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Bare Knuckle Crawler
List: $669 (calibrated pair)
If you are new to the Bare Knuckle brand name, it’s a boutique pickup brand from the UK (hence the excessive list price). The model reviewed here, the Crawler, is a humbucker, wound especially for one of the best Les Paul toting session musician in Britian, Geoff Whitehorn. Some of us might have come across Mr. Whitehorn’s music tutorials in Guitar Technique magazine.
The Crawler is affectionately named after one of Geoff’s bands, Back Street Crawler. The pickup is essentially a covered, Alnico V unit, carefully wound to fulfill his blues rock needs. Clean, the Crawler sounds full in both the neck & bridge positions. Both units successfully produce a degree of warmth to differentiate itself from cheap sounding pickups. Interestingly, in split mode, the Crawler possesses a healthy dose of twang not normally associated with a humbucker. This specific voicing is retained under restrained, driven settings.
However, the Crawler’s forte is that of pumped-up drive, otherwise known as ‘blues rock’ to the rest of us. This pickup was wound to churn out a balanced bass & midrange response that sounds crisp & sweet. This voicing is responsive through both tube/ solid state amps & picked/ fingered playing. Harmonics are aplenty in both units, if your are particular about playing nuances, the Crawler will reward your inputs accordingly. With that said, this humbucker isn’t quite accustomed to metal-type distortion settings, reason being the grizzly nature of its bass/ lower midrange. All in all, the Crawler is best installed in a set neck guitar with sufficient inherent bottom end girth.
Is it worth paying $670 for a pair of humbuckers knowing that other similarly voiced pair could be had for less than half this list price? When you pay for these pickups, you are paying for a guranteed outcome. Some of us will undoubtedly choose to invest in assurance because the returns are simply worth it in the long run. That choice is ultimately yours to make.
Worthy competitors:
• Seymour Duncan SH-14 Custom 5 (bridge)
• Seymour Duncan APH-1 Alnico II Pro (neck)
