I have hot gold lace sensor pickups and I love them. They have a lot more out put than my other pickups. I switched out some SCNoiseless pickups on my clapton strat for them and they're suit me just fine. I'm think about getting golds for the neck and middle though. I like to play a lot of r&b and jazzy sounding stuff too (using position 2 on a strat 5-way) and they are just too hot!!! It's all up to your ears though. Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Buddy Guy have all used them so they can't really be that bad.