Seymour Duncan SH-4 NH Slant

Seymour Duncan SH-4 is a best selling pickup from SD, the one being reviewed is adjusted for Gibson Nighthawk (which is not produced any more) and a recent reissue model - Epiphone Nighthawk. The only visible difference is that the pickup is slanted in order to suite an atypical pickup cavity and cover in the Nighthawk guitar. It's only available in black (which suits the target guitars well), no zebra option.

The pickup is characterized by a higher output than the factory pickups in the Nighthawks. It cleans nicely with the guitar volume down, therefore it's still versatile over most styles.

It is not suitable for an extremely heavy modern metal and djent, it doesn't properly cut and gets slightly muddy with extreme gain levels. But the Nighthawk range wasn't designed for those styles of music in the first place.

It excels at most other genres, from jazz, blues, pop, rock and lower-gain metal. It's perfect for fusion, especially in the smooth mode with the tone rolled down to 3/4.

The wiring provides a coil split option. It's lowering the output and produces some hum, but otherwise doesn't change pickup characteristic that much (comparing to other splitting bridge pickups). In the coil-split mode it cuts through the mix properly, but looses a bit of the smoothness.

The only flaw I can point is slightly loose material covering the sides of the pickup and a lower resale value of the pickup, given that the Nighthawk guitars are not that popular and it's essentially the only guitar in which this pickup would fit. Therefore there won't be that much demand for the slanted version. On the other hand it is the only viable replacement bridge pickup for those types of guitars, whose factory pickups are not that good themselves.

I can strongly recommend upgrading to the SD SH-4 pickup, which makes playing Nighthawks a much more pleasant and versatile experience. It suits Nighthawk's atypical scale length of 25.5 inch, which distinguishes this Gibson/Epiphone model from other in the range.