I own a 1959 Stratocaster with original pups and figured these would give me a similar sound in my Relic. They don't. They have an annoying upper midrange squawk, and my originals are fatter than these. I put an SSL-1 in the neck, an SSL-1 rev in the middle, and an SSL-3 in the bridge of my Relic, and guess what? It sounds better than my "59's.

I put these in a project surf guitar because I wanted that vintage 60's surf sound, and they really did the trick. All five pickup positions are clear, usable, and totally vintage.

The Fender 54's and 69's are great too, but they didn't have that rich vintage sound I was looking for.

These are great for rockabilly, twanging, blues, classic rock, and surf music, but I wouldn't spin them for hard rock and heavy metal is plain out.

Plug these into a Fender Twin Reverb and prepare for a 40 year time warp.

I just installed a new set of these Fat 50s on my 2004 American Deluxe 50th Anniversary Strat. The original pickups on this guitar were Fender's SCN Samarium Cobalt Noiseless pickups. While those were good all around pickups they lacked the tone of a true 50s Strat.

I cannot overstate how good these pickups are, my Strat sounds amazing now with all that classic 50s spank. All 5 positions are very usable with the middle pickup being the most lush vintage tone of them all.

These pickups really give you all the 50s vintage Strat tones in a modern Fender. My Marshall DSL and Vintage modern are different amps with these, just pure vintage tone.

I have also had the SCN and tried the; Custom shop 60s (really good also but I prefer these 50s) Tex Mex (to harsh) David Gilmour EMG's (blah, not for me)

In the end I cannot tell the difference in tone between a Custom Shop 57 and my 2004 American Deluxe, they are that good.

I have a strat with Custom Shop 69 pickups and I love the sound. With my other strat I decided to try these to get a different, yet classic sound. These pickups gave me that and so much more. They can give me a clean blues tone and with overdrive they are simply amazing. Perfect for everything from Buddy Holly to Hendrix. I highly recommend these to anyone looking for that classic stratocaster sound.

The Fat 50s were my first foray into DIY guitar improvement. Simply put, I can't believe the difference between my MiM stock pickups and these bad boys. Before installing the Fat 50s I rarely used my neck pickup (too muddy), but now the neck sounds, well, fat and creamy. You know Hendrix's sweet tone on his cover of "Born Under a Bad Sign?" That's the sound you get with the Fat 50s (my Blues Deluxe amp may help too). Utterly amazing and highly recommended.