Great humbucker! (or single coil, idk)

I've had this pickup for about 2 weeks now, and It's pretty great! It's very high output, and has a very thick sound. Works well for most styles of playing, but it does get a bit muddy depending on how you use it. If you know how to use it right, it works very well. The only reason I am deducting a star is because it is not perfect, but it gets the job done very well.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

From Gear Setup

Decent little humbucker

Had this in the bridge of my strat for a couple years. It definitely bucks the hum, and left a good amount of sharp treble in that position for solos to cut through. The output was kind of underwhelming, considering how it's marketed. And as other reviewers note, it had a tendency towards sounding muddy, especially when adding dirt pedals to the signal I lost a lot of articulation.

At The Top of My List

I first bought one of these maybe 17 years ago or so, and put it into one of my earlier model Fender Stratocasters in both the neck and bridge position. The output on these pickups is really great for solo work on the higher note strings, and depending on how much gain and the tone you're working with you can get some really crunchy rhythm sounds out of them. The neck pickup is my favorite for noodling around with, if you back off the tone a little bit you get those round, syrupy runs with a great amount of sustain. The only downside is when I plug into an amp after jamming on a different guitar/pickup, I have to do some knob tickling to get that hot mud sound out of the low E string. It's not a fault of the pickup, they just run hotter and have different tonal characteristics than stock pickups, so they're definitely purpose-built for shredding on a certain setup to get the most out of them. I have an older stratocaster I've had for over 20 years that I'm going to clone soon, and if it's any indication of how I feel over the long-term about these pickups, I'm going to drop a set of these in the clone.

From Gear Setup

Average Humbucking sound......until you blend it.

I took interest in this particular pickup when I saw a video on youtube demonstrating the "djentability" of a strat against an Ibanez 8 string. The video has since been taken down, much to my disappointment. Surprisingly the strat turns out to yield a more pleasant tone and I decided to give it a go. I was fortunate enough to find a steal of a deal on the second hand market (about 35 USD) so I bought it and installed it onto the bridge position of my Squier Affinity Strat (note that this is an earlier incarnation of the affinity series so the quality is roughly equivalent of that of a Squier standard).

The result was within my expectations - high gain, beefy and mid-rich tone distinct to the rest of the pickups on the guitar (both being single coils). When engaged, it has a significant volume increase which some may find bothersome, but that is only reasonable when you pit a high output humbucker against cheap factory single coils. Despite being great for rock and metal tones, the pickup could be a little bland. It lacks a lot of dynamics, and the clean tend to be a bit compressed and duller than that from a single coil.

Then I switched to position 2 on the pickup switch, which was when I discovered the tone I've been searching for several years. Crunchy, not too full sounding and touch-sensitive, with the sensitivity of a humbucker but the clarity and snap of a single coil. On lower gain settings - whether it be lead or rhythm - this combination shines. It's crunchy, bitey and....well it's pretty hard to describe, but I really can't recommend it more. Oh right, and slapping is strictly mandatory on that combination. It's slap heaven.

Anyways, this is a very solid humbucking pickup aimed towards rock and metal players who want a thick sound. Blend it with the middle pickup if you have one. You'll be surprised.

Brilliant!

A very awesome pick up indeed. I've heard people have felt its a bit dark and can be muddy sounding but I personally have never had that problem in my strat for the shortish time I used it in there. I still have it waiting for when I buy a new strat as it has been replaced by a SH-4 JB. Very crunchy clean tone indeed and very very mid range orientated, just sounds awesome to me. Great bass response and the highs aren't too over the top or piercing like some pick ups can be in my opinion. I used it with a coil tap so if I wanted to have that more traditional strat tone I could do. Cleans up pretty good to when you roll of the volume. If you want to do anything from the heavy alt rock of the 90's, well grunge really to stuff like maiden etc. excellent pick up

Not good for anything lower than Eb

If you play lower than Eb standard, don't get these, They get really muddy at lower tunings. Other than that, they're pretty good.

Great pickups - powerful!

Powerful pickups, like a humbucker in a single coil casing! Still retains that cleaner tone reminiscent of a single coil, but delivers that dirt when you want it to!