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I had put one of the first available ones which I think was a Duncan JB junior in my first guitar.
It always sounded in between single coil and humbucker to me which I think is cool.
How it affects the sound is that it makes the E strings weak, which is why Seymour Duncan developed the 'Trembucker' which is wider, to avoid the problem of the Es being outside the sensing area on one coil - although it still works better with the pickup straight.
There's an even worse problem if you do that to a two-post bridge guitar - the treble side can collapse through into the cavity because the corner of the pickup rout is too close to it... especially if it's been crudely chopped out with a chisel, as many were.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I'm putting a Seymour Duncan JB in my Strat (you may have seen my thread about the upgrade) in the bridge position. I expect it to be straight rather than angled, in the pickguard but it should still get me in that ballpark "Dookie album" tone?
As well as being the best-sounding single-sized pickups you can get (yeah, I'm a little biased), they use a much weaker magnetic field so string pull is minimised.
For context, I've used all the alternatives from SD and DiMarzio, as well as the Irongear variants, and none of them come close to the Lace Sensors.
The best by far are the Oil City pickups that Ash winds to special order. The Jailhouse Rail I sounded awful in one guitar and really good in another (??!!). No, I have no idea why. JR II was a bit meh, SD's were Ok and the KA's were nothing special.
At the moment I have the JR I in the bridge position in my LAG Strat, an Oil City in the bridge position in my G&L S500 and a full set of Oil City in my Eggle Los Angeles. All doing an excellent job.
I can't stand the Duncan Li'l '59 either, for balance!
I really like the Dimarzio Fast Track and Chopper though.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I've always found that humbuckers - particularly single-coil-size ones - tend to mask the attack too much. They cover up picking inaccuracy, which is nice (it's something I'm not very good at), but most of them totally miss the "ch" of "chug", particularly DiMarzios. It's something you can't really correct for with EQ or compression.
Also, given that the other guitarist in my band uses a Les Paul, that little extra definition really helps differentiate the two guitars.
Lack of chug would be due to the compression from too much distortion back of the gain a bit.
I do have a strat with a Lace red-silver-blue set, so as a side issue was interested in the discussion on those - my take is that for versatility they are great, and for a gigging guitar they really get the job done, and obviously can suffer from less noise when that's an issue. For me they have a smooth, hi-fi kind of thing, which is nice sometimes, but also I do understand where @ICBM is coming from if I'm honest.
Anyhow - I am going to be building yet another partscaster strat (surf green, all maple neck) having already made 3 of them - must be bonkers, but I just like strats it seems. Since I already have a couple of strats with the classic tones covered well, for this next one I'm going to go a bit different - it will have Axesrus Red Mag pickups in the neck and middle slots - for a warmer/fuller take on the single coil tone, and a rails in the bridge, and with switching to tap that one. To be honest I think I'll try something fairly inexpensive to start with, like an Artec or similar (alnico magnet) - will see how that works out, can always upgrade if not happy. Cheers again though!