I have an Ibanez AFC 151 which is an all laminate maple and laminate spruce top guitar with a floating pickup. The guitar is great but I didn’t catch the point about a floating pickup on a laminated guitar.
Anyway I ordered this pickup don’t knowing what to expect. On the Shadow site it says that the pickup is a warm sounding humbucker pickup. Exactly what I was looking for, but on the other side, on the forums they claimed the pickup is clear and pretty bright. Well, now I can say that the people from the forum are right.
The pickup is bright, clear, quite nice sounding, but a bit muddy on the heavier strings(the pickup resistance is 15,78kOhm).But it’s not for you, if you have a PAF sound in your head(Peter Bernstein for example). And the other thing I found is that is a pretty quite pickup. On my setup the pickup needs twice as much power to be equaly laud as my guitar with a normal PAF style pickup(Dimarzio 36ann.).
Conclusin: If you are looking for a clear, almost acoustic floating pickup, go for it! The build quality is pretty nice, and for the price it’s great.
But, if you’re looking for a warm, full humbucker PAF sound, this one is not for you.