Ibanez SAS32fm pickup replacement

   A friend of mine bought this wonderful ibanez set neck guitar for cheap, but the pickups were replaced... It's made in Korea, it has the best neck joint I 've seen on an Ibanez and it plays like a dream! Maybe one of the best Ibanez electrics I 've played(and I've played lots of them, RGs, Prestiges, Xyphos etc).
  The original pickups were not included but the guitar had a low output S.Duncan Jazz at the bridge position. The guitar was oriented for hard rock solos and some shredding so we needed more output!
   My first thought was to put a new ceramic bar inside the Jazz humbucker to make it hotter but it also made it quite bassy... So I put back the alnico bar and sold the S.D. pickup.
 With both pickup cavities empty, I was looking for a matched set of passive hot humbuckers. I found a nice set of open coil hot ceramic humbuckers with adjustable poles(very important!) for 20euros by a company called "PROLINE". They also had 4 conductor wiring and all the screws/springs to fit them on the guitar.
  I installed these Proline pickups on the sas32fm and guess what: they sound great! They sound like PAFs only hotter and the mids are so rich and cut through the mix/band. There's no muddiness or bassy/"farty" response. It's amazing what you can get for 20euros but it's no surprise to me.
 The high spec US pickup and hardware companies were providing Chinese OEM factories with knowledge and data for years in order to produce the "X-designed/licenced" series of affordable pickups/hardware. Now that these factories produce more than the US companies can absorb, the rest of the good stuff  appears on several Internet markets at really competitive prices!

Here are some pictures of the project: