Stock pickups are not so great but I found that it was also the bad factory wiring as well. I went bananas and redid all the wiring (replaced it with shielded cable) and layed in copper tape for shielding instead of shielding paint. I'll link the review I did for my S8 below. I dropped in a Bill Lawrence which was really made for steel lap guitar but it works great. But if I went the sane route I would swap it with some deathbars from lace. They seem to be pretty A+.