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Verified Customer zZounds has verified that this reviewer made a purchase from us.

Just installed the zebra set in my Les Paul Prophecy EX and, wow! This is the best sounding set of pickups I have ever installed in a guitar! The clarity and gain structure is second to none. When playing clean, you can hear everything, all the way down to the pick impacting the strings, helping create a nicely percussive sound and giving you that clean tone you've been longing for. Dirty, these pickups push you further into the territory of sonic, god-level, overdriven greatness!!! Pinch harmonics are much easier to attain and are supremely clear! All-in-all, I'd say these pickups resemble a Hot-Rodded Duncan that was hot-rodded even further! I've found no style of music that these can't handle. Give em a shot. You won't regret it.

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I swapped the EMG 81/60 set in my LTD ec1000fr for the EMG fat 55 set as the 81/60 set was way too brittle and crunchy for my tastes. The Fat 55 set was a straight swap thanks to the solderless connectors and took all of 15 minutes to install. The result was a more classic (for me) sound with the tones that I was looking for. Smoother mids and highs with more enough crunchy power to the bottom end too. More than enough power for harder rock styles and easily tamed via picking dynamics and dialling down the volume knob. Clean tone are much improved too. The only drawback (for some users) is the lack of coil tap/phase reversal.

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I replaced an 81/85 set in my Schecter C-1 Platinum. They remind me a lot of the old Duncan Distortion in my MIJ Contemporary Strat. I swapped the ceramic magnet with an A5, basically the same specs as a JB. That’s been my go-to guitar for a while and sets the bar pretty high for any pickup comparison. Well, the Fat 55 set may be my new favorite. They have a really full and powerful tone. I have a JTM45 2x12 combo and a Mesa Rectoverb 50 and these pickups sound great through either amp. They are similar to my DD pickup output-wise, but after switching to that guitar after using the Fat 55 set, the DD sounds dark and a little dull. Overall, I’m very pleased with this purchase. Somehow the EMG logo was printed on the wrong coils, so when installed properly the logo is upside down. EMG customer service was great though! They immediately offered to replace the pickups. My lower output PAF style pickups will always have a place in my arsenal, but these pickups offer a very wide range of tones, from great cleans to smoky blues, classic rock and metal. If you use the volume and tone controls, they will cover just about anything.

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I've been a Dimarzio and Seymour customer for decades. I never thought I'd ever use EMG's cause back in "my day" they were just made for metal and quite one dimensional pickups for the most part. But now that I'm getting older, my eyes aren't what they used to be so I can't solder in pups anymore, so looking into EMG's due to being solderless, I decided to give them a shot, especially now that they have so much more to offer. I saw the retroactives and thought, this might be my type of thing. All I can say is WOW! I have a lot of guitars and all of them have Seymours, Dimarzio's and now a couple w/ EMG's and these fat 55's are by far my favorite. They are so multi dimensional. Can cover all genre's, can get a great pinch harmonic, and tuned down heavy growl to cleaning up for some great country, jazz and blues. These are now my go to pups.

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Verified Customer zZounds has verified that this reviewer made a purchase from us.

These are not the typical EMG's that most people think of. These are very versatile PAF type pups. But not just great for classic rock. Very good for most genre's. I can get real heavy tones for that tuned down heavy stuff, and they can clean right up for blues, country, jazz etc. I'll put more of these in some other guitars.