EMGSA/SA/81 Active Strat Guitar Pickup Set, Black

After receiving my pickups I went to work installing them in my dean guitar. Top pickup went in well a little tight fitting if you ask me. Middle needed some modifications to the pickguard. then the humbucker, I tried making the same modifications like how I did with the middle pickup. I ended up breaking a little corner of the pickguard all the way through to the bottom of the pickguard. After I had gotten it in and fixed up the wiring came next. It was easy and very straight forward.Then the input jack. I had lightly glanced over the exposed innards of the guitar, but I didn't notice this massive flaw in the engineering of the guitar. They had only bored a hole in the guitar big enough for the tiny cable that was originally in the guitar. So what do you do when you have a small hole that needs to get bigger. get a drill right? Turns out I am a neanderthal and don't own any other power tools aside from a palm sander (Which by the way wouldn't help me in the slightest bit). So I did the rational thing and grabbed the biggest screwdriver I owned and a hammer. I had placed the tip of the screwdriver on the hole and began pounding it in (Not Recommended). It somehow worked perfectly. After everything is said and done, I love the EMGs they were worth every dollar, ding, and sweat drop.TL;DR: I didn't do the research on my guitar making my life harder than it had to be. DO YOUR RESEARCH (So you don't have to break your pickguard or hammer a screwdriver through a wire hole.)

These sound amazing, zero buzz or back ground noise. I play mostly death metal and these are perfect, they are also extremely clean on the clean channel. Install was super simple although I did have to extend some of the wires to fit my Jackson. The pickup selector is a little tall but the compartment cover flexes over it just fine. These sound way better than my fishman fluence pickups in my 7 string.

Put these into an old Ibanez Gio. The only mod I had to do was to make a spot for the battery to hide under the guitar pick. That was a fairly easy project. They sound great and look fantastic!

I bought these for a ESP and not a fender with a pickguard so let me explain why only 4 stars. The wiring harnesses are made for a pickguard mounted setup, that being said I had issues with cable length. EMG says that they have and carry extended wires but I could never find them anywhere. Secondly once I was able to splice and solder together wiring to accommodate my guitar, the middle and neck pickups hardly worked at all. The bridge was amazing! but the other two barely had enough output to be audible. I ended up contacting EMG and they tried to help me as much as possible, even sent them the entire kit. They claimed it worked perfectly the way I sent it in. Sounds odd doesn't it? well they sent me the pickups back but they replaced every other part of the kit and even sent me longer wires for 2 of the pickups (still spliced and soldered the bridge to be longer) and then they worked fine. Why did EMG send me new wires if the old worked fine?? I Think they were embarrassed but great customer service nonetheless. After a month long endeavor these finally made it into my guitar and I couldn't ask for a better setup. just be prepared if you don't use a pickguard mounted pickup system to do some creative wire creations.

OK here is what happened, I purchased a DIY strat which does not have a pick guard and the cables were a bit short. I contacted EMG and without question they are sending me a cable that is 1 inch longer so I can make the connections. I'll use the neck cable for the middle pick and the bridge cable works just find. The pictures I've posted are from before I switched to the EMG pickups.Would I purchase EMG pickups again? Yes I have a DIY Tele that I'm installingEMG T SYSTEM Prewired Telecaster Guitar Pickup Set Plus Control Plate. I'll write a separate review on that pickup set.The cable came Saturday and in minutes I had everything ready to plug in to my amp.It's feels good working with a company of qualityUPDATED Picture 9-6-2023

Went in easy with my new stratocaster pick guard, very simple install, and came with clear instructions. they sound amazing! wish i would have done this upgrade a long time ago

This products is great. Emg kicks (donkey)! BUUUT the KH-20 Pickgaurd has these exact same 3 pups (S/S/H) but it also comes with a 5-way switch, a master volume knob, master tone knob (both knobs fully control all 5 positions) all pre installed on a cool strat-style pearl pickgaurd. Even if you dont have a strat, or dont want the pickgaurd, thats fine take them off lol but might as well pay $10-20 more and get everything you need, all with solderless conectivity. *SIDEBAR* I only rated this one star sonit would stick out. These are ‘5 star’ pickups- I just wanted to potentially help some of you save time and get more bang for your buck

What a great tone change from my stock setup. The Charvel is now complete.

I was rebuilding a Steinberger Spirit headless and decided to go full 80s with the EMG set. I was shocked at how good they make that little guitar sound - big, rich, and resonant. It's a tight fit getting all the electronics in the small cavity (I had to improvise a lot), but the plug-and-play connectors are excellent and in any normal size guitar it wouldn't be an issue. The price on Amazon seemed to be about 25% less than retail. All in all I am very pleased!

Makes a old guitar like new