Fluence Stratocaster Loaded Pickguard - Black Review

MachV

MachV, put some tape on it and move on. Sweetwater has the best customer service, hand down. Stuff goes out of stock all the time, no one feels sorry for you. For real, the wire is barely showing, tape it and move on. Fishman and Sweetwater is top notch, these pickups sound amazing and you (MachV) are being ridiculous.

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Stratty!!!

They sound amazing and quiet as a church mouse. I'm sold!!! Thanks as always for the great service Sweetwater!!!

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Making all other pickups obsolete

For decades I accepted the 60 cycle hum as the cost of admission of owning an older guitar with single coil pickups. I never seriously thought of changing pickups as the sound of the guitar was the reason I purchased it in the first place. After speaking with guitar extraordinaire Greg Koch, I decided to take a leap of faith and have a Fishman Fluence Strat loaded pickguard installed… read more in my early 80's Schecter. After the install, I plugged it in and nothing, not a sound. It was gloriously silent. I was satisfied with my purchase without hitting the first note. A few strums of the strings and things just got better. Beautiful vintage single coils tone without the noise. Think Buddy Holly or early Beach Boys. With a quick pull of the rear tone pot and the guitar grew teeth. Hot, overwound but still unmistakably strat-like. As much as I love this guitar (I am the original owner), it has honestly never sound better.

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No buyer remorse here

everyone hears things different so i'm not going to try and describe "air" "chime" or any other subjective terms. the best endorsement i can offer is that these replaced my beloved Fralin Vintage Hot set and i have NO regrets whatsoever. If i played clean all the time i probably could continue to live with the hum of the Fralins, but I'd had enough and after seeing Greg Koch's… read more demos i decided to roll the dice on this new technology. they've been in my strat for about two years now and they're not going anywhere. they even prompted me to put a Greg Koch set into my tele a couple months ago. no regrets there either. my only disappointment is that in the Greg Koch demo video, he states that there's no volume drop when switching to the 2 & 4 positions. not true. there IS a volume drop just like on traditional strat pickups. as a side-note, i installed my strat bridge pickup with the angle reversed (Hendrix?). to steal Fishman's line, "everything you hear is true". so unless you're a head-up-your-behind purist, i can't imagine anyone not being completely happy with these. believe the hype.

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Amazing and Groundbreaking

Never had such great noiseless Strat tone. The Greg Koch videos tell the story. Really the tone is like two guitars and when they say noiseless, this delivers in spades. I cannot say how much more usable this guitar now is for recording. If you want true single coil tone and hate buzz this is the BEST option. I have tried Kinmans which are probably the best passive pickup solution,… read more but these are more versatile with the two voices. Previously tried EMG active vintage but found them weak and dark. You can run these Fishmans right into your OD pedals and crank up the gain. Still no buzz. Remarkable. I replaced the SCN set on a 2004 Deluxe Strat (which are great pickups if you like that more modern tone) which simply does not make that vintage Strat sound (even though it is a great tone its just can't get the high end air). Probably the SCN bridge sound is better for harder rock, but throw some pedals on the Fishmans and you don't care. Very happy with these I think it delivers what is promised. This is truly the only vintage strat sounding pickup set I have ever used that does not buzz to insanity with a gainy pedalboard. Battery pack on the back is also a great idea, makes the battery a non issue. Expensive but worth it. I do miss the bridge tone control a bit but not a deal breaker.

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