I'm typically not a huge fan of single coils but I do happen to have an ESP Vintage Plus Strat with two singles and a humbucker and could never get used to the tone from the singles. That being said I was actually going to swap out the neck pickup for a DiMarzio mini humbucker like an Air Norton S for a tone I'm more familiar with and very happy with, BUT I just happened to have a Cruiser Bridge pickup laying around for some time that I bought off someone a while ago and thought.. hey I might as well give it a try.
It is honestly one of the best sounding neck pickups a guy like me could ask for. I can see why Andy Timmons likes the Cruiser so much now. Output wise it's fairly low but unlike most strat pickups it doesn't sound thin to my ears and this is coming from someone who's used to playing on fairly fat sounding humbuckers in the neck position. It's got all the clarity and sparkle one could expect from a true single coil but just a bit more umph to it.
The clean tones are fantastic with this and handles distortion very well. A mild distortion yields a great blues/rock lead tone and also produces fantastic shred tones if you crank up the gain. I'm honestly really surprised how great this pickup is and may have found a new favourite neck pickup. Too bad the one I had lying around was black. I wish they did this in white with chrome blades. (ok, I know, I can just get white covers, but the blades are still black)
