Thanks! It's a great sounding and playing guitar. I was going to get a Warmoth body for the JM neck from my Noventa, and use up some parts-drawer pickups, but the Tone Bakery B-stock body was just too good a deal to pass up. Even if every part attached to it gets replaced, it's still hundreds less than a Warmoth body would be, and it's decently light, resonant, and looks great. The new pickups are, all at the same time, full and round, clear, bright, and crisp. I will likely add the 4p2t on-on-on switch at some future point, so that I can get the middle alone and the neck + bridge 1/2 OOP as additional tones in the guitar. The three pickups measure 6.4k ohms, 6.7k ohms, and 6.99k ohms from neck to bridge. Definitely in the "vintage" range. By way of comparison, the ones I took out were in the 10-11k range. Might just be 42 vs. 43 gauge wire, but they sound a little "warmer" and "rounder" and less "clear" than the replacements from Q Pickups, so it might be they are a little over-wound.
Throw the 5-way in the middle for neck + bridge, and you can immediately get the "Dear Mr. Fantasy" tone. The little, hidden construction details that are mentioned on
the Q PIckups site about these seem to make that last bit of difference, as I couldn't quite get that tone out of the Duncan Vintage Firebird Mini-HBs I had in the old Explorer Studio Pro that I shouldn't have sold years back.... Neck by itself is pure and sweet, balanced beautifully, with enough highs to cut through while still carrying the rounded neck pickup tone with it. Bridge is clear and biting, but not harsh, and has a wonderful "KERRRANG" to it. The "notch" sounds are great. Combining the middle with the neck gets a clear and quacky, yet fatter, Strat tone, and with the bridge, you get the same thing - clear, quacky, Stratty, but a little fatter. This is the Strat tone I wanted 35-40 years ago.
I was close to it in the '90s with three Duncan Firebird Minis in a black Mexican Strat, but they were the higher output ones (the "Seymourized" at the bridge and two "Hot" ones at neck and middle), and they didn't have the sparkly highs that these Q Pickups do. Someone out there has that guitar, which was stolen from my car the one time I was too tired to make an extra trip to bring them in after a gig.
