Re: JB Jr vs Hot Stack Plus
I know a lot about these pickups. I don't care for the JB Jr at all. It's and insipid pickup and even though it's one of the higher output stacks, it responds nothing like the JB. It sucks for clean tones. It's one of Seymour Duncan's suckiest pickups. Sorry, but I'm just being honest. The Hot Stack Plus is Seymour Duncan's best bridge stack. It's such a good pickup that I like it even more than the YJM bridge which I'd say is 2nd best in terms of the higher output noiseless strat pickups. The STK-S9b has such a wonderful midrange that it would make a Dimarzio lover envious. Dimarzio generally makes the best stacks period (by stack I mean stacked, noiseless single size humbuckers or whatever you want to call them). It's not just because Dimarzio does them right, but also because they're the only ones besides Seymour Duncan who have a whole variety of them.
Anyway, the STK-S9b is way more like the JB than the JB Jr. is. In fact, they should scrap the JB Jr., apologize for making it, and either rename the Hot Stack Plus the JB Jr. or even better the Warrren Dimartini Jr. Yeah, it's that good. It feels quick enough, loads of harmonic content, great output, a little sparkle in the high mids for clean tones, not fat like the Hot Rails, but not thin in any way. Maybe you could say it has a moderate thickness. It has a nice bass response, so you won't be missing any, but it's also a little tight and has enough output to play metal if you have enough distortion from your amp or pedal.
I wish they made a matching neck pickup or a calibrated set of this pickup. It's a damned shame they don't. I love this pickup as much as any Dimarzio. You will not be disappointed if you get it. The STK-S9 vs. JB Jr. is like comparing German beer to prison toilet beer.
EDIT: It pairs well with single coils, but I'd recommend the Classic Stack Plus neck. In fact, and I'm not even kidding, writing this response for you made me realize that I forgot to buy another one. I had one in a strat that I built and recently sold. Right before I sold it, I thought about swapping the STK-S9 with another pickup, but the guy who bought it had already been asking me while the description read STK-S9. I hated losing that pickup. THEREFORE, I literally just bought one online and came back to update this thread.
If you buy it and you don't like it, I will buy it from you (at used market price of course). You can't go wrong with that pickup really well. You can get a range of satisfying clean tones just by adjusting your guitar volume. Let me tell you something else, I demoed that strat with a local guy from Craig's List on his JTM45 cranked up at his country house and I tell you the tone was nothing short of iconic.
Yeah, great thread because it seems like the STK-S9 doesn't get the attention it deserves. It's probably because SD has a habit of using "stack" in the names of several pickups. They should call it the Savage 9!
