I put this pickup into my standard strat. I soldered black to the tone knob and white to the switch, but that put out horrible feedback so I switched the black to the switch and white to the tone knob and ever since this pickup has performed great. The performance is excellent and the price is alright, but this pickup doesn’t come with a new pickup guard and the instructions are a little lacking. My best advise is to dremel out your old pickup guard to fit these pickups (the magnets are spaced farther apart than my old strat’s) and go to Seymour Duncan’s webpage to watch a video of how to replace the pickup and what to do if your first attempt isn’t what you’re looking for. Once everything was installed and setup it’s a great pickup that sounds great with the other two strat pickups and I had to put the guitar volume, amp volume and a tube overdrive volume all to 10 just to hear a little buzz (which might have been the pedal not the pickup, I’m not sure).

I own a Lite Ash Stratocaster which has the staggered version of this same pickup in it (just magnet height is the only difference). These pickups I also once installed in a soft maple body guitar, and they sounded good. They're not harshly bright like other single coils: they're bright, but smoother on the top end. They're not for ultra-heavy metal, however. The tone is nice and smooth. With my Boss ME-50, Fender Pro Junior, and volume and tone knobs on guitar at all 5's, these babies have a beautiful sound. They sound great for almost everything I've played. I would definitely buy them again if I should ever upgrade to an AmStd Strat. They can sound almost perfect for Zeppelin, perfect for Hendrix, and perfect for Floyd. They're also versatile, all the way from jazz and clean to classic rock. They also do not seem to kill sustain at all. I'm very happy with them!

It sounds beautiful in the neck of my Lite Ash Stratocaster (although mine are "staggered" magnet pattern, not "flat" like this one). In the neck of my guitar, and my 1972 Fender Twin Reverb, it sounds like almost a P90: beautiful mids, excellent jazz/blues sound. Obviously this isn't the pickup for playing Metallica or Pantera, but it works very well, sounds very vintage and beautiful, and I'd recommend it. I'd also buy it again if I needed to. I'm going to say "I have used it" even though I own technically the same thing, just staggered magnet pattern. Oh, by the way, this pickup sounds good in soft maple body: I know from experience with an Ibanez RX240.

I own a Lite Ash Stratocaster. It has three Alnico II Pro Staggered pickups. The only difference is these are flat (for more "modern" fretboard radius), but otherwise they're the same pickup. These pickups have awesome buttery vintage tone, and can handle anything up to hard rock. The Alnico II Pro Humbucker (Slash's favorite) was designed after the tone these get. The vintage tone is very addicting. I mainly play in church, and for Hillsong and many other single coil sounds for church, these are unbeatable. They will not be overly bright, as single coils go, but they will not be dark like a humbucker either. You won't be disappointed! :)

I've only used this, but it's in my dream guitar (Fender Lite Ash Stratocaster). I've spent an hour or two playing this thing in the store, and it's an excellent pickup! It's got a very smooth vintage tone (alnico II magnets) and is also clear, with moderate output. The pickups sound great for everything from jazz to hard rock (didn't try metal on it, yet). These work good for warming up a bright guitar. My advice, however, is don't buy them unless you're warming up a bright guitar or you just like the vintage sound of alnico II pickups. If you only play metal, look elsewhere. Ironically, however, alnico II magnets work fine for hard rock (look at Guns'n'Roses / Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash: he exclusively plays on alnico II magnet pickups and I don't hear anyone calling his tone wimpy :)