Bare Knuckle Pickups Aftermath Humbucker Set

The Aftermath has been pummeling eardrums for well over a decade. During the olden days, the BKP “extreme metal” menu is pretty much the Warpig, the Painkiller, and the Miracle Man. The Aftermath opens up a fresh palette. Let’s take a look at how.

The earliest “contemporary” BKP models are the Warpig and the Miracle Man. The ‘pig is an incredibly compressed, full, aggressive pickup with loads of low end. The MM is brighter, far fewer mids, and still a hot wind. Another hot wind, the Painkiller comes a little later, with tighter lows and more upper mids. That really helps to set the stage for how the Aftermath fits in to things.

To say BKP put those other pickups into a mixer and dropped out the Aftermath is an over-simplification. Although, companies do often find spaces in the lineup to develop new offerings. Yet I’m not saying this is in any way how this set of humbuckers came to be. Still imagine wanting a little less compression than the Warpig. But more girth than the Miracle Man. And how about more lower mids than the Painkiller.

Installation

For this application, I’m going with the same guitars in play for the Silo evaluation. Double cut 2-humbucker mahogany body with maple neck and 25-1/2″ maple fingerboard. The harness contains the BKP pots and caps. 550k pots, 0.022μF cap for the bridge, and the 0.015μF cap for the neck. The guitar has 10-46 strings and has E standard tuning. This set has the short filister screw poles.

Evaluation

In application, the Aftermath hits me as big and full and bold. The voice is solid in the high end and firm in the low end. A fairly even balance to the EQ, with the low midrange drawing the most attention. This makes the Aftermath come across as a little throaty, which can be a good match for a bright guitar. Even so, there is plenty of room for harmonic clarity. Squeals and squeaks and screams all jump right out of the mix.

A lot is said about “tightness” of this bridge humbucker. More specific suggestions are that it seems to have a response like “built-in gate”. It’s really due to the 3 ceramic magnets. Forget about a single ceramic magnet. Using ceramic magnets as spacers is a fairly common application for power and control. Imagine a really strong magnetic field. So strong that the less it’s disturbed, the more it clamps down tight.

For even more precision, add the shorter filister screws to that. Longer poles literally pull and stretch the magnetic field down toward and past the baseplate, making it bigger. The shorter poles keep the field up at the coil, tighter and more in control.

The neck pickup is hotter than most traditional selections and gets power from an Alnico 5 magnet. The overall character is a little rounder than the bridge counterpart. I am finding the the Aftermath neck is a little better for clean amp settings, without having to get into split or parallel wiring tricks. Even so, there is a sense that a ceramic option on the neck would be worth exploring and I hope that is an option to be considered for this set.

Specs

Demo

What do you think about that? Pretty brutal, but also versatile. Right?

Conclusion

The Aftermath is good for punk, hardcore, hard rock, progressive & djent metal, nu-metal, thrash, death metal, metal core, and extreme metal styles. Like most Bare Knuckle humbuckers, the Aftermath is available in 6, 7, and 8-string variations. There are over a dozen bobbin colors and pole screw options to choose from when ordering. If you like covers, BKP offers many cover and radiator selections to personalize your humbuckers.

For reference, this Bare Knuckle Aftermath humbucker set evaluation was conducted with the following: Fractal Axe-Fx II XL+ featuring Celestion Impluse Responses and Fractal MFC-101 MIDI Foot Controller. ADA MP-1 Tube Pre-Amp loaded with Tube Amp Doctor ECC83 Premium Selected tubes, using the ADA MC-1 MIDI Controller. Fryette LX II Stereo Tube Power Amplifier. Physical cabs use are Marshall 1960B, Mojotone British, and Peavey 6505 cabs loaded with Celestion Classic Series Vintage 30s and Classic Series G12M Greenbacks.

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