I had a set of DG20's (second hand from ebay) installed on my squire strat over a decade ago. A little rediculous I know but at the time I wanted to try the active pickups and I could afford not a new set nor a "bona fide" stratocaster.
I remember liking them, especially for the 2 & 4 positions. A sort of honky/blocky sound. I was getting images of an explosive chain, if that makes sense (almost literally a metal chain/links) through an old overdrive pedal. Probably does not make sense :icon_scratch:. Anyhoo, I remember a time when I just loved to play that guitar, 21 frets, crappy used fretwire and all, and what had been my first electric guitar (of dubious quality by other highbrows)followed by 2 les pauls (epiphone with 81/85 and then a dynamite Heritage with blackbacks E.R proprietary god rest his soul) became once again my number 1, with my uber CO59 Heritage collecting dust i the closet. :doh:
Not an afficianado by any means (in fact if you tested me aurally, I probably would not even be able to identify subtle differences between pups), you would probably have more difficult time engineering a pickup that I would not like or find unusable than you would engineering a favorite pickup: I guess the range of what I like is much bigger than the range of what I dont like. But...one or two, or three things I did manage to notice about the EMG's was that first they do require a battery, second I found the tone (whatever that was in my mind) to be pretty consistent. And lastly, this realization only just came to light recently of what kind of baby I have become over the years, my muscles, tendons and ligaments struggling sometimes to bend notes to the correct pitch if I my grip does not find purchase on that high e string with enough leverage sometimes the bend with be flat. Its like wtf mman? I used to bend the bejeebus out of my old squire, which leads me to believe that the active pickups may have had something to o with it. I thought I read somewhere that active pickups do not pull the strings as hard as passive, magnets and whatnot.
You know, that Mr. Seymour seems like a nice guy, knowledgeable and all, and I saw a recent A/B demonstration of his blackouts vs. the SA's and they did seem a little brighter, maybe even more clear. But in my heart of ears, I know from my own experience what it was about those active pickups that I loved and seek to find again: SA 2&4 position, and the effortless chiming bell-like pinch harmonics of the 81 and I sucked worse back then than I do now! :guitaristgif:
Does EMG make s/s/h set of SA SA SA/81 with the 81 splittable to an SA/
Maybe someone out ther can do better!
) I now own a Peavey Dyna-bass with active tone controls, 
