Quarter Pound Staggered SSL-7

[deadrateyes]

Anybody using this? Can it really get hard rock/metal tones? I want to put something more traditional in the bridge position of my strat. I've got a hotrails in there now but I hate how it clashes with how the stock pickups look.

 

[alex1fly]

Re: Quarter Pound Staggered SSL-7

Anybody using this? Can it really get hard rock/metal tones? I want to put something more traditional in the bridge position of my strat. I've got a hotrails in there now but I hate how it clashes with how the stock pickups look.

I tried it for a bit in the bridge of my strat after the Hot Rails and Cool Rails, but it wasn't in my guitar long enough to really tweak the sound for live use or much beyond my bedroom jamming, so you may take my experience with some grains of salt. It adds a lot of beef and girth to the strat, definitely. It gave my amp some nice overdrive, accented the lower mids, and the treble was nice and clear even though its a single coil. It didn't have the chunk of the Hot Rails that I really liked... though the HR could've sounded more "authentic" in my opinion. The QP helped my strat sound almost like a mahogany body/rosewood board PRS guitar. Metal riffing (without palm mutes) sounded really nice, except for the lack of humbucker chunk. So the palm mutes suffered, unless I really hit the strings hard. But it had a lot of output, which I wasn't a fan of. I prefer now to use low output pickups and boost them with my SD pickup booster, so it would be interesting to put the QP back in my strat to see how it reacts to my setup now. But to sum it up, the QP beefed up the strat quite a bit but it lacked the chunkiness of a humbucker. It's a pretty versatile pup though if you tweak your volume knob... supposed to scream for solos on 10 and roll it down for rhythm and that kind of setup works really well... I just find that while playing with a group that tweaking knobs is the last thing I want to be doing so the QP didn't work out too well for me. It seems like it would work best as a bridge pup for a lead player who can take the few necessary seconds to roll things down to their appropriate levels. But if you want chunk and big palm mutes it may not be for you. I'd wait and search around for more input, because like I said, my experience with the pickup was basically limited to my own jamming and didn't make it to the live use realm.

 

[deadrateyes]

Re: Quarter Pound Staggered SSL-7

Hmm... Thanks a lot for your input. If what you say is true, it's definitely not the pickup for me. One thing I love about the hotrails is how chunky it sounds.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Quarter Pound Staggered SSL-7

Ask this question first.... do you want a single coil or a humbucker? The QP is about the fattest, beefiest single you're going to find, but it's still definitely a single. That said, it's an awesome pickup, and the tap thing is hella cool.

 

[kjrocks]

Re: Quarter Pound Staggered SSL-7

You wont find any more chunk than the Hot rails especially in a single coil.

 

[alex1fly]

Re: Quarter Pound Staggered SSL-7

Do you want to stay traditional or can you put a full size in the bridge?

 

[uOpt]

Re: Quarter Pound Staggered SSL-7

I have a flat one, used in an Ash blazer. Very nice, I really loved the tone, and definitely single coil.

However, in the end it lost out to the little screamin' Demon. The Demon was more versatile and well, the single coil is noisy.