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

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!

The media could not be loaded. 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 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.

Ya, just get it!

ive been thru a few fender pickups, these EMG's are the ones for me. i love the active tone controls, really easy install, absolutely recommend