Seymour Duncan SSL-7

The whole story starts with my 1989 japanese made Charvette 200 which has original factory single coil pickups at neck and the middle but a Seymour Duncan APH-1B humbucker was installed at the bridge. (So it's a SSH configuration)
Obviously the stock pickups were very weak compared to the Seymour APH-1, there was no balance between them, and I mean not just the gain structure was not the same but the volume of the stock single coils were significantly lower. It was like having two different sounding instrument in one body.....which I did not want. I wanted more balanced, equal volume and much similar gain structure pickup configuration.
As the cavity size and routing was a strict limitation for my choice of possible pickups my attention turned towards to the Seymour Duncan SSL-4 and SSL-7. They seem to be a high output, single coil pickups, in the size of a typical Fender pickup! Unfortunately there is not too many reviews out there about them, if there is any they are rubbish.
I ordered one SSL-7 as I preferred the staggered version of magnet poles.
Installed immediately in the neck position and tested! Woooow!
Don't forget: it is a single coil pickup! There is no extra vertical windings (like Dimarzio HS-3 for instance) which could reduce the noise or no extra coil to give an extra burst (like a Dimarzio Chopper). This is a pure single coil, with a big magnets! And what a sound! I like it! It is hot!
OK, let's be factual here: this SSL-7 is not as hot as a typical humbucker, or not as hot as modern single coil size humbucker either...but very close to the latter one.
I have a YJM Fender Stratocaster with stock Dimarzio YJM (neck & middle) and HS-3 (bridge) inside. This SSL-7 has a very similar tone characteristics as the YJM but with more gain and treble....definately has more output than the YJM or HS-3.
One thing which I realized: this pickup is very sensitive about the distance from the strings. At first the gap between the string and the magnet poles were on 1mm roughly and I heard that the lower notes started to became muddy and choking. Then I lower the pickup so the gap was from the strings was about 2mm, the sound became much more clear not as fragile as it was. My final setting was: from the E1 string the gap is 2mm, from the E6 string the gap is 2.6mm. This is the setting where the SSL-7 is in balance with the APH-1B humbucker and produce the same volume. Gain wise is obviously not the same, but the SSL-7 is still hot enough to me.
The clean sound is crisp and very articulated, the pickup has very good bass frequency response, it is generally very warm sounding.
The distortion sound is creamy, it sings. When you pick suddenly it gives you a big punch, the sound kicks immediately. Also you can play with your volume pots because this pickup is very dynamic.
If you put the pickup too close to the string it start to became muddy and chokes, or if you apply too much overdrive or gain the sound will collapse. BUT, if you find the right balance between the string distance and the correct amount of gain this pickup is unbeatable. Slightly noisy as it is a single coil with any noise reduction...it's not a problem to me as I use noise gate anyway.

bear in mind it is not a trash metal or power metal pickup. It still moves in a territory of blues-hard rock-heavy metal.

Thomann delivered the pickup in 4 days, just amazing as usual!