EMG T Set Black

Good sounding pickups. 5/5.

Pros:
Great bite, and fit a lot of genres, just like most Telecasters do.
They work great with distortion and keep that recognizable bite, without going into the ice pick territory. This set could perhaps be one of the most versatile pickups I've tried, but don't take my word for it. Check around the web for examples.

Also very easy to install on your guitar. The solderless setup that EMG uses is incredibly easy to put into your guitar. If you've measured and made sure everything sits where it should sit, I'd say it's a 5-10 minute job to install them.

Cons:
If you're a Telecaster purist, these are most likely not for you.
I always noticed them sounding a bit smoother when compared straight up to a Telecaster. This was never an issue for me, a lot can be done with external sources like the Amp, or Pedals.
In my humble opinion it's worth having noiseless active pickups over the purist sound.

I arrived at this active T-Set by EMG because I needed a particular hollow-body T-style guitar to be effectively shielded, which is easier said than done (as opposed to any normal, routed solid body).

Mine had the vintage bridge plate with 3 saddles only, the boxed-steel design from the '50s and '60s style, not the flat-out of contemporary MIM and MIU Telecasters.

Installation was totally straightforward, no adaptation needed, no routing... the 9V battery had its most perfect fit underneath the potentiometers, so I did not even install a box or a lid for it, just placed a piece of foam to keep it press-firm.

Then came the tone.

Tele, indeed, but like another user here said, with a broader harmonic range (no need to invent another way of describing it when this is so effective, if I can borrow). And such an increased dynamic range, too.

Definitely the most piano-like Tele sound I've heard (and the pickups I replaced where really special, really exclusive ones). Why did this tone remind me of a past experience, I wondered.

Answer came from EMG website: this is the pickup set that inspired the OEM kit installed on the Chapman Stick touch-guitar-bass as the then-named "The Block" special option!

I've owned a Stick in my past, tried to become proficient on it (and failed at it), but the sound, the tone was the real driving force behind my love for it. It's this, it's all here!

I, for my own mental and aural limit, still can't understand why active pickups became synonimous with "metal" or "extreme distortion". I only play clean, never a hint of distortion, almost exclusively in jazz-tone, or acoustic-tone territory. And find active EMG pickups the most hi-fi sounding ones, the most extended in frequency response, the most balanced for any height-setting I decide to choose.

I installed this set onto a high quality instrument, which has retained all of its specialty, and is now totally RF-shielded (thanks to EMG active design) to the point of leaving the guitar plugged in, idling on top of a pedalboard with 12 DSP-based stompboxes, without a hum.

Were it not for the blacked-out look of this, I would have installed one such kit in any of my other Teles; if only it existed with the traditional nickel-plated (neck pickup) cover, and exposed-poles (bridge pickup) bobbins, I would have not one, but two or three dream guitars.