I have this pickup with a 5% underwind in my MIJ Talman. I was expecting a great pickup, but somehow the Fralin crew exceeded my expectations. It absolutely nailed the tone I was looking for–beefier than a standard Strat pickup, but still in the same neighborhood — all while being noise-free! Simply put, the Split Steel Pole Strat offers the platonic ideal of what I want a Strat bridge pickup to be in my head. What really surprised me about this pickup was its versatility; you can get a broad range of highly-usable sounds from the guitar’s tone control alone. So in addition to doing traditional Strat bridge things and medium-gain leads that I expected this pickup to deliver, I found that it can work quite well for parts that I normally play with a Filtertron. tl;dr: The Split Steel Pole Strat offers everything I want out of a Strat bridge pickup and more.
