This pickup is an absolute beast!
-- Long review: (Short review/overview at bottom of this review)
In humbucker mode I can easily play with a véry decent amount of gain (with gain setting being quite low, around 2/3 (on a (slightly) modded Marshall DSL40CV) - allowing to play (old school) metal, while also allowing some rock (n roll) by decreasing volume (on the guitar).
With the same amp settings, by decreasing volume and tone you can get a softer, gentle yet still clear enough tone to play some blues, or even switch to some funk by splitting coils (both slug coil and screw coil sound good, though for obvious reasons, screw coil sounds better in _most_ situations).
By (almost) completely dialing down the tone knob (and by keeping volume knob low), even jazz could sound nice on this pickup (Disclaimer: I don't play jazz, so I don't actually know if it sounded good for jazz. To me, it sounded good. For people into jazz maybe not, I can't tell).
Granted, I changed all my guitar's hardware (went for the Jimmy Page wiring) so I couldn't _completely_ compare it against my old situation, but even then, above things are done with júst the bridge pickup (my dirty fingers). Pots are still 500K pots, with the same caps for tone pots (TAD Cap Orange Drop 22nF 600V) so that _shouldn't_ really make a difference -- except that old pots were logarithmic, and the new pots are "Vintage audio tapers".
I saw in some reviews that this pickup sounds very thin when splitting coils. I guess that depends on the amp because I absolutely do not have this issue.
On the amp of a friend (a Marshall DSL5CR) it sounded good enough, not great, not even great enough that I'd use it alot on that amp.
My amp (a Marshall DSL40CV, with a few mods; the so called "bright cap mod" and different tubes, V1 swapped for 12AX7 (with ~70% power of the stock tube, Marshall ECC83, so that I have more headroom), V2 for a Tung-Sol 12AX7/ECC83 (High Gain), V3+V4 EH 12AX7/ECC83 (Balanced & Matched) and EH EL34 Platinum (Matched) tubes for powertubes, bias@38.5mV) does not have this issue.
On earlier mentioned amp settings they do sound thinner when trying to play with gain, but that is easily solved by cranking up the amp's gain.
Not only does this pickup sound great, it looks great too!
The only less positive thing I can say about this pickup is that I disliked the fact that north finish & south finish were already twisted together (which you want if you're not going to split coils), and that the manual is very minimalistic (especially compared to the one that comes with Seymour Duncan pickups). Not really an issue since I was going to use custom wiring anyway.
What I did like on the other hand is that 1) the pickup cable is quite long and 2) enough length for wires to easily solder them to pots without having to strip the outer cable.
The other pickup I placed (a Seymour Duncan SH-1N-59), the pickup cable was just long enough, and individual cables too short to solder them to both the neck volume and neck tone pots. Gibson definitely won there!
-- Short review:
> Pros:
+ Pickup suitable for multiple genres (against my expectations)
+ It's a beast that wants to scream!
+ Yet it can also be very gentle without really loosing sound/signal quality
+ Long pickup cable
> Cons:
- north finish and south finish twisted together out of the box. Not really a con though, just very slightly inconvenient
> Conclusion:
I recommend this pickup to basically everyone! This one's a beast!
However, if you're into jazz, or don't really play much with much gain (crunch/overdrive) this might not be the pickup for you.
If you're into rock/metal this pickup is an absolute must! Massive output for a passive pickup!
