I bought one of these back in 2002/03 for my limited edition 7-string Warlock. I had to have it professionally installed as the corners of the pickup housing had to be routed out. If this is the case with your guitar, do yourself a favor- take it to someone who knows what they're doing. The guy who did mine has built custom guitars for Slash, so I trust him! This pickup is made especially for a 7 string guitar. It has beastly tone & more bass response, than EMG 81's, but this is a bit cleaner to let you really HEAR that low B, drop A, etc. I run this through my Line 6 POD 2.0, which for me gives me my illusive "Holy Grail" of guitar tones. Even through the POD, I get plenty of warm, creamy gain'n'grind, as if I'm using a tube pre-amp. Pinch harmonics & tapping sound fantastic, as do rhythm chunking and speed picking. It lets you do it all and looks BA while your doing it!

I have 2 seven strings (Schecter Loomis) that both came with these pickups stock. These were my first venture into active pickups and my expectations were very high. I play through a Mesa Triple Rec/Mesa Split-Back 4x12 cabinet with a lot of gain and have to say that these pickups, although very even in frequency response, lacked the attack and character I was looking for. They are not very loud compared to my Gibson stock p'ups. For chunky, heavy metal riffs, they just don't have enough 'umph' to give me what I need. Playing clean, Muzac type background they are fine. But for really dynamic, articulate, high gain, high attack chunk, I don't think they 'fit' at all. I give them average based on the sound. Quality is solid as EMG is known for. As far as the features of a pickup, I'm not a tech head so I don't know if they're wired a special way or not. My expectations were based on putting a battery in the back of the guitar and hammering on the strings.

In my opinion if you want some really heavy sounds from your seven string, this pickup is the way to do it with. It is very tight, very bright, very crunchy and clear. It will handle fast soloing and also heavy chording. It is one of the meanest sounding active pickups in the market today. It also does alot of the clean stuff very well. Seeing as its basically an EMG 85 for the seven string, it can really warm up and beef up your sound. Very good pickup, well worth the price.