Seymour Duncan SSL-5 RW/RP Custom Staggered

I bought this to replace me stock bridge pickup on my Fender Player Strat. Yes, you read that correctly, BRIDGE pickup. If you own this particular guitar, you need a RW/RP SSL-5 if you want to keep hum cancelling on positions 2 and 4. Probably with other Fender strats as well, but not all.
If your stock bridge pickup Has North-up polarity you need to get this pickup, if it has South-up, get the regular SSL-5.

Furthermore, if your stock bridge pickup is CW wound (on Player strat it is), you install this pickup normally - white wire is hot, black is ground.
But if your stock bridge pickup is CCW wound, you need to reverse the leads.

I hope someone found this useful, I went insane over this for 1 week straight because the information on the internet (and also thomann support) is very contradictory. Use your own brain and facts.

Regarding the sound:
Honestly, I was not that impressed.. I can't say I even hear a big difference between my stock pickup and the SSL-5, but this may as well mean that the stock pickup was not that bad.

Got this fitted in the neck position of my Yamaha Pacifica 604 (SSL-5 in the middle, & a JB full sized HB in the bridge)

Lovely mellow 'S' type tone (think Mark Knopfler just with the treble/top end rolled off slightly - note: pickup is designed to have soft treble)

Only problem is the bass is very weak, and I've altered setup/pickup height but can't seem to solve this prob.

Bear in mind this is fitted to a Yamaha with narrower string spacing than a Strat, i.e. 48mm on the Yam, from E to E string at the neck, and the pole pieces on Alnico II Pro are 52mm so the E strings sit over the inside edge of their respective pole pieces. Therefore a Strat, which is what it's designed for may cure this prob.

Either way I still really like the basic tone of the pup so I'll prob. just move this into the middle & get an SSL-1 or something similar for the neck & see if that helps.

Just what my strat needed had texas specials in it and needed a little more output as had changed the humbucker (lone star strat) to a Duncan JB Trembucker.

This fits the bill perfectly toneally there isnt that much difference between this and the texas specials a little maybe but not that much. but it has more output Not OTT at all just a little more to make the guitar more Balanced.