Post by slartibartfarst42 on Jul 6, 2014 13:05:28 GMT
This is a review of a Holydiver set. I initially used the bridge model in a Jackson SL3 Soloist (maple neck-thru, alder wings, rosewood fretboard and OFR) and then the full set in a PRS SE Custom 24 (mahogany body, maple cap and maple neck). For those who don't like long reviews and would prefer the short version, here it is: 'It's bloody good!'. For anyone happy to devote more time to a review, here it is:
Holydiver bridge
The first thing to say is that the statement that this is ‘a celebration of the original '80s hot-rodded humbuckers’ is entirely appropriate. If you’re looking for that classic 80s Metal tone then this gets you there. I’ve heard many people describe the Holydiver as being fat, rich, organic and fluid and all of these terms apply, though I'd say it's more 'thick' than 'fat'.
Overall, it’s true to say that if you like a JB, you’ll LOVE a Holydiver. I liked the JB because it had that 80s Metal vibe about it but it still sounded a little thin to my ears and while being a more articulate pickup than many give it credit, it was still prone to mushing up a bit at the bottom end under gain. The Holydiver has a similar tonal footprint but is just so much more in every way. It’s significantly thicker, richer, more organic and articulate in its tone and really made my guitar sing in a way it never did before. The thick lower mids really helped to chunk it up so that lead playing cut through well and gave the tone plenty of body and fluidity. I think it’s easy when talking of a pickup as being ‘fat and fluid’ to imagine it will mush up but this simply doesn’t. For all its thickness it remains a highly articulate pickup. Play chords with a good dose of gain and the distortion is warm, thick and smooth in just the way it should be but each note remains distinct within that rich and harmonious chord.
I think the fact that this pickup is associated with the sounds of Whitesnake and Dio is a given but it does a lot more than that. As a lead pickup, this is excellent. Everything you may have read about this being the best lead pickup Bare Knuckle make is quite possibly true in my opinion. I think a lot of people rightly talk about the Holydiver’s ability to play leads but this also excels at rhythms where it’s a powerful pickup with lots of body and a reasonable amount of aggression. It's tight enough to stretch to more modern Metal but open enough to do Classic Rock. It's really surprisingly versatile. Its natural home may be 80s Metal but it can easily cover Metallica levels of gain as well as Disturbed, though obviously not being as scooped. Moving in the other direction it plays Free very well and has a lovely clean tone as well. I’ve tried this guitar on cleans, Blues, 70s – modern Rock/Metal and modern Pop Rock and it covers them all really well. I play all of these styles in my band and could use my guitar for all of them without any trouble. While it’s a great Rock/Metal pickup, turn down the gain, add some delay and tweak the tone control if you want to and you can play some decent Blues. It can get a great Gary Moore tone too. Would I change anything about it? Well, I still use a compressor on some songs for leads to saturate it more but I suspect that if the pickup was like that naturally it would lose a lot of its versatility so in all practical terms, no, I like it in every way.
It's worth making an important point here if you're after 80's Metal tone. The Holydiver does NOT reproduce that classic 80's Metal tone, it is only reminiscent of it. The wire Bare Knuckle use in this pickup is a modern 44 polysol rather than the 43PE that would have been used back in the day. This helps to give it the versatility it boasts but it's ultimately neither compressed, saturated or aggressive enough to really nail that tone. If the 80's Metal tone is really what you're after, I'd advise you to look at the Classic '83 set from The Creamery instead.
I think the Holydiver would work very well in any guitar. I’m sure it would thicken up a Strat-style guitar beautifully and certainly worked well in my guitars. In a Les Paul it will sound absolutely huge but I seriously think it has the articulation to pull it off with stunning results.
Holydiver neck
I never initially thought about the neck version. Comments about it being 'bright' and 'thin' tended to put me off. Instead, I've always paired the Holydiver bridge with an Emerald neck and it really is a magical combination. This begs an obvious question:
'If it's so magical, why did you change?'
Good question and the answer is more about chance than anything else. I ordered a Crawler set for my other PRS but while I liked the bridge a lot, the neck version didn't really light my fire as much. After a lot of research I found myself increasingly drawn to the Holydiver neck, so, how does the Holydiver neck stack up to other great Bare Knuckle neck pickups like the Emerald and Cold Sweat? This is an odd one to explain as the Holydiver neck pickups seems to straddle categories. The use of an alnico 5 magnet with modern 42.5 polysol wire suggests a very modern sounding tone but it also uses a very light wind, making it brighter and far more PAF-like. It is true that the Holydiver is both thinner and brighter than the Emerald but that isn't really such a bad thing because it's all relative. It may be thinner but it's not thin to the point where it has no presence and nor is it bright to the point of being piercing. When I assumed this in the past about the Holydiver neck, I was wrong. It actually has quite a lot in common with the Cold Sweat and Rebel Yell neck models as all three use AV magnets and all three use the same wire. I've never tried a Rebel Yell neck but I have owned a Cold Sweat neck pickup so I do feel I can draw some appropriate comparisons and conclusions.
Like the Cold Sweat, the Holydiver neck is broadly given a modern voicing and as such, copes well with modern styles from Classic Rock/Metal to shredding. Where it differs from the Cold Sweat neck is in terms of compression. The Cold Sweat has a slightly hotter wind whereas the Holydiver is almost vintage based on the DC resistance. I wouldn’t presume to suggest that this makes the Holydiver a PAF pickup because I think both the magnet and wire suggest this wouldn’t be an entirely accurate description but the light wind does help to make it feel quite open compared to other neck pickups from the contemporary range and in this respect, you may notice more than a little vintage vibe going on. The upshot of all this is that it is a very clear pickup with great cleans. While the Emerald cleans are warm and rich, the Holydiver cleans are more bright and jangly. They always seem to remind me of a Fender amp for some reason. I don’t think the cleans on the Emerald and Holydiver are better or worse than each other; they’re just different. However, I would say the cleans on the Holydiver are better than those on the Cold Sweat.
As I’ve already indicated, the Holydiver is possibly a bit brighter and thinner than the Cold Sweat and if I were to leave it at that, I’d be tempted to say that under distortion the Cold Sweat is better but as is often the case, there’s more to it than that. The Holydiver is a bit more precise than the Cold Sweat and will take shed loads of gain very well and as the gain is added, the sound seems to thicken. It’s difficult to explain but the Holydiver seems sweeter and more ‘musical’ than the Cold Sweat. There’s certainly something about it.
Downsides? Its brighter and thinner nature would mean I’d hesitate in using it in a bright Stratocaster but it will work very well in pretty much anything else and positively slay in a Les Paul. The only other possible negative I could mention is that for some, it may be a bit too much of a halfway-house between an open, vintage tone and modern styles. It’s not a problem for me, in fact, quite the reverse as I like this about the pickup but I can imagine that for some people, they may want either ‘vintage’ or ‘modern’ and not the ‘best of both’.
When I first got the Holydiver neck, I really liked it but felt the Emerald neck had the edge. The more I played the Holydiver neck, the more I liked it. So far in my experience, if you have Bare Knuckle Emerald and Holydiver neck pickups in your guitars, you have the two best neck humbuckers money can buy. I love them both and really couldn't decide between them.
Holydiver bridge
The first thing to say is that the statement that this is ‘a celebration of the original '80s hot-rodded humbuckers’ is entirely appropriate. If you’re looking for that classic 80s Metal tone then this gets you there. I’ve heard many people describe the Holydiver as being fat, rich, organic and fluid and all of these terms apply, though I'd say it's more 'thick' than 'fat'.
Overall, it’s true to say that if you like a JB, you’ll LOVE a Holydiver. I liked the JB because it had that 80s Metal vibe about it but it still sounded a little thin to my ears and while being a more articulate pickup than many give it credit, it was still prone to mushing up a bit at the bottom end under gain. The Holydiver has a similar tonal footprint but is just so much more in every way. It’s significantly thicker, richer, more organic and articulate in its tone and really made my guitar sing in a way it never did before. The thick lower mids really helped to chunk it up so that lead playing cut through well and gave the tone plenty of body and fluidity. I think it’s easy when talking of a pickup as being ‘fat and fluid’ to imagine it will mush up but this simply doesn’t. For all its thickness it remains a highly articulate pickup. Play chords with a good dose of gain and the distortion is warm, thick and smooth in just the way it should be but each note remains distinct within that rich and harmonious chord.
I think the fact that this pickup is associated with the sounds of Whitesnake and Dio is a given but it does a lot more than that. As a lead pickup, this is excellent. Everything you may have read about this being the best lead pickup Bare Knuckle make is quite possibly true in my opinion. I think a lot of people rightly talk about the Holydiver’s ability to play leads but this also excels at rhythms where it’s a powerful pickup with lots of body and a reasonable amount of aggression. It's tight enough to stretch to more modern Metal but open enough to do Classic Rock. It's really surprisingly versatile. Its natural home may be 80s Metal but it can easily cover Metallica levels of gain as well as Disturbed, though obviously not being as scooped. Moving in the other direction it plays Free very well and has a lovely clean tone as well. I’ve tried this guitar on cleans, Blues, 70s – modern Rock/Metal and modern Pop Rock and it covers them all really well. I play all of these styles in my band and could use my guitar for all of them without any trouble. While it’s a great Rock/Metal pickup, turn down the gain, add some delay and tweak the tone control if you want to and you can play some decent Blues. It can get a great Gary Moore tone too. Would I change anything about it? Well, I still use a compressor on some songs for leads to saturate it more but I suspect that if the pickup was like that naturally it would lose a lot of its versatility so in all practical terms, no, I like it in every way.
It's worth making an important point here if you're after 80's Metal tone. The Holydiver does NOT reproduce that classic 80's Metal tone, it is only reminiscent of it. The wire Bare Knuckle use in this pickup is a modern 44 polysol rather than the 43PE that would have been used back in the day. This helps to give it the versatility it boasts but it's ultimately neither compressed, saturated or aggressive enough to really nail that tone. If the 80's Metal tone is really what you're after, I'd advise you to look at the Classic '83 set from The Creamery instead.
I think the Holydiver would work very well in any guitar. I’m sure it would thicken up a Strat-style guitar beautifully and certainly worked well in my guitars. In a Les Paul it will sound absolutely huge but I seriously think it has the articulation to pull it off with stunning results.
Holydiver neck
I never initially thought about the neck version. Comments about it being 'bright' and 'thin' tended to put me off. Instead, I've always paired the Holydiver bridge with an Emerald neck and it really is a magical combination. This begs an obvious question:
'If it's so magical, why did you change?'
Good question and the answer is more about chance than anything else. I ordered a Crawler set for my other PRS but while I liked the bridge a lot, the neck version didn't really light my fire as much. After a lot of research I found myself increasingly drawn to the Holydiver neck, so, how does the Holydiver neck stack up to other great Bare Knuckle neck pickups like the Emerald and Cold Sweat? This is an odd one to explain as the Holydiver neck pickups seems to straddle categories. The use of an alnico 5 magnet with modern 42.5 polysol wire suggests a very modern sounding tone but it also uses a very light wind, making it brighter and far more PAF-like. It is true that the Holydiver is both thinner and brighter than the Emerald but that isn't really such a bad thing because it's all relative. It may be thinner but it's not thin to the point where it has no presence and nor is it bright to the point of being piercing. When I assumed this in the past about the Holydiver neck, I was wrong. It actually has quite a lot in common with the Cold Sweat and Rebel Yell neck models as all three use AV magnets and all three use the same wire. I've never tried a Rebel Yell neck but I have owned a Cold Sweat neck pickup so I do feel I can draw some appropriate comparisons and conclusions.
Like the Cold Sweat, the Holydiver neck is broadly given a modern voicing and as such, copes well with modern styles from Classic Rock/Metal to shredding. Where it differs from the Cold Sweat neck is in terms of compression. The Cold Sweat has a slightly hotter wind whereas the Holydiver is almost vintage based on the DC resistance. I wouldn’t presume to suggest that this makes the Holydiver a PAF pickup because I think both the magnet and wire suggest this wouldn’t be an entirely accurate description but the light wind does help to make it feel quite open compared to other neck pickups from the contemporary range and in this respect, you may notice more than a little vintage vibe going on. The upshot of all this is that it is a very clear pickup with great cleans. While the Emerald cleans are warm and rich, the Holydiver cleans are more bright and jangly. They always seem to remind me of a Fender amp for some reason. I don’t think the cleans on the Emerald and Holydiver are better or worse than each other; they’re just different. However, I would say the cleans on the Holydiver are better than those on the Cold Sweat.
As I’ve already indicated, the Holydiver is possibly a bit brighter and thinner than the Cold Sweat and if I were to leave it at that, I’d be tempted to say that under distortion the Cold Sweat is better but as is often the case, there’s more to it than that. The Holydiver is a bit more precise than the Cold Sweat and will take shed loads of gain very well and as the gain is added, the sound seems to thicken. It’s difficult to explain but the Holydiver seems sweeter and more ‘musical’ than the Cold Sweat. There’s certainly something about it.
Downsides? Its brighter and thinner nature would mean I’d hesitate in using it in a bright Stratocaster but it will work very well in pretty much anything else and positively slay in a Les Paul. The only other possible negative I could mention is that for some, it may be a bit too much of a halfway-house between an open, vintage tone and modern styles. It’s not a problem for me, in fact, quite the reverse as I like this about the pickup but I can imagine that for some people, they may want either ‘vintage’ or ‘modern’ and not the ‘best of both’.
When I first got the Holydiver neck, I really liked it but felt the Emerald neck had the edge. The more I played the Holydiver neck, the more I liked it. So far in my experience, if you have Bare Knuckle Emerald and Holydiver neck pickups in your guitars, you have the two best neck humbuckers money can buy. I love them both and really couldn't decide between them.