Seymour Duncan APST-1 Twang Banger

First of all, I bought this APST-1 Twang Banger with the thought of replacing a Mustang bridge pickup. If you know your Mustang's, you know they can have really low and dull output pickups to begin with.

So I wanted a more "beefy" clean tone and a great "dirty" overdrive tone, and the Twang Banger is a perfect match for that.

The downside is, because this pickup has a copper-plated steel bottom plate which the mounting screws mounts to and the way a Mustang is wired, in one position it will be quite when you touch the mounting screws, but in the other position when you touch the screws it will boost the ground noise instead.

There is a fix for this though, find the drawing of how the Kurt Cobain Mustang is wired and use that, it was pretty simple. You only need to wire the bridge pickup like the KC Mustang, once I did that, the noise was gone. The downside is though that the bridge pickup switch can only turn the pickup on, when both pickups are on only the neck pickup switch can swap the in/out of phase.

And yes, it adds even more Twang to your Mustang.

Up until now I've only ever used Fender pickups. Fender not surprisingly concentrate on reproducing the famous and much sought after sounds that they are known for. Seymour Duncan (and Di Marzio, EMG, and others) are free to go much more extreme and creative in their designs and the Twang Banger Stratocaster pickup was the first to catch my attention. I've only recently acquired a Telecaster (less than a year ago) and just love the Twang. The idea of having Twang in a Strat really appeals! If I fit a 5-way Superswitch it is possible to have the mid position giving bridge and neck together (rather than mid pickup alone), so 1-Bridge, 2-Bridge+Mid, 3-Bridge+Neck, 4-Mid+Neck, 5-Neck. That should really Twang. The only question is which pickups to use together? Personally I've chosen: Bridge-Twang Banger APST-1, Mid-APS-2RW/RP Alnico II Pro, Neck-APS-2 Alnico II Pro. If I'm right, these are the recommended set and give a very well balanced sound. The reverse wound - reverse polarity mid pickup does effectively give hum reduction in positions 2 and 4. The only thing now is that curiosity is beginning to kick in and I'm wondering what a Twang Banger in the neck position would do to the overall sound. These pickups have a higher impedance than the Alnico II pro's and the copper plated steel base plate causes the magnetic field to become so strong that it even effects the mounting screws. After trying these for a few months now, I'm lovin' it! Positions 1-3-5 sound like a Tele and 2 and 4 sound like a Strat.