Seymour Duncan SSL-4 RW/RP

I bought the Seymour Duncan as an experiment with combining high output single coils with humbuckers. The pickup is described as giving a P90 type sound in a strat sized pickup. as I don't own a P90 fitted guitar, I though it would be an interesting option.
I bought the RW/RP version to fit in the middle position of my H/S/S guitar and it is in this position I am reviewing the pickup.Fitting was easy, I used 500K pots to match the bridge humbucker and the high output of the quarterpounder.
The difference between switching from the H/B and the quarterpounder was very dramatic. This is a very loud and dark sounding pickup and the huge jump in tone and volume between the two pickups was hard to balance .I spent some time adjusting settings on my amp in order to try and compensate, but ended up taking the Quarter Pounder off. I sold it to someone who fitted it to the bridge of a Fender Mustang, where the powerful tone and volume compensated with the thin, quite sound of the strings in this position.
I have heard online demos of guitars fitted with a set of these pickups and they sounded balanced. I think, in the middle and neck position they work best with pickups in the similar tone and volume output e.g. P-90 types. Overall I think it would work better in the bridge position or as part of a set.

I bought this with the neck SSL-4 and it significantly changed my sound. The pole pieces and - I'm guessing - extra winds produce a significant increase in output, and a darker tone than standard single coils. None of this will be news to anyone reading these reviews, but I need to emphasise that the sound is beautiful. The tone is fantastic, and the quarter pounders nicely push an amp into slight breakup. Works fabulously with fuzz, overdrive and distortion. Suffice it to say that if you are looking for the high end offered by conventionally wound singles, then look elsewhere (just to give you an idea, the resistance of these are ~ 13kOhm compared to ~ 6kOhm of standard singles), but if you want meat and potatoes with your strat playing, look no further. Great pickups.

I use this pickup in a HSS configuration in the middle, because it's RW/RP this makes combination with my neck or bridge pickup(coil split) have a hum-cancelling effect.
Combining this pickup sounds great, and that's why I first bought it, but I found it sounded even better on its own, if you can handle some single coil hum that is.

The pickup is pretty hot for a single coil but cleans up easily if you back off the gain. Which makes it useable in all kinds of settings.

Since I put this in my guitar I find myself using the middle and inbetween positions a lot more, and with a high gain amp, this pickup even sounds good playing metal.