Curious to hear your impressions on the STK-S7 in the neck and middle!
Okidoki...
These guitars are for gigging. I'm not anal about
my live sound. I'm happy with these pickups. They're good 'alrounders'.
The reason for choosing them was that a HSS setup is a compromise. Initially, the guitars had 250k pots with early SD STKs - for the best part of 25 years. About five years ago, I changed the STKs to SSLs, which was great, but I was feeling I wasn't getting enough from the 'bucker, so I threw in 500k pots. Natch., this made the SSLs 'a bit bright'.
Hindsight 'n' all, I
should have just swapped the pots five years ago.
Do they sound like vintage pickups? No, of course not. They're built different. "Ye cannae change the laws o' physics, Cap'n."
When I need 'vintage', I've got other guitars for that.
To summarize, the 'balance' is back, but a tad brighter/clearer than the original setup. Ideal world, I'd have fitted EMGs, but I had those in the '80s and keeping track of when the battery was due for changing was a PITA.
I have a pair of STK-S7s on order for the green one.
Moral of the story, if yer stacked 'singles' are muddy, stick 500k pots in - they
are 11k humbuckers after all.