every aspect of our instrument, it’s been turned into high art – and then some! The thing is, a pickup – much like a set of tuners or a bridge – is pretty damn useless without the rest of the guitar.
The classic guitar recipes have given us some pretty clear and defined sounds yet it’s all too easy to assume that certain elements are more responsible for the sounds we hear than others. The final sound we have coming out of our guitar is not just that of the pickup, even though our perception often says it is.
Chatting to pickup maker Thomas Nilsen, the man behind Cream T, earlier in the year, I must say I was fascinated. His rock-star associations, particularly the patronage of Billy F Gibbons, would suggest he knows what he’s doing. My only experience of his pickups, however, was his Banger and Mash and a Tele-style bridge pickup fitted to the very fine Patrick James Eggle Oz Cream T that we reviewed back in issue 458.
As ever, a review is conducted over a pretty strict time frame and I quite fancied spending a little more time with Thomas’s pickups. Now made at Sound Affects’ HQ in Ormskirk, I asked owner Tim Lobley if he could loan me some, and a few weeks after that review, a set of Cream T BFG Bangers turned up.
According to the new website, these Bangers were “created after years of work between Thomas and Billy F Gibbons. If you want a pickup that has been tweaked to perfection by a legendary guitarist and boutique pickup winder, look no further. Thomas is renowned for working closely with artists to achieve the tone they desire and Billy F Gibbons has now used the BFG
Bangers on stage for the last 10 years! The BFG Bangers are slightly hotter than the pickups Billy F Gibbons has in his 1959 Les Paul sunburst guitar.” A nice sell, though the only details we get are DCR readings of 7.3kohms (neck) and 8.9k (bridge).
Personally, I like to listen and not look at a spec sheet, which is just as well seeing as Cream T’s fledgling webpage is scant when it comes to techy info. We get DCR readings of most but not all of the six different sets of vintage-style PAF-alikes they currently offer, but that’s it. The sets are priced at £299 (that’s with single conductor in aged nickel covers; uncovered and fourconductor are also available), with the exception of the WhiskerBucker 100 per cent replicas of Billy G’s fabled Pearly Gates and the BFG Whisker Eliminator set, which are £399 and £199 respectively. So our set of BFG Bangers costs £299, the same as a set of Bare Knuckle Mules, though those do have more options. “Let me know what you think…” says Tim.
Evaluation
Problem number one is that simple request. ‘I’ll let you know in a couple of months’ isn’t the answer Tim wants to hear. The truth is that we can all fit a set of pickups and give an opinion. But is that opinion valid? And how do I give my opinion some validity?
Let’s start with what we get. While many makers keep things pretty austere in terms of their packaging, Cream T’s is a whole lot
“There’s no sharpedged honk from the bridge, and the neck has clarity and depth with a soft but not over-rounded nose”
more ostentatious. This pickup set ships in a wooden display box – the sort of thing you might keep your lengthy Cuban cigars in – filled with a hard foam, faced with a print of a ’Burst into which the pickups fit. Outwardly, the pickups look tidy enough with no obvious boutique twists, and just a simple rear label. They are single conductor within a braided hook-up lead (four-conductor are available): default PAF-style dress. There are no free strings, pickups, stickers or a wiring diagram as you’d get with a set of Bare Knuckles.
Back in The Mod Squad in issue 458, I described how I’d slightly modded a new hardtail PRS SE Starla Stoptail by adding a TonePros tune-o-matic and locking stud tailpiece studs so I could quickly capo, detune, remove the stud tailpiece then the pickguard. I’d fitted a neat Radioshop Pickups volume control with three screw terminals so I didn’t need to warm up the soldering iron. Once I’d loaded in the new pickups into a duplicate scratchplate, I could swap over in a matter of minutes. It’s not as fast as Relish’s pickup swapping concept, but it’s still fast. I’d soon loaded up the Bangers.
I simply set both pickups 1/16th of an inch from the high E, fretted at the last fret on the treble side, and 3/32nds on the bass-side low E, and plugged in clean. The best part of two hours later, I only had some scribbled notes, but I had played through quite a few jazzy/blues tunes.
I was completely absorbed. My notes said things like “timeless, musical voice”. Mr Billy F Gibbons was a million miles away from my thoughts, but the quality of sound, the balance and touch sensitivity were simply superb.
The mix sounds more like a Telecaster, there’s no sharp-edged honk from the bridge, and the neck has clarity and depth with a soft but not over-rounded nose. There are no boutique pots; the cap is .022 microfards Asian standard-issue. The pullswitch on the tone is unused as the Bangers are single conductor, but the way the controls worked, with a treble-bleed cap (180 picofarads) on the volume, I simply couldn’t get a bad sound.
But I haven’t really tested the pickups, have I? I’d guess that we’re probably all pretty similar. As soon as our new pickups arrive, it’s out with the soldering iron, load them into the guitar and while we’re at it we give our instrument a bit of a clean and fit new strings. If our choice is anywhere near correct, it’s a “new guitar”: the pickups sound awesome. Err…
Rethink
So far, I’ve listened to the pickups on just the PRS SE. But what percentage of what I’m hearing is pickup and what percentage is the rest of the guitar? Well, if you can be bothered, try recording what you have and then try them on another guitar. I pulled out my well-modded and stripped Tokai Love Rock and loaded in the Bangers, gave them a play through and recorded those. There’s definitely more girth, more lower-end thump to what I’m hearing underpinning the voice, which I didn’t hear on the thinner-sounding PRS SE Starla. The vintage wired four-control setup is definitely home for me over the more generic drive of the PRS, too. Another few hours’ play time and I still can’t find a bad thing to say about these pickups.
Yet again the Les Paul-style Emerson control circuit on the Tokai will be playing its subtle part in ‘tuning’ what we’re hearing compared with the master volume/master tone setup of the SE Starla. That may be subtle, of course, but it gives us another consideration when we’re discussing or giving our verdict of the ‘sound’ of a new set of pickups.
But do I want to go on record and say these Bangers are bangin’? Not really. I really like what I’m hearing, but I’d like to directly compare them to a set of Bare Knuckle Mules, maybe some Seymour Duncan ’59s or even Seth Lovers – all pickups I’ve used and still use. But that’s just scratching the surface. Virtually every pickup maker on the planet makes at least one PAF-alike; most make considerably more. I’d like to gig them a few times, try them on another Les Paul or two. But I have to file my copy. Tim wants my thoughts. Our layout means I have to rate them.
All I can say, based on the above process and quite a few years of playing and listening to similar pickups, is that I’ve yet to find anything I don’t like about these. Is that good enough?
A last-minute gig, the first since lockdown, at least gave me a chance to experience the Bangers in situ. The Tokai, which has had numerous different pickup sets onboard over the past few months, just sounds right. I’d swear the pickups aren’t potted (although I believe they are) and the range of sounds – from clean, almost hollowed with volume and tone reduction to a wonderfully woody yet clear neck at full tilt and the sort of snarl from the bridge that has bite without excessive spike – are extremely musical.
A local pro guitarist who I’ve got a lot of respect for called me over at half time: “Good tone!” Well, that’s good enough for me. And while I haven’t possibly listened to these Bangers as much as I’d like, clearly we’re on the same page.
Final Thoughts
You can read all the pickup specs in the world and watch endless YouTube vids, which will certainly help you to narrow your choice, but until you’ve loaded them into your own guitar and experienced them first hand you’ll never know whether they’re right for you.
Even then, after fitting your new pickups and finding love at first listen, how do you feel after a few more weeks and some gigs or recordings? Are you totally transfixed by your tone, or are there things that you’re doubting? Maybe you went a bit too clean PAF, or vice versa. Maybe you played someone else’s similar guitar and thought, “Now, that’s what I really want my guitar to sound like.” Well, that’s all part of the fun isn’t it? The caveat being that experimenting with ‘boutique’-priced pickups like these and the many others out there can be a very expensive pastime.
So, just bear the above in mind when someone recommends a pickup to you and tells you it sounds amazing. Properly evaluating a new-to-you set of pickups can be both time consuming and very personal. Comparison is everything and the key to finding your own way, as is putting in the hours. Listen and play.
“Another few hours’ play time and I still can’t find a bad thing to say”