HEAVY TRIP

Bare Knuckle MD Tim Mills on the breakthroughs and bumps in the road behind Rabea Massaad’s seismic new Triptych Strat single coils

- Henry Yates

There is nothing off-the-peg about the guitar playing of Rabea Massaad. Voluminous of hair, visionary of mindset and almost permanently viral for his jaw-dropping online videos, the FrogLeap guitarist was never likely to settle for factory spec Strat coils. Sure enough, the search for a bolder tone led him to the door of Tim Mills, MD of Cornwall’s acclaimed Bare Knuckle, and to the birth of the Triptych set that is rapidly becoming the mod of the moment.

There’s quite a buzz surrounding the Triptych.

“Yeah, absolutely, it’s really taken off – in part because Rabea has just brought a different angle to Strat playing and introduced a lot of players to a new way of delivering tone from a Strat they wouldn’t necessarily think of. And that was very much part of the brief: to not just make another vintage-accurate set. Rabea gave me a wishlist of classic tones, but he also needed to be able to handle the modern applications he’s called on to do.”

What touchstones did Massaad give you? 

“Having done a lot of work with him on the Silo humbucker set, I’m very familiar with where Rabea comes from in terms of tone. The remit for the Triptych was primarily the line-up of Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer and Philip Sayce. Certainly, Philip and Stevie are very fierce Strat players, and then John has a slightly politer approach. The Triptych had to be able to handle heavy stuff and work with copious amounts of fuzz and various drives.”

What are the defining features of the Triptych?