fender_bender
New member
This is my first post here so go easy on me. I'm very interested in the new STK-S4. I have read all the threads concerning this pickup and I have a few comments and questions. Lewguitar has stated that he feels these pickups cop 85% of the true single coil vibe. "The guy who invented Fire" preferred them to Kinmans, Lawrence L280 and the older (lame) Fender vintage noiseless. To me these are slightly contradictory observations. I owned a set of Lawrence L280's and I feel they already had 85% of the vintage vibe. I missed the other 15% and I sold them (I currently use SS1's). I recently tried the new Fender SCN pickups (designed by Lawrence) and found them to be much closer - maybe 90% of the way. I would put the latest efforts of Kinman, Dimarzio and Lawrence in the 90-95% range. My observation is if the S4's sound more authentic than Kinmans they should cop AT LEAST 95% of the vintage tone. When I hear the mids are "thicker" and the highs are "warmer" I start to think of all the shortcomings of the other noiseless strat pickups I've heard. In particular, none of them I tried had the right amount of sparkle, or they didn't have enough quack when combined, or the neck pickup was lacking that specific combination of warm bass, hollow mids and treble sheen that I love so dearly. So whats the scoop? Do they provide authentic sparkle, quack, percussive attack and any other adjective that can be used to describe a good single coil? Are these pickups really a step above whats already available?
