Post by slartibartfarst42 on Jul 7, 2014 19:50:26 GMT
Classic ’83 Review
I’m not new to changing pickups in guitars as I find that stock pickups from guitar manufacturers are invariably poor. Even when they choose to install a ‘named’ brand like Seymour Duncan, the results can still be disappointing because they don’t represent my tonal choices. As a result, over the years I’ve fitted a lot of pickups to various guitars from manufacturers like Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio and Bare Knuckle. This is the first set of pickups I’ve tried from Jaime at The Creamery in Manchester so I was interested to see how they’d stand up to the better known brands I’ve tried before.
When you visit the website, the first thing that struck me was the very limited range of pickups available compared to the myriad of possibilities available from other brands. At first, this seems a bit limiting but upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that it’s quite the opposite. Someone like Bare Knuckle offer you a number of vintage pickup options with different names and magnets yet The Creamery has only two – the Creamery ’57 and the Creamery ’59. However, each of these pickups can be bought with either alnico 2, 3, 4 or 5 magnets so effectively there are eight possibilities for vintage pickups. On top of that, talk to Jaime and he will adjust the wind to reflect your own personal tastes so in reality, the choice is practically limitless. This basic philosophy runs throughout the entire range so I had the choice of taking alnico 5 or 8 magnets or opting for a ceramic magnet. I should point out from the start of this review that I went with the classic alnico 5 option.
There’s clearly something about scatter-winding a pickup by hand because what is immediately apparent is that pickups from Seymour Duncan and DiMarzio just can’t live with the quality you get from either Bare Knuckle or The Creamery. They can’t take as much gain, they’re not as articulate and they ultimately just don’t have the tone so for the purpose of this review, I’m not even going to bother drawing further comparisons with those brands. The key question here for me, having been a Bare Knuckle user for many years, is could they live with the undoubted quality of that particular brand? In short, the answer to that question is yes, they can, but as with most things in life it’s a little more complex than that as there are pros and cons on both sides.
Where Bare Knuckle score over The Creamery is the speed of service they can provide. If I email Bare Knuckle, I will get a response within 24 hours easily and I’ve even known that to be the case on Bank Holidays. I can also phone and get a fast and knowledgeable response and in both cases I can speak to the owner, Tim Mills. Once I have selected the pickups I want, they are usually despatched within 48 hours. Bare Knuckle is now quite a major player in the pickup market so they have a number of staff employed and I daresay most orders these days simply come off the shelf so it’s hardly surprising they can operate faster but it’s still a VERY impressive level of customer service. In comparison, Jaime is operating by himself at The Creamery so there’s just no way he can deal with phone calls and respond to emails in the same way. It can take a week or so to get a reply to an email and I never did manage to get anyone to answer the phone but when you do get a response, the help and advice is detailed, knowledgeable, personal and friendly. What he produces is of excellent quality and in my opinion, is a match for Bare Knuckle and that’s not something I say lightly. You will have to wait about four weeks for your pickups instead of just a few days but that’s because every order is completely bespoke, with no stock being kept on shelves. The wait may be frustrating but the considerable upside is that he will tailor your pickups to your individual specifications whenever possible so you’re not left trying to make a particular model fit your unique requirements. This is something Bare Knuckle used to do in the early days but they’re too big now to do bespoke designs unless you’re a famous artist and this is where Jaime really comes into his own. As it happens, these pickups are virtually the stock design, just a little tweaked in the wind to account for the fact that they’ve gone in a mahogany PRS SE Custom 24 instead of an alder Stratocaster. I’m already talking to him about a bespoke version of the Creamery ’59 set for my Gibson. So what of these pickups in practise?
Bridge
As you might expect with a name like ‘Classic ‘83’, these pickups are squarely aimed at the iconic tone of 80’s Metal and in that respect they had to square up to the Bare Knuckle ‘Holydiver’ that I’ve been using for the last few years. No pressure then! I LOVED the ‘Holydiver’ so it was with some trepidation that I took the plunge and ordered the Classic ’83 pickups to replace them but I’m pleased to say they accomplish their task with complete success. The Classic ’83 bridge humbucker is not just reminiscent of 80’s Metal tone like the Bare Knuckle ‘Holydiver’, it really IS that tone. Think of classic Metal guitarists of the era like Jake E. Lee and the Classic ’83 will faithfully give you that tone with complete authenticity and accuracy. There are plenty mids across the board but there’s also enough lows and highs to provide a rich tone with fat high frequencies. The tone here is thick, rich, organic and incredibly smooth. There is just no harshness at all in this pickup. Levels of compression are just as you’d expect from a pickup delivering 80’s Metal tone and it is wonderfully saturated but with plenty of articulation to stop things turning to mush. Rhythms are extremely satisfying to play. There is a really good clean tone there, which you might not expect from a ‘Metal’ pickup and as gain is added, the pickup gradually starts to unleash the animal within. Leads are thick, warm and fluid, providing a rewarding experience whether you’re alternate picking, tapping or using legato runs.
Criticisms? Not much to be honest. It nails that 80s Metal tone far more convincingly than the ‘Holydiver’ without a doubt but because it’s so astonishingly good at giving you that distinctive tone, it’s probably not as versatile as the ‘Holydiver’. In this regard it’s a victim of its own success but if you want more versatility, just tell Jaime and he can always adjust the specification of the build to meet your needs. I’m tuned to Eb and I found that under a lot of gain, the low Eb can start to lose a little definition but with two rows of screws instead of the more conventional screws and pole pieces, it’s a very easy pickup to adjust to get the tone you’re after. I also noticed that at gig volumes this pickup really starts to breathe properly and that slight looseness in the bottom end disappears. It’s a pickup a live performer will love. When I switch to this guitar at a gig I always smile as soon as I play the first chord. The other option of course, if you wanted things a little tighter and more modern, would be to go for either the alnico 8 or ceramic magnet options.
At 13.6k DC Resistance, it’s not a particularly hot pickup by modern standards but it’s hot enough to give it a nice hairy, aggressive growl beneath the smoothness of the tone and I find pinched harmonics are pretty easy. Realistically, if the wind was much hotter it would make the pickup too dark to give you a really accurate reflection of 80’s Metal tone.
Neck
The neck pickup is hotter than I might have expected at 11.7k so it’s certainly more modern sounding than many of the PAF based neck pickups that were used back in the day and as a result of the hot wind, that bit darker too. Once again, you can choose from alnico 5, alnico 8 or ceramic magnets but for the neck position, I imagine most people will go with the alnico 5 option. In a way, I wish he also offered alnico 2 and alnico 4 options but I daresay if you asked, he could make either a Classic ’83 or Creamery ’59 neck pickup with those magnets wound to about 9.0k, which I would have been sorely tempted by. Nevertheless, for a hot, alnico 5 neck pickup, the cleans are excellent. Actually, for any neck pickup, the cleans are excellent. It’s far better than the alnico 2, 490R that’s fitted in my Gibson and that surprised me a lot. Note definition is superb on any of the strings and leads are warm, fluid and smooth. It’s a gorgeous pickup to solo on regardless of your style and you need have no fears of a catastrophic volume drop when switching from the bridge. It takes masses of gain really well and I find it gives a nice balance between the cut of a modern neck humbucker and the creamy brightness of a more PAF-based design.
Conclusions
To sum things up I’d say that if you’re looking for that iconic 80’s Metal tone, the Classic ’83 from The Creamery is the most accurate and authentic sounding pickup I’ve ever tried and I can’t recommend it enough. Jaime is a great guy to deal with and build quality is absolutely top drawer. What you get is a pickup that is as good as anything I’ve tried from Bare Knuckle and can be designed and built to your own personal requirements. OK, so the wait can be frustrating, as can the struggle to get a speedy response at times but you end up with such a fantastic product and Jaime is so friendly, honest and helpful that I can easily forgive that. You also don’t pay the price premium you do with the likes of Bare Knuckle as Jaime’s pickups cost much the same as the far inferior Seymour Duncan and DiMarzio alternatives. It’s a no-brainer really and I will certainly be dealing with Jaime again.
I’m not new to changing pickups in guitars as I find that stock pickups from guitar manufacturers are invariably poor. Even when they choose to install a ‘named’ brand like Seymour Duncan, the results can still be disappointing because they don’t represent my tonal choices. As a result, over the years I’ve fitted a lot of pickups to various guitars from manufacturers like Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio and Bare Knuckle. This is the first set of pickups I’ve tried from Jaime at The Creamery in Manchester so I was interested to see how they’d stand up to the better known brands I’ve tried before.
When you visit the website, the first thing that struck me was the very limited range of pickups available compared to the myriad of possibilities available from other brands. At first, this seems a bit limiting but upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that it’s quite the opposite. Someone like Bare Knuckle offer you a number of vintage pickup options with different names and magnets yet The Creamery has only two – the Creamery ’57 and the Creamery ’59. However, each of these pickups can be bought with either alnico 2, 3, 4 or 5 magnets so effectively there are eight possibilities for vintage pickups. On top of that, talk to Jaime and he will adjust the wind to reflect your own personal tastes so in reality, the choice is practically limitless. This basic philosophy runs throughout the entire range so I had the choice of taking alnico 5 or 8 magnets or opting for a ceramic magnet. I should point out from the start of this review that I went with the classic alnico 5 option.
There’s clearly something about scatter-winding a pickup by hand because what is immediately apparent is that pickups from Seymour Duncan and DiMarzio just can’t live with the quality you get from either Bare Knuckle or The Creamery. They can’t take as much gain, they’re not as articulate and they ultimately just don’t have the tone so for the purpose of this review, I’m not even going to bother drawing further comparisons with those brands. The key question here for me, having been a Bare Knuckle user for many years, is could they live with the undoubted quality of that particular brand? In short, the answer to that question is yes, they can, but as with most things in life it’s a little more complex than that as there are pros and cons on both sides.
Where Bare Knuckle score over The Creamery is the speed of service they can provide. If I email Bare Knuckle, I will get a response within 24 hours easily and I’ve even known that to be the case on Bank Holidays. I can also phone and get a fast and knowledgeable response and in both cases I can speak to the owner, Tim Mills. Once I have selected the pickups I want, they are usually despatched within 48 hours. Bare Knuckle is now quite a major player in the pickup market so they have a number of staff employed and I daresay most orders these days simply come off the shelf so it’s hardly surprising they can operate faster but it’s still a VERY impressive level of customer service. In comparison, Jaime is operating by himself at The Creamery so there’s just no way he can deal with phone calls and respond to emails in the same way. It can take a week or so to get a reply to an email and I never did manage to get anyone to answer the phone but when you do get a response, the help and advice is detailed, knowledgeable, personal and friendly. What he produces is of excellent quality and in my opinion, is a match for Bare Knuckle and that’s not something I say lightly. You will have to wait about four weeks for your pickups instead of just a few days but that’s because every order is completely bespoke, with no stock being kept on shelves. The wait may be frustrating but the considerable upside is that he will tailor your pickups to your individual specifications whenever possible so you’re not left trying to make a particular model fit your unique requirements. This is something Bare Knuckle used to do in the early days but they’re too big now to do bespoke designs unless you’re a famous artist and this is where Jaime really comes into his own. As it happens, these pickups are virtually the stock design, just a little tweaked in the wind to account for the fact that they’ve gone in a mahogany PRS SE Custom 24 instead of an alder Stratocaster. I’m already talking to him about a bespoke version of the Creamery ’59 set for my Gibson. So what of these pickups in practise?
Bridge
As you might expect with a name like ‘Classic ‘83’, these pickups are squarely aimed at the iconic tone of 80’s Metal and in that respect they had to square up to the Bare Knuckle ‘Holydiver’ that I’ve been using for the last few years. No pressure then! I LOVED the ‘Holydiver’ so it was with some trepidation that I took the plunge and ordered the Classic ’83 pickups to replace them but I’m pleased to say they accomplish their task with complete success. The Classic ’83 bridge humbucker is not just reminiscent of 80’s Metal tone like the Bare Knuckle ‘Holydiver’, it really IS that tone. Think of classic Metal guitarists of the era like Jake E. Lee and the Classic ’83 will faithfully give you that tone with complete authenticity and accuracy. There are plenty mids across the board but there’s also enough lows and highs to provide a rich tone with fat high frequencies. The tone here is thick, rich, organic and incredibly smooth. There is just no harshness at all in this pickup. Levels of compression are just as you’d expect from a pickup delivering 80’s Metal tone and it is wonderfully saturated but with plenty of articulation to stop things turning to mush. Rhythms are extremely satisfying to play. There is a really good clean tone there, which you might not expect from a ‘Metal’ pickup and as gain is added, the pickup gradually starts to unleash the animal within. Leads are thick, warm and fluid, providing a rewarding experience whether you’re alternate picking, tapping or using legato runs.
Criticisms? Not much to be honest. It nails that 80s Metal tone far more convincingly than the ‘Holydiver’ without a doubt but because it’s so astonishingly good at giving you that distinctive tone, it’s probably not as versatile as the ‘Holydiver’. In this regard it’s a victim of its own success but if you want more versatility, just tell Jaime and he can always adjust the specification of the build to meet your needs. I’m tuned to Eb and I found that under a lot of gain, the low Eb can start to lose a little definition but with two rows of screws instead of the more conventional screws and pole pieces, it’s a very easy pickup to adjust to get the tone you’re after. I also noticed that at gig volumes this pickup really starts to breathe properly and that slight looseness in the bottom end disappears. It’s a pickup a live performer will love. When I switch to this guitar at a gig I always smile as soon as I play the first chord. The other option of course, if you wanted things a little tighter and more modern, would be to go for either the alnico 8 or ceramic magnet options.
At 13.6k DC Resistance, it’s not a particularly hot pickup by modern standards but it’s hot enough to give it a nice hairy, aggressive growl beneath the smoothness of the tone and I find pinched harmonics are pretty easy. Realistically, if the wind was much hotter it would make the pickup too dark to give you a really accurate reflection of 80’s Metal tone.
Neck
The neck pickup is hotter than I might have expected at 11.7k so it’s certainly more modern sounding than many of the PAF based neck pickups that were used back in the day and as a result of the hot wind, that bit darker too. Once again, you can choose from alnico 5, alnico 8 or ceramic magnets but for the neck position, I imagine most people will go with the alnico 5 option. In a way, I wish he also offered alnico 2 and alnico 4 options but I daresay if you asked, he could make either a Classic ’83 or Creamery ’59 neck pickup with those magnets wound to about 9.0k, which I would have been sorely tempted by. Nevertheless, for a hot, alnico 5 neck pickup, the cleans are excellent. Actually, for any neck pickup, the cleans are excellent. It’s far better than the alnico 2, 490R that’s fitted in my Gibson and that surprised me a lot. Note definition is superb on any of the strings and leads are warm, fluid and smooth. It’s a gorgeous pickup to solo on regardless of your style and you need have no fears of a catastrophic volume drop when switching from the bridge. It takes masses of gain really well and I find it gives a nice balance between the cut of a modern neck humbucker and the creamy brightness of a more PAF-based design.
Conclusions
To sum things up I’d say that if you’re looking for that iconic 80’s Metal tone, the Classic ’83 from The Creamery is the most accurate and authentic sounding pickup I’ve ever tried and I can’t recommend it enough. Jaime is a great guy to deal with and build quality is absolutely top drawer. What you get is a pickup that is as good as anything I’ve tried from Bare Knuckle and can be designed and built to your own personal requirements. OK, so the wait can be frustrating, as can the struggle to get a speedy response at times but you end up with such a fantastic product and Jaime is so friendly, honest and helpful that I can easily forgive that. You also don’t pay the price premium you do with the likes of Bare Knuckle as Jaime’s pickups cost much the same as the far inferior Seymour Duncan and DiMarzio alternatives. It’s a no-brainer really and I will certainly be dealing with Jaime again.
