Youtube Demo Artist Spotlight: James Phillips
6th July 2026
Celebrating our Demo Artists
Here at Bare Knuckle we are immensely proud of our Youtube channel, and the demo artists we are lucky enough to work with. A Youtube channel, for a company that specialises in tone, is a priceless asset. Not only can players visit it to check out the sounds and tones we produce, it can be used as a tool for learning, a resource for inspiration and a way to form a community of like-minded players.
Recently we have been shining a spotlight on this fantastic resource, and the demo artists who make our Youtube the most amazing tool for guitar players worldwide.
Today we are talking to James Phillips, a guitarist who has been a demo artist for us for five years.
James Phillips has been playing guitar since he was sixteen, which he recalls as feeling "late to the game," but actually shows how a passion for and dedication to the instrument can bring a player on in no time. James was kind enough to talk us through his background in music and playing.
"I remember having the Fever album by Bullet for My Valentine bought for me and it got me hooked on metal music and made me want to play. I had a cheap Strat copy bought for me by my parents, which I played to death for its first three years of life. I took up some lessons which were so beneficial for me, because I had zero musical talent whatsoever! So I really had to put in the effort to learn.
Bands I gravitated towards when I was younger were Trivium, Bullet, Avenged Sevenfold, Foo Fighters and Killswitch Engage. I was very much a 2010 metalcore fan boy, which still comes through in my playing today. I picked up guitar surprisingly fast during high school and then college as I enjoyed it so much. I went on to study music at University and obtained a degree in Professional Musicianship. I owe a lot of my current music career to this course, as I wouldn’t have learnt so many of the skills I needed to go on to be successful. I am also hugely influenced by instrumental music from artists such as Intervals, Jeff Loomis and Andy James Polyphia. These probably shaped the second half of my guitar playing and pushed me down the social media and demo work route.
A lot of my music career experience has been trial and error. I have never done any courses on music production or video editing, and even taught myself to install my own pickups. I’ve always found learning the hard way is sometimes the best way to do it as it really makes you think it through. I would like to add that I owe so much of my professional career to Tim and all the Bare Knuckle team. They spotted me at a time when I hadn’t really done anything professional and it was so great to be recognised as an upcoming guitar player by them. It's been great throughout all the years of working together, and I can't wait for whatever may come further down the line."
The Unity humbucker is a bit of an unsung hero in the BKP range, so I hope more people hop on board with how good they sound!"
So how long have you been a Bare Knuckle demo artist, and how did it come about?
"I have been an artist for Bare Knuckle now for five years, since 2021. I’ve been using BKPs for longer, since about 2017, while I was studying music at University. I think my love for Bare Knuckles came, like so many others, from Misha Mansoor of Periphery. I spent most of my time back then just posting videos of me playing on my Instagram, and then out of the blue Tim [Mills] messaged me asking me to do a demo for the Silo pickups when they released them. Naturally I obliged and got stuck in, and it went from there. Shortly after that I went on to do a demo for the Unity humbuckers when they were released. The Unity's aim was to raise money for humanitarian aid during the ongoing Ukraine conflict. After this followed plenty more demo requests, resulting in me becoming a staple demo creator for Bare Knuckle."
The original concept behind Unity and the initial limited edition run of Unity 2022 humbucker sets, hand-wound and numbered by Tim Mills, raised over £10K for humanitarian aid. A subsequent limited edition run of Unity T-shirts raised a further £3K.
Talk to us about your favourite guitar, and top pick from the Bare Knuckle range.
"My favourite and dream guitar is my custom Mayones Duvell HSS 7 string. It has got the most stunning quilt maple top I’ve ever seen. It's my ideal guitar from top to bottom and it still feels surreal that I have that guitar. It’s loaded with a Ragnarok bridge pickup and a couple of Cobra single coils, which just sound monstrous in every setting!
As for Bare Knuckle pick, I think my favourite has got to be the Unity humbuckers. The massive ceramic magnet in the bridge makes it sound so damn huge, and gives some of the nicest split coil tones I’ve come across. When paired with low tunings and loads of gain it's possibly one of the most squishy, chewy and satisfying pickups to riff through. It’s a bit of an unsung hero in the BKP range, so I hope more people hop on board with how good they sound!"
Talk to us about your rig run down, and how you approach creating a demo.
"For the past eight or nine years I have mainly used Fractal Audio Units for my tones. I find their tones just to be next level quality. There's so much choice within the unit to find the sound in your head. I love tweaking amp tones and could do it all day. I tend to use that same setup for live as well, as it lets me take my studio sound into a live setting with no issues at all.
When it comes to my studio/recording setup, I keep things basic. It's just guitar and amp into a little Focusrite Scarlett that I’ve had for about seven years, and a pair of Yamaha HS7 speakers. No mess, nice and easy and I can just plug in and play at any time.
So from there, when it comes to writing a demo, I try as much as possible to just let the creative ideas flow once I have the pickups in my guitar. Different pickups will lead to different tones and different sounding riffs. As an example, the amount of gain the Halcyon humbuckers have instantly made me want to riff my heart out. However, whilst the Nailbombs led me down a similar route for the riffs, the demo ended up with so many lower gain and clean tones just because that’s where I felt the pickups took me.
Every demo is different, some take a day to do and some take two weeks, but I always like making sure I don’t force the demos out as I want it to reflect my playing as much as the pickup itself."
What kind of advice would you impart on someone just starting out with guitar, or wanting to get into demo work? You must have some great tips and tricks for the upcoming player!
"Learn and play as much as you can! The more you put in the more you will get out, take the opportunities and enjoy it! Also, it's so important to use your ears! I’ve always been a massive advocate for listening and hearing how things sound and then trying to replicate from that. I think it's important to find a tone that works for you. I spent so long trying to chase other people’s tones until I realised that it's how people play that contributes so much to their tone.
As for top tips, I think my main one is to get stuck in and get together with other people. Social media is such a powerful tool these days, you just never know where it can take you. I never thought, sat in my bedroom when I was seventeen learning to play guitar, that ten years' later I would have been heading out to the NAMM show in LA with one of my favourite companies."
