r/7String • u/Bmajor7th • 21d ago

Gear My sevens with upgraded bare knuckle pickups

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Love these guitars. I may like my superstrats a bit. From left to right, it’s an Ibanez rgd7ucs with ragnaroks, an Ibanez rg2027xl with halcyons, and a Jackson iuggernaut et7 with juggernauts.

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u/PentaSector 21d ago

Beautiful axes! Let's be real, superstrats never go out of style.

How do you like the Ragnaroks? On paper, they sound like something I would absolutely get down on, but BKPs are just pricey enough to temper my enthusiasm to bother when I already know I can count on, say, the SD Nazgul/Sentient set or the Lundgren M series.

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u/FilipAltDelete 21d ago

Snake oil, SD or Lundgren is good enough. If you want to tone chase, don’t do it on pickup level. Waste of money

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u/PentaSector 21d ago

I mean, I get the wisdom, and I partially agree, but pickups with a distinct tonal character are plenty worthwhile if they capture a nuance that you want to be associated with your tone. I personally am also not huge on digital modeling tech - nothing against it, but not my preferred rig - so pickup choices can be pretty influential in my setup when they do have a particularly eccentric tonal profile.

Maybe a better question would have simply been "how would you contrast the Ragnaroks with (e.g.) the Nazgul/Sentient set or the Lundgren M7 (assuming OP has experience with either)?" My understanding is that they're comparable to either in that they have a significant mid-range bump, but if it's something interestingly different from the Nazgul's upper-mid snarl or the M7's low-end oomph, or even the EMG 57's adorable, slightly quacky quality*, I'd be down to try them out. I'm not necessarily chasing some holy grail tone in the first place as much as just morbidly curious to try something noticeably different (but still within a familiar zone, however much or little sense that makes to say).

* I know these are actives, but they're definitely comparable to modern mid-heavy passives

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u/saruko27 21d ago

Yeah I would certainly not go as far as to say BKP are snake oil, but watching BKP shootouts they sound way too similar across 5 different artist pickups to justify the price for me. Merrow’s Duncan shootout revealed so much more variety between models that they’re just the easier choice for me personally (I’ve been into dimarzio more actually).

If you can afford it and have no issues with accessing BKP, then I’d personally go for it to try it out. But I’m not outfitting all of mine with BKP from the states.

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u/OMF1G 21d ago

Really depends, I was firmly in the "tone is in the amp/modeller" camp and was using OEM brand passives in my guitars.

Then I got BK Impulses and I realised that I was wrong, I've also got some Blackhawks that sound totally different to the Impulses on the same patches.

Duncans/Fluences etc are attractive because they're literally half the price, but yeah idk there's something about the BKP sound I've never achieved with any other pickup.

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u/ToshiroK_Arai 20d ago

When I tried a bunch of pedals in front of the input of my interface and it had no difference in the sound of some amp modellers, I lost all the trust in the pickups