Lollar Novel CC NE NI

For context, I'm using this pickup on a laminate archtop guitar (Eastman, 175 style)

Pros
1. Very crystal clear and full range sound. Super articulate. Just what I wanted in terms of sound. Think Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel. I've never tried the big, original CC ones, so I don't know how it compares

Cons
1. About 3x times noisier than regular Strat single coil pickup. It's quite hard to manage in lower volume settings. This is one of the noisiest pickups because of its big magnet.
2. Quite boomy, so leads to more feedback with my guitar. But nothing that EQ on the amp and raising it off the floor can't fix.

Observations
I kept the original 500k pots the guitar has (and .22uf cap), although Lollar recommends 250k. I wanted it to be quite bright, so this made sense to me, but the tone knob only works between 3 and 0 (it's linear). The sweet spot is probably 500k volume, 250k tone.

Conclusion
If you can live with the noise, the velvety old-school sound this pickup has is certainly special and inspiring to play.

I have never changed a pickup in a guitar until now. I own an Ibanez AG75 Artcore and I love the feel of it but the pickups aren't great, everyone else's Jazz guitar sounded way better than mine. Rather than buy a new guitar, (Which I considered) I tried changing just the neck pickup for this Lollar Novel CC. It fitted right in with no mods required and I can't believe the difference. It sounds amazing, so much richer, more depth. I think that my cheap guitar now sounds like a really expensive one. I bought this on a recommendation from a friend in the USA who had done the same mod on exactly the same guitar. Super impressed and super happy with my purchase!