I bought this set to put into a 335 but still haven’t had the chance to do that yet. There was an issue with one of the pickups and Kris and Christine helped resolve it right away. I have another set of the Smokey nights pickups and they are awesome. I expect these to be just a good with the care and attention that go into the pickups. Will be buying more soon.
The Blade and Bloom set sounds absolutely fantastic. Clear, sparkly, and warm with no mud. Sounds amazing clean and distorted . A better analogue to the JB/Jazz combo from SD. Packaging was great with a ton of foam and bubble wrap, which came a week early as well. They also came with a sticker, pick, and a few information cards regarding installation, specs and warranty info. Kris was great to deal with. I'm very happy with my purchase. One thing I may add is that the black chrome is black - not as grey as search results or the pictures on the site look. Not a complaint at all, just something to be aware of.
I paired the Mississippi Blue bridge pickup with a no load tone pot. Lots of mid range and top end if you want it. Sound great wildly overdriven, sounds great when you roll back on the volume. It just sounds great.
I had the pleasure of working with Kris on a set of replacement pickups for my Stratocaster. The set of Lollars I had in there were beautiful sounding, but not quite what I needed to get the tone I was looking for. After a lot of back and forth, Kris suggested a set of VS-61 and I asked him if he could understand wind the neck and bridge a bit. I was looking for a scooped mids tone in the neck leaning more towards the brighter highs and upper mid range to help cut through the mix. The bridge stayed the same but he added a metal base plate to help warm it up and it actually gave it more of a Telecaster bridge crossed with a Strat tone.
It’s a killer set and I highly recommend it. I’m sure the straight up VS-61s sound just as good too,, but the voicing of these are something that should be ordained by the gods of tone!