UberMetalDood
New member
I have had this pickup installed for about a week now and thought I should post a review since information about this pickup is scarce. This is a GREAT single humbucker for a strat bridge. I installed this in my Am Deluxe alder strat with rosewood fretboard. It's the new Am. Deluxe with the NS3 pickups instead of last years model with the SCN's.
As a bridge humbucking pickup, it pairs very well with the stock neck & middle pickups. There is a noticeable difference in output between single coils and the STK-S9, but it still retains a lot of single coil characteristics.
The most amazing things about it are that it has awesome harmonics and if you juice the amp distortion, you can get really nice chugging sounds out of the low E and A strings. Harmonics on this thing virtually jump out of the pickup on command. It's not as crazy as some of the harmonics you can get out of a Dimarzio Fred or D Sonic, but for a single humbucker is very impressive.
It's fairly tight and has great definition. It's not harsh at all and has prominent mids. With my tone control all the way up it's almost perfect, so I set it on 8 for the perfect warmth and treble response.
If it could be just a little bit hotter I would have absolutely no criticism of it. I'm still not sure if I installed it wrong, but everything is working as it should and it sounds great so I'm not worried about it now. I know resistance is not a measure of output, but Seymour Duncan pickups seem to generally indicate more output with higher resitances. This is rated around 20 whereas the JB and Lil 59 had around 1/2 the resistance.
I thought it would be louder and more humbucker like, but the description on the website seems fairly accurate. It's a great pickup and I'm going to keep it in my strat.
I would post a sound clip but I tried that many times before without a response, so I'm obviously not a very good player. Just take my word for it that it's a really great pickup.
As a bridge humbucking pickup, it pairs very well with the stock neck & middle pickups. There is a noticeable difference in output between single coils and the STK-S9, but it still retains a lot of single coil characteristics.
The most amazing things about it are that it has awesome harmonics and if you juice the amp distortion, you can get really nice chugging sounds out of the low E and A strings. Harmonics on this thing virtually jump out of the pickup on command. It's not as crazy as some of the harmonics you can get out of a Dimarzio Fred or D Sonic, but for a single humbucker is very impressive.
It's fairly tight and has great definition. It's not harsh at all and has prominent mids. With my tone control all the way up it's almost perfect, so I set it on 8 for the perfect warmth and treble response.
If it could be just a little bit hotter I would have absolutely no criticism of it. I'm still not sure if I installed it wrong, but everything is working as it should and it sounds great so I'm not worried about it now. I know resistance is not a measure of output, but Seymour Duncan pickups seem to generally indicate more output with higher resitances. This is rated around 20 whereas the JB and Lil 59 had around 1/2 the resistance.
I thought it would be louder and more humbucker like, but the description on the website seems fairly accurate. It's a great pickup and I'm going to keep it in my strat.
I would post a sound clip but I tried that many times before without a response, so I'm obviously not a very good player. Just take my word for it that it's a really great pickup.
