EMG KH20 Pro Series Kirk Hammett Active Pickup Prewired Guitar Pickguard Set

I picked up a squire Strat from my local pawn shop. It was in great shape, and the original neck and middle pickups had a really nice tone. However, the bridge pickup was a single coil... and well, I was not so impressed with how that one sounded. i.e. it didn't chug. Swapping this unit in was super easy, no soldering required! It took less than an hour to complete the mod... which included a trip my local store to get a 9V battery. One hole out of eleven didn't quite line up. I had to drill that hole in the guitar using the unit as the template. I also had to widen the hole from the jack cavity into the pickup cavity a little to allow the wires to slide through with ease. Now this guitar rocks!!!! And the neck & middle pickups still provide excellent tone diversity. One other really important feature worth mentioning... Strats traditionally have the volume knob way too close to the bridge for my liking. This unit has some space between the bridge and the volume knob. Besides the humbucker bridge pup, the location of the volume knob was the thing that sealed the deal for me. The pearl color of the pick guard is totally awesome looking too! I am super happy with it and would recommend to anyone looking for fun and easy project to get a killer sounding guitar for not a whole lot of money.

I had an old Squier 70's Vibe Black Strat that needed a new bridge and pickups. It sat in my attic for years collecting rust and dust. I saw a YouTube video about the EMG KH20 loaded pickguard and heard how great it sounded and decided to restore my old Squier Strat. BEST DECISION I EVER MADE! Installing the KH20 was so easy! No soldering necessary. I had to drill a SLIGHTLY bigger hole between the control cavity and the jack cavity for proper wiring but that was easily done. The screw holes in the pickguard lined up PERFECTLY with the ones on my guitar and the battery fit perfectly underneath the volume/tone control knobs. The tones are AMAZING! The clean tones from the S single coils are very Straty, tight and clear. The 81 humbucker is a BEAST with distortion! Plenty of dirt with little to no noise. I also replaced the bridge. Now I have a SUPER STRAT that I can play anything with. And THANKS to Amazon for overnight delivery!

I want to start off by saying this product- installed- is incredible. Beautiful, and wildly different-sounding tones with all five pickup variations on the 5-way switch. That said, on my Ibanez Gio GRX40, it took some thinking and modification to make it work. First off after removing strings and old yellowing pickgaurd, I checked the fit of the KH-20. The side of the main electronics (volume/tone/5way area is the hub where everything meets) didnt quite clear the cutout on my guitar. So i simply marked the wood that was in the way and grabbed my oscilating tool and cut it out. Then i swapped the input jack- easy peasy. Then i tried to find where the 9V battery would fit. After some thinking and frustration i took off the back plate and removed the center tremolo spring (out of 3) and drilled a small hole between that pocket and the other side and slid the wire through. I put the 9V in a toddler sock and tightened the tensioner bracket to try to compensate for the loss of a spring. (I dont ‘whammy’ much) then i put the pickgaurd into place and it didnt fit the shape of my guitar at all (BTW if you have a Squire I think you won’t have any of these issues or the ones to come), so I marked roughly the new shape I wanted to make it look right, grabbed my little wheel sander and carefully ate away at it until it was about right. Then with fine sand paper, at around a 45° angle I lightly smoothed and beveled the edges to match the rest of the pickgaurd. Lastly I drilled all new holes, because none of the pickgaurd ones matched my guitar. Plus when reshaping a couple holes were eliminated and needed new ones. Before I screwed it down I made all the connectionsfor the electronics, which was refreshingly simple. Although I did have to solder the green wire back onto the terminal it belongs to on the switch (could have been my fault that it came off, hard to say), I’m still giving this 5 starts because of how great the pickups are and how much I like the white pearl finish! It took a fair bit of tools and confidence sonif you dont have one of the two, find someone who does or maybe re-evaluate. The former would be better though, trust me. I’m ‘iffy’ on the pricepoint, because of my experience vs. how easy it is advertised to be. Would still recommend! Pictures kind of show the original look, the stages/hiccups of installation, and then the finished product.

Extremely easy to install and looks and sounds great! You can really shape different tones with these pickups.

So for the people that are saying these pickups are noisy I totally get it but that is a feature of all electronics that have ever been put in a guitar. These pickups are dead quiet with little to no distortion. These pickups produce a clean high quality signal going into your amp and pedals and so to get that metal sound it takes extra distortion, when you turn up the distortion to high levels on any pickups there is going to be noise it’s just a feature of these types of electronics. So most people will need some type of noise gate to get that truly dead silent effect while using high distortion. And while I was surprised with noise these pickups produce once I added a noise gate that solved the whole thing, with the gate all 3 pickups are dead quiet compared to regular single coils.

All parts and pieces accounted for! One problem was the plate did not work with my Ibanez guitar!

I won a cheap but great looking Kramer Focus VT-211S HSS Strat copy at a charity auction that I turned into a modding platform, and the stock garage pickups and electronics were the first to go. (Otherwise, the guitar is a beautiful color with excellent wood quality - maple neck, mahogany body, and extremely, wonderfully playable, so a solid foundation for a great guitar.) I always wanted EMGs, so I replaced the pick guard and pickups with this EMG KH-20, which includes two active single coils paired to a bridge EMG 81. The install was straightforward, but challenging given I was installing it onto an Asian import. It was easy enough to de-solder the ground wire attached to the trem claw in the body cavity and the wires going to the input jack. One tricky part of the installation was getting the EMG input jack to fit through the input plate on the front of the guitar. I ended up having to ream out the hole with a cheap but sharp Harbor Freight $3.50 T-handle reamer. The other tricky part was re-drilling holes - of the 11 pickguard holes, 10 of them did not match the original holes, which is fine since this is an import guitar from China and expected. The fact that this guitar has a Strat-style pickguard and body cavity made it super easy to install as the pick guard, pick up, volume and tone pots, input jack and selector switch combo of the KH-20 has everything integrated, with no soldering required. It sounds as one might expect - tight, articulate, and aggressive, with a thick, mid-scooped character that screams metal. It is 100X or more better than stock and has given this guitar a real bite. Highly recommended and superb value, given that you don’t need to solder anything and all the electronics are included. I never imagined it would be this easy to get EMGs!

I went back and forth on buying this active pickup set for a few weeks. Amazon had a great deal on it one day and I finally decided to purchase and test it out. I'm glad I did! The packaging, documentation, and components are all very high quality. It comes with everything you need for installation, including pickguard screws (I didn't know this). The single coils really do retain that Strat sound, and the EMG 81 is awesome for heavier riffs/songs. This pickup set provides a lot of flexibility. One day I may post some sound clips to my website. Installation was pretty easy in a Fender Squire Affinity Strat. The body cavity wasn't deep enough for the battery, so I needed to route out about a half inch below the knobs. I used a Dremel for this with a router bit and a cutting bit. There was NO soldering involved - everything connects to a circuit board underneath the knobs. Very cool. I highly recommend this pickup set.