I got myself one EMG single coil to put on my strat-like Washburn as there is that Shred Contest down with Zakk Wylde !!
First I thought that it would be real hard to get a distortion wild enough to boot something decent for that contest.. also considering I'm using a dirt cheap guitar with an extremely thick neck which makes shredding fast and long tricky.
What surprised me the most was the tone this passive single coil had in its sleeve.. a lot of gain with no noise whatsover.. EMG S4, about the cheapest of theirs and it revamped this guitar pretty damn good.