To my mind far too many humbucking pickups today sound
similar - everyone seems to be producing stuff with a tight, compressed, almost
processed sounds. Everyone’s obsessed with vintage this and PAF that,
forgetting that many guitarists need to find their own voice, not sound like
the crowd. So enter the Oil City BrassKnuckle. It’s not a crowd follower …
every element of its design harks back to much older concepts than current
trend. It’s a humbucker sure, but more
than that, it’s two fully independent single coils, with separate alnico
magnets for each string, mounted on an industry standard humbucker frame that
will fit in any guitar built or adapted to take humbuckers. The coils are custom made 50% taller than
standard for enhanced top end response. A steel inner inductance plate, similar
in function to a Telecaster’s baseplate, shapes the frequency response further.
Left is a wound BrassKnuckle bobbin right a standard humbucker one.
What you end up with is a tone that is vintage, very broad
in its response, and absolutely huge! Split down you have classic single coil
cut and sparkle with masses of harmonic content and ‘air’ in the tone. With
both coils in play power is there a plenty and the BrassKnuckle lends its self perfectly
to all kinds of series/parallel in or out of phase switching combinations.
Coming soon … the BrassKnuckle neck position humbucker.
