Overall, I’m quite impressed with these pickups. They have the power, tightness and crunch that you’d want from a pickup design for hard rock/metal or anything you’d play with a bit or a lot of distortion from blues right up to really aggressive metal. The bridge pickup definitely blew me away here and I do see the neck pickup taking over a lot of the recommendations that the Air Norton and LiquiFire tend to get, especially for solo instrumental/shred stuff. The inability for me to get a clean sound just by rolling down the volume takes a bit away from the versatility of the pickups, but that’s easily remedied by switching to a proper clean channel.
If you’re looking for a set of pickups for instrumental metal/shred but want something more aggressive than the Tone Zone and don’t want the darker rounder sound from the Air Norton in the neck? Get the Gravity Storm set. If the key words in your tonal description includes tight, aggressive and crunchy, get the Gravity Storm set. Heck if you have a single humbucker guitar and need an awesome bridge pickup that’s got versatility, GET THE GRAVITY STORM. It’s that good!
You may have just sold me. At least on the bridge.
My main ride is a mahogany set neck, maple carved top hardtail double cutaway, but is nothing like a Les Paul or SG (It's a Jack Dent Raven for the record- NC builder). The neck tenon goes all the way through the one-piece body. It's full and balanced but extremely bright. Strong but tight bass.
I CANNOT get the pickups right. I love the Tone Zone, especially for cleanish-mid gain playing. I love the harmonic complexity. But it's too dense. Not too bassy exactly-too dense, when playing gained out.
I use a clean amp (Fender 75) and dirt pedals.
Duncan Custom-tight but too stiff. Harsh highs.
Crunch Lab- Nice harmonics and definition, but very boxy/stiff for cleans and too polite/polished with gain.
I could go on. I wanted a Tone Zone with tighter bass and some space in the mix (less lower mids is what this amounts to).
I had also considered the Dominion bridge.
NECK: this one scares me a little. Any pick up that gets recommended for people who want more clarity out of the neck is generally something I avoid like the plague. This guitar is so clear already that it needs a fatter neck pickup to get any sing out of it. So the thought of a ceramic neck pickup does not appeal to me. I love for you to prove me wrong because I like the idea of a matched set. I am tired of fighting volume and color differences when mixing and matching pickups.