nexion218
New member
... but I passionately loathe fish, so I got me a Mule. A whole set of it actually. lol
I've always been curious what's all the rage about Bare Knuckle pickups. One thing I knew for sure: they are most probably overpriced due to the boo-teek hype of today and there is no way in hell I'm paying more than 400 USD worth of whatever currency for a pair.
But thanks to my day starting ritual of going through the classifieds, I stumbled upon a Mule set, with chrome covers, two conductor, long legs, pristine condition in box with coaster and sticker (the latter two are very important, they obviously make the things sound better... lol) for around half of it's MSRP, making it a reasonable investment.
Popped 'em in the cheapo Ibanez semi I scored a few weeks back (I never really understood the idea of the ceramic HBs in a semi to begin with apart from being cheap). The installation was pretty much seamless, especially given that this is the first semi that I have ever worked on (well apart from reversing the selector positions, but when I realized it was already put together and it's not something that I am willing to take the thing apart again for)
Anyways, they seem to be everything the company promises: very vintage, very well balanced, very articulate and very touch sensitive. They can really go from barely driven to full on distortion just by picking - exposing every bit of my inconsistencies that I never noticed on my "metal" pickups. So all in all a happy camper here. Based on first impressions these are really excellent pickups, really cream of the crop, but are definitely overpriced. IMHO no production model pickup should ever cost that much, period.
Here's a small sample, comparing the Mule to the stock pickups using the small Autumn Leaves excerpt I did last time around w/ te walking bass. In the clip with the drums, the OEMs are hard panned left, the Mule hard panned right. The Mule is definitely more "lively" and thicker sounding. The OEMs feel kinda "anemic" compared to the new toy.
https://soundcloud.com/user-97187376...social_sharing
I've always been curious what's all the rage about Bare Knuckle pickups. One thing I knew for sure: they are most probably overpriced due to the boo-teek hype of today and there is no way in hell I'm paying more than 400 USD worth of whatever currency for a pair.
But thanks to my day starting ritual of going through the classifieds, I stumbled upon a Mule set, with chrome covers, two conductor, long legs, pristine condition in box with coaster and sticker (the latter two are very important, they obviously make the things sound better... lol) for around half of it's MSRP, making it a reasonable investment.
Popped 'em in the cheapo Ibanez semi I scored a few weeks back (I never really understood the idea of the ceramic HBs in a semi to begin with apart from being cheap). The installation was pretty much seamless, especially given that this is the first semi that I have ever worked on (well apart from reversing the selector positions, but when I realized it was already put together and it's not something that I am willing to take the thing apart again for)
Anyways, they seem to be everything the company promises: very vintage, very well balanced, very articulate and very touch sensitive. They can really go from barely driven to full on distortion just by picking - exposing every bit of my inconsistencies that I never noticed on my "metal" pickups. So all in all a happy camper here. Based on first impressions these are really excellent pickups, really cream of the crop, but are definitely overpriced. IMHO no production model pickup should ever cost that much, period.
Here's a small sample, comparing the Mule to the stock pickups using the small Autumn Leaves excerpt I did last time around w/ te walking bass. In the clip with the drums, the OEMs are hard panned left, the Mule hard panned right. The Mule is definitely more "lively" and thicker sounding. The OEMs feel kinda "anemic" compared to the new toy.
https://soundcloud.com/user-97187376...social_sharing
