Would think these are good pickups. Terrible buzzing, terrible feedback, horrible hollow cold sound. I don't see how people like these, I think they produce a horrible sound for any type of music. Seymour Duncan puts EMG to shame, seriously the pickups that come in cheap beginner guitars are better than these.

I recently bought this pickup and it realy is the best pickup for metal and the push/pull knob works great and comes in handy when you wont to get a good clean/distortion sound for a fast crunchy solo. I like to change to the 89 during a good solo because the 81 gets alot of feed back when you take your hand off the top strings so I just switch and it sound good and clean/heavy during solos. And one problem I ran into is I turned the volume up one time and it turned all the way around and didn't stop so I would putt diferent pots in it.

This has super good clean tone and u get that strat tone when u split the coil. I like the clean tones but well at least on my guitar I hate the distorted tone its too spongy. I like the normal 81 better. But who knows this might be caused from the wiring being too long but I dont know I just didnt like the sound I got from it.

The EMG 81TW is such a great pickup. I've always dug the standard 81 for distorted tones, and even on cleans it wasn't THAT bad, but there was always something to be desired. The 81TW came stock in the bridge of my Schecter C-1 Hellraiser, and I run it through a Mesa DC-5 head into a Mesa 2x12 cab. On the clean sound in humbucking mode for some reason sounds better than the normal 81, but the real fun comes with the coils tapped. The cleans become smooth and bright, with the right amount of cluck in them; picture old school Pink Floyd, U2, The Police sounds...really clear and prescise and completely organic sounding. With distortion; it's an EMG 81, what more do you need to say! Humbucking produces a great sound, and with the coil tapped the distortion becomes clearer and a little less in your face. Above all though, the EMGs offer excellant clarity; I can hit 7 chords or various augmented or diminished chords, with some light crunch or even with a really crunchy modern level of distortion [my main sound], I can hear all the notes clearly. Excellant pickup, and highly recommended if you want killer distorted tones, but are a stickler about good cleans.

I got my new Schecter Yesterday and it was this pickup in the bridge position. It sounds amazing and is as quiet as can be. Most pickups start to hiss back when you turn up the volume, but this think stays quiet and stays chunky as hell on any volume.