I purchased these for my first custom build Stratocaster. I own a Chinese Fender and an American Fender, the difference is night and day. I considered purchasing Fender pickups for this build but after reading reviews decided to go with this Seymour Duncan trio of pickups. I must say I am very happy I did.
After taking my time and building an unbelievable (I think so anyway) custom Stratocaster with the best of everything, I soldered in these pickups. After filing, sanding and buffing the frets all level and adjusting everything right by the book I tentatively plugged it in. To my surprise, silence.... no humming feedback as with some guitars. I touched a string and had sound. After going through all the switch selections and tone adjustments to make sure everything was working properly, I started playing.
The very first thing I noticed was that it sounded smooth and toned down a bit from my other Fenders. Going through the pickups I noticed they had great range, reminded me of my Gibson Les Paul a bit. I could make it twang and bark, but could also bring the blues and rock mellow tone in easily.
I prefer this OVER my Fender American HSS. It looks better (maybe that's a stretch) and sounds superior to either of my other Stats or my American Telecaster, although the Telecaster is still one of my favorites.
I like these so much that I am going to purchase another set for my Chinese Fender and make a few other upgrades to it as I love the fit and finish of the guitar, it just doesn't sound and react like the American Stat. For 130 bucks, that's a lot of bang for the buck. I plan on upgrading a few other parts as well with it.
I am working on a Les Paul build and already have a set of Seymour Duncan Humbuckers ready to install in it, hoping for the same results. I have another cheap off-brand Strat done up in red, white and blue (I'm a flag loving disabled veteran) and I hope I can do a few upgrades to it to make it sound as good as it looks.
I am excited about this product and won't hesitate to install these in any of my future projects. Personally, I don't know how anyone could say anything bad about Seymour Duncan's except "you can't please all of the people all of the time". I think 9 out of 10 people would probably agree with me.
I'd like to mention a few more things about the product. I got the Seymour Duncan covers and installed them over the pickups, made them look awesome. The also came packaged VERY well in a nice plastic container with the pickups set in foam molds, making it impossible to damage them in shipping. I'm going to use them to store old pickups in. These came with plenty of wire to make connections and great installation directions for soldering too, for use in any application. I am very happy with the product. I wish I could post a photo of my guitar, I'm so proud of it.
5 stars all day long and I will and already have bought more of these for a future project. I wish they were a bit cheaper, but you get what you pay for. It's a small price to pay to make a $400 guitar sound like a $2000 guitar.
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This Item  Seymour Duncan SSL-1 California 50 S Strat Pickup Set - Set Of 3 |  |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | $237.00 | $327.00 | $79.00 | $199.99 | $5.99 | -33% $6.00 List: $8.99 |
| Delivery | Get it as soon as Monday, May 13 | Get it as soon as Sunday, May 12 | Get it as soon as Sunday, May 12 | — | Get it as soon as Sunday, May 12 | Get it as soon as Sunday, May 12 |
| Customer Ratings | ||||||
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| Easy to install | ||||||
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| Sold By | Zorro Sounds | Liquid Audio Inc | Cannon Online | Butler Music LLC | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
Reviews with images
Fantastic!!
First of all, I am a HUGE Fender fan. Guitars, amps and especially their pickups. Second, when it comes to tone, I am very picky. I love the Fender Custom Shop ‘69’s, 54’s, 57/62’s and Fat 50’s. I wanted to try something other than Fender this time, so I chose these SSL-1’s. So far I think they are absolutely the best single coil pickup I have ever had. Big, full tone with bell-like highs and a clear bottom end. On a lot of pickups in Strats the neck pickup can sound too quacky, too much twang and it over powers everything else. These strike a very nice balance with quack and all the other harmonics that are present. Some other vintage single coils I’ve tried have too much chimey-ness in the tone, too much high, drowns out the mids, again these SSL-1’s don’t do that, even though there is still tons of chimey, bell-like tones, like glass breaking, very brilliant, but it’s balanced out with the mid and low tones as well. Very nice and yes I would buy them again.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2014
Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2014
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2018
First of all, I am a HUGE Fender fan. Guitars, amps and especially their pickups. Second, when it comes to tone, I am very picky. I love the Fender Custom Shop ‘69’s, 54’s, 57/62’s and Fat 50’s. I wanted to try something other than Fender this time, so I chose these SSL-1’s. So far I think they are absolutely the best single coil pickup I have ever had. Big, full tone with bell-like highs and a clear bottom end. On a lot of pickups in Strats the neck pickup can sound too quacky, too much twang and it over powers everything else. These strike a very nice balance with quack and all the other harmonics that are present. Some other vintage single coils I’ve tried have too much chimey-ness in the tone, too much high, drowns out the mids, again these SSL-1’s don’t do that, even though there is still tons of chimey, bell-like tones, like glass breaking, very brilliant, but it’s balanced out with the mid and low tones as well. Very nice and yes I would buy them again.
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Top reviews from other countries
Miguel Ángel B.
Sonido excepcional. Sonido Fender vintage
Reviewed in Spain on February 23, 2022Jarn K
Great bright vintage pickups.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 15, 2019
Jarn K
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 15, 2019
They have staggered pole pieces which gives a more authentic vintage balance between the strings. Also if you get the heights set right (or just slightly wrong strictly speaking) you can induce a quasi-chorus effect on the middle two strings while the others stay clean which I've been enjoying. I'll correct that soon, but for now a nice side effect.
The pickups are vintage cloth wired and wax potted (both the coils and the wire). All works well.
They do come with bright WHITE pickup covers which are SD branded. You'll need to buy aged cream or black covers separately.
Also supplied are the installation guide (with more options available for download from the SD website) and mounting screws and rubber tube section spacer pieces. No mounting springs are included. I swapped these across from my old pickups as I prefer the springs over the rubber tube.
Coil resistances (OCR) are typically 6.5k ( I measured 6.47-6.78k) and bizarrely the middle pickup in my set had the highest resistance. Usually it is the bridge. I didn't measure impedance - that also contributes so the OCR is only one indicator of the coil output.
NB The box lies. They are all 52mm pole spacing NOT 49.5mm as the packaging suggests. This is for all 3 pickups. That is the better way round for Fender stratocaster and similar guitars with a vintage trem (Yamaha Pacifica, Squire, etc). Strictly speaking they should be 49.5mm neck, 52mm bridge, and in-between for the the middle pickup. Using 52mm throughout is as the Fender default spec and is better than having the outer strings outside of the end pole pieces like you'd get at the bridge with a 49.5mm spaced pickup. Why the packaging suggests the bridge is 49.5mm spaced baffles me. I've measured it by ruler and by vernier callipers and it is definitely 52mm.
A bit of an impulse buy but glad I bought them and a big step-up from the default pickups on my cheap Pacifica 112V.
Note these are not shielded and not hum-cancelling. (Nor were the original pickups I swapped out) To improve resistance to hum shield your pickup cavity with copper foil. I tried it and the amount of hum I get from electrical interference is much reduced making these much more viable and the cost saving over Stk4s well worth it.
Edit 2021: Pic added of the back of the packaging confirming these are SSL1s (and the spurious comment about pole spacing!)
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