BARE KNUCKLE ‘T-TOP’ HUMBUCKER

We’ll begin with a confession: once upon a time, I was a serial pickup-changer. Every time I bought a new guitar, the stock pickups would be out of it before you could say “knife”. The guitars from that era that are still with me – which is most of them – have a range of Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro II single coils, Custom Custom humbuckers, David White Old Glories and, more recently, a Bare Knuckle here and there. When I switched to playing acoustic guitar almost exclusively back in 2005 or thereabouts, the madness ceased. I mean, they tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, “No, no, no…”

All this being said, one of the projects that I have been meaning to get around to for years is what amounts to performing a factory reset on my 2001 Les Paul Standard. I realise it’s a fool’s errand to try and transform a contemporary guitar into a true vintage piece, but I’ve always reasoned that this isn’t the point. My most admired guitar sound is to be found on from , performed on Clapton’s ‘Fool’ 1964 SG Standard, which would have been around four years old at