Slartibartfarst42
New Member
Background
I’ve written loads of reviews of different pickups over the years and mostly these have been based on Bare Knuckle pickups but a year or so ago I took a chance with a set of Classic ’83 pickups from Jaime at The Creamery in Manchester. I think it’s fair to say that I was very impressed so when it came to choosing pickups for my latest project, I had a difficult choice to make: do I stick with Bare Knuckle or do I take a punt on another set of Creamery pickups? It’s easy to spend the money on Bare Knuckles because there’s plenty information out there for each one whereas information on Creamery pickups is far more limited. I started by trying to think of the Bare Knuckles that might suit what I was after but each one had a problem. Holydiver? A great pickup but frankly the Classic ’83 is better. Miracle Man? Another great pickup but a bit too scooped for what I was after this time. Juggernauts? I really like the idea behind Juggernauts (ceramic magnet for tightness and bite flanked by two alnico 5 magnets for warmth and tone) but whenever I listened to the clips they always sounded too dry and clinical. By a process of elimination, I soon came to the conclusion that I needed to contact Jaime again.
The Conversation
My brief to Jaime was that the pickups would be going into a PRS SE Floyd Custom 24 and the for the bridge I wanted a pickup that had the tone, thickness and saturation of the Classic ’83 but with a bit more bite to it and a tad brighter, like you find in an alder bodied Jackson loaded with a Seymour Duncan JB or perhaps a similar guitar with a DiMarzio Super Distortion. Jaime suggested a ‘Double Six’, which is similar in concept to the Bare Knuckle Juggernaut but instead of using a ceramic magnet, he uses an alnico 8 flanked with two alnco 5 magnets. He said that to keep it a bit closer to the Classic ’83 he wouldn’t offset the coils quite so much and the power would be tweaked, partly for tone but also to make sure it didn’t overpower the neck.
For the neck pickup I wanted something far more PAF in nature, with a sweet lead tone and good articulation. I also wanted it to use double rows of screws so that it would match the Double Six. He suggested the Creamery ’59 with an alnico 2 magnet but the trick would be maintaining its PAF character while making it hot enough to keep up with the Double Six.
Double Six
To me, this pickup is about as close to perfection as I could ever hope to achieve. Clearly, given my brief to Jaime, there were always going to be some compromises and to a degree that is evident but I think we need to consider what is actually possible. My starting point was the Classic ’83 and the Double Six certainly sounds like it’s from the same family. Distortion is beautifully smooth, in a style that is strongly reminiscent of 80’s Metal and it gives you a saturated tone that is typical of the genre. In this regard it has the qualities of the Classic ’83 I was after, even if it is a slightly different flavour. The tone is thick but not quite as thick as the Classic ’83 due to the extra tightness the alnico 8 magnet is giving you. It’s also not quite as hairy as the Classic ’83 but it certainly isn’t a polite pickup either. Articulation is superb, even with high levels of gain, with both chords and single notes having real body to them. Without doubt it gives you a lot of the attributes of a ceramic pickup, like aggression and tightness, but without any of the associated negatives. The tone can never be described as ‘cold’ or ‘sterile’ like a typical ceramic pickup as there is always a rich warmth to it and this is why it produces a surprisingly good clean tone for such a hot pickup. Like the Classic ’83, there are certainly plenty mids here but overall, the tone is more balanced. There’s plenty body at the bottom end and highs can really sing in solos. In some ways it’s like a cross between the Bare Knuckle Holydiver and Miracle Man or to put it another way, it’s everything I hoped the Bare Knuckle Juggernaut would be but doesn’t quite achieve. The Double Six shows how it should be done and the results are absolutely sublime. I find that every time I play this guitar, I just can’t stop smiling because I feel like I’ve finally found the tone I’ve been searching for all my life. For the first time ever I’m struggling to find the words that would adequately convey just how good this pickup sounds. It just gives you the best quality alnico tone you can imagine combined with all the advantages of ceramic magnets but none of the drawbacks and even that high praise doesn’t really do this pickup justice. I could find virtually nothing about this pickup online before I placed my order so it was a bit of a shot in the dark but for anyone reading this review and wondering if it’s worth the money, the answer is a resounding ‘YES’!
Creamery ‘59
This pickup shows why dealing with Jaime at the Creamery is so good because things can be tweaked to suit the individual. I was initially going to go with an alnico 4 magnet for this pickup as I wanted it to maintain some articulation that I was afraid I’d lose with alnico 2. However, because Jaime agreed to make it with double rows of screws to match the Double Six, he suggested using alnico 2 instead as the tone would be sweeter and the extra row of screws help to make an alnico 2 magnet more articulate. My initial concern was that a PAF pickup would be swamped by the Double Six but these fears proved to be groundless. What is immediately apparent is that this pickup produces enough power to easily live with a hot bridge pickup yet it is distinctly PAF in its tone. Your sound is clear and creamy, with a musicality that you just don’t get from a non-PAF pickup. I was originally after a neck tone that was like early Dave Murray when he was using proper PAF humbuckers in his Strat and this thing delivers in spades. If anything, I think this pickup produces a better tone than even Dave Murray had in many respects. There may be better pickups out there for shredders but this thing just drips tone and I find that during solos I’m utilising the neck pickup far more than usual. When I get around to replacing the pickups in my Gibson Les Paul I’ll go for something different in the bridge as I’ll need a different flavour there for some of the things I play but for the neck I think I’ll have to get another Creamery ’59 wound a bit lighter to match what will go in the bridge.
Conclusions
Once again Jaime does the business and I am reminded why he is my ‘go-to’ pickup manufacturer. I just can’t envisage me ever owning another Bare Knuckle again when these are better, cheaper and more personalised. Individually, each of these pickups is superb and together they make a formidable set. You can look at all of the individual components of the design and think, ‘Yes, that sounds like it will be really good’ but then something magical seems to happen and the end result is so much greater than the sum of its parts. If the world we lived in was perfect, would I change anything about them? Yes, I’d make the Double Six a little hairier and I’d certainly make the Creamery ’59 brighter but the thing to remember is that we don’t live in a perfect world. I recognise that Jaime can’t make the Double Six as hairy as the Classic ’83 because the alnico 8 magnet in the design prevents it and by the same token, I can’t have a brighter neck PAF and still have it live with the Double Six. It’s simply a fact that the hotter a pickup, the darker the sound and no amount of wishing it otherwise will change the physics of the situation. Frankly it’s remarkable to me that Jaime can get any pickup that hot and still make it distinctly a PAF. Everything in guitar tone is about compromise and pickups are no different but I honestly believe that what I have here is the perfect compromise for a Rock/Metal pickup set and it’s a set that is astonishingly versatile. I really can’t overstate just how good these pickups are. Awesome alnico tone with ceramic tightness and a sweet PAF neck humbucker to match; life doesn’t get much better than this. Regardless of what you’re after in a pickup, I would have no hesitation in recommending pickups from The Creamery. Certainly if you like Rock and Metal with a blend of vintage and modern, then I would take this set over anything else available today.
I’ve written loads of reviews of different pickups over the years and mostly these have been based on Bare Knuckle pickups but a year or so ago I took a chance with a set of Classic ’83 pickups from Jaime at The Creamery in Manchester. I think it’s fair to say that I was very impressed so when it came to choosing pickups for my latest project, I had a difficult choice to make: do I stick with Bare Knuckle or do I take a punt on another set of Creamery pickups? It’s easy to spend the money on Bare Knuckles because there’s plenty information out there for each one whereas information on Creamery pickups is far more limited. I started by trying to think of the Bare Knuckles that might suit what I was after but each one had a problem. Holydiver? A great pickup but frankly the Classic ’83 is better. Miracle Man? Another great pickup but a bit too scooped for what I was after this time. Juggernauts? I really like the idea behind Juggernauts (ceramic magnet for tightness and bite flanked by two alnico 5 magnets for warmth and tone) but whenever I listened to the clips they always sounded too dry and clinical. By a process of elimination, I soon came to the conclusion that I needed to contact Jaime again.
The Conversation
My brief to Jaime was that the pickups would be going into a PRS SE Floyd Custom 24 and the for the bridge I wanted a pickup that had the tone, thickness and saturation of the Classic ’83 but with a bit more bite to it and a tad brighter, like you find in an alder bodied Jackson loaded with a Seymour Duncan JB or perhaps a similar guitar with a DiMarzio Super Distortion. Jaime suggested a ‘Double Six’, which is similar in concept to the Bare Knuckle Juggernaut but instead of using a ceramic magnet, he uses an alnico 8 flanked with two alnco 5 magnets. He said that to keep it a bit closer to the Classic ’83 he wouldn’t offset the coils quite so much and the power would be tweaked, partly for tone but also to make sure it didn’t overpower the neck.
For the neck pickup I wanted something far more PAF in nature, with a sweet lead tone and good articulation. I also wanted it to use double rows of screws so that it would match the Double Six. He suggested the Creamery ’59 with an alnico 2 magnet but the trick would be maintaining its PAF character while making it hot enough to keep up with the Double Six.
Double Six
To me, this pickup is about as close to perfection as I could ever hope to achieve. Clearly, given my brief to Jaime, there were always going to be some compromises and to a degree that is evident but I think we need to consider what is actually possible. My starting point was the Classic ’83 and the Double Six certainly sounds like it’s from the same family. Distortion is beautifully smooth, in a style that is strongly reminiscent of 80’s Metal and it gives you a saturated tone that is typical of the genre. In this regard it has the qualities of the Classic ’83 I was after, even if it is a slightly different flavour. The tone is thick but not quite as thick as the Classic ’83 due to the extra tightness the alnico 8 magnet is giving you. It’s also not quite as hairy as the Classic ’83 but it certainly isn’t a polite pickup either. Articulation is superb, even with high levels of gain, with both chords and single notes having real body to them. Without doubt it gives you a lot of the attributes of a ceramic pickup, like aggression and tightness, but without any of the associated negatives. The tone can never be described as ‘cold’ or ‘sterile’ like a typical ceramic pickup as there is always a rich warmth to it and this is why it produces a surprisingly good clean tone for such a hot pickup. Like the Classic ’83, there are certainly plenty mids here but overall, the tone is more balanced. There’s plenty body at the bottom end and highs can really sing in solos. In some ways it’s like a cross between the Bare Knuckle Holydiver and Miracle Man or to put it another way, it’s everything I hoped the Bare Knuckle Juggernaut would be but doesn’t quite achieve. The Double Six shows how it should be done and the results are absolutely sublime. I find that every time I play this guitar, I just can’t stop smiling because I feel like I’ve finally found the tone I’ve been searching for all my life. For the first time ever I’m struggling to find the words that would adequately convey just how good this pickup sounds. It just gives you the best quality alnico tone you can imagine combined with all the advantages of ceramic magnets but none of the drawbacks and even that high praise doesn’t really do this pickup justice. I could find virtually nothing about this pickup online before I placed my order so it was a bit of a shot in the dark but for anyone reading this review and wondering if it’s worth the money, the answer is a resounding ‘YES’!
Creamery ‘59
This pickup shows why dealing with Jaime at the Creamery is so good because things can be tweaked to suit the individual. I was initially going to go with an alnico 4 magnet for this pickup as I wanted it to maintain some articulation that I was afraid I’d lose with alnico 2. However, because Jaime agreed to make it with double rows of screws to match the Double Six, he suggested using alnico 2 instead as the tone would be sweeter and the extra row of screws help to make an alnico 2 magnet more articulate. My initial concern was that a PAF pickup would be swamped by the Double Six but these fears proved to be groundless. What is immediately apparent is that this pickup produces enough power to easily live with a hot bridge pickup yet it is distinctly PAF in its tone. Your sound is clear and creamy, with a musicality that you just don’t get from a non-PAF pickup. I was originally after a neck tone that was like early Dave Murray when he was using proper PAF humbuckers in his Strat and this thing delivers in spades. If anything, I think this pickup produces a better tone than even Dave Murray had in many respects. There may be better pickups out there for shredders but this thing just drips tone and I find that during solos I’m utilising the neck pickup far more than usual. When I get around to replacing the pickups in my Gibson Les Paul I’ll go for something different in the bridge as I’ll need a different flavour there for some of the things I play but for the neck I think I’ll have to get another Creamery ’59 wound a bit lighter to match what will go in the bridge.
Conclusions
Once again Jaime does the business and I am reminded why he is my ‘go-to’ pickup manufacturer. I just can’t envisage me ever owning another Bare Knuckle again when these are better, cheaper and more personalised. Individually, each of these pickups is superb and together they make a formidable set. You can look at all of the individual components of the design and think, ‘Yes, that sounds like it will be really good’ but then something magical seems to happen and the end result is so much greater than the sum of its parts. If the world we lived in was perfect, would I change anything about them? Yes, I’d make the Double Six a little hairier and I’d certainly make the Creamery ’59 brighter but the thing to remember is that we don’t live in a perfect world. I recognise that Jaime can’t make the Double Six as hairy as the Classic ’83 because the alnico 8 magnet in the design prevents it and by the same token, I can’t have a brighter neck PAF and still have it live with the Double Six. It’s simply a fact that the hotter a pickup, the darker the sound and no amount of wishing it otherwise will change the physics of the situation. Frankly it’s remarkable to me that Jaime can get any pickup that hot and still make it distinctly a PAF. Everything in guitar tone is about compromise and pickups are no different but I honestly believe that what I have here is the perfect compromise for a Rock/Metal pickup set and it’s a set that is astonishingly versatile. I really can’t overstate just how good these pickups are. Awesome alnico tone with ceramic tightness and a sweet PAF neck humbucker to match; life doesn’t get much better than this. Regardless of what you’re after in a pickup, I would have no hesitation in recommending pickups from The Creamery. Certainly if you like Rock and Metal with a blend of vintage and modern, then I would take this set over anything else available today.
