Bare Knuckle ‘T-Top' Humbucker

Continuing this issue’s customisation theme, deputy editor David Mead heads off to Bare Knuckle Pickups in Cornwall to try his hand at the deceptively difficult art of winding pickups, embarking on his very own PAF to enlightenment…

- David Mead

We’ll begin with a confession: w once upon a time, I was a serial pickup-changer. Every time I bought a new guitar, the stock pickups would be out of it before you could say “knife”. The guitars from that era that are still with me – which is most of them – have a range of Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro II single coils, Custom Custom humbuckers, David White Old Glories and, more recently, a Bare Knuckle here and there. When I switched to playing acoustic guitar almost exclusively back in 2005 or thereabouts, the madness ceased. I mean, they tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, “No, no, no…”

All this being said, one of the projects that I have been meaning to get around to for years is what amounts to performing a factory reset on my 2001 Les Paul Standard. I realize it’s a fool’s errand to try and transform a contemporary guitar into a true vintage piece, but I’ve always reasoned that this isn’t the point. My most admired guitar sound is to be found on Sleepy Time Time from Live Cream, performed on Clapton’s ‘Fool’ 1964 SG Standard, which would have been around four years old at the time. Not ‘vintage’ at all, then: a mere four-year-old. So the mission is to try and return my Les Paul to ‘fresh out of the box’ status… but from an early 1960s box, if you catch my drift.

When the opportunity came up to kickstart ‘Project Retro’ by winding my own pickup at Bare Knuckle HQ in Falmouth, I jumped at the chance. After all, I’d watched the process before, both on video and in the flesh, and so I reasoned, ‘How hard can it be?’ I was in for a shock. It’s hard.

A Proper Wind-Up