Check this video!
This topic gets mixed opinions but I felt like sharing my attempt of once again replacing stock pickups in one of my guitars. Granted most of my guitars are premium instruments so the stock pickups are usually good to begin with but I've had everything from Ibanez to Squier in the past and I've never really felt a huge difference with new pickups, rather I feel the placebo effect in combination of fresh strings after the pickup switch.
I think I have tried the most common pickups out there and I don't by any means think that all pickups are bad, quite the opposite, I feel like most pickups are really good these days and you're maybe not getting much bang for buck spending hundreds of dollars on pickups (especially boutique premium pickups). I'm intentionally not naming any brands as I don't mean to single companies out.
"Where I'm coming from" is pretty clear so there's no reason hiding it. Luckily most people understand the value of IR's and I can make a living out of it but there's one guy out of ten who thinks IR's are too expensive. Really? After getting a $2.5k/$1.5k unit, two $500 monitors, a $2k guitar with $200 pickups... the most effective part of your signal chain is still IR's am I right?
I'd love to hear your experiences as I'm sure pickups have saved some of the guitar for you guys!