I've spent a week with the EJ pickups in my Old Man Strat, overall I absolutely love them and they came with some epiphanies/connecting of dots with what EJ's said about what he's aiming for with his tone and how those pickups sound. Obviously, they're not HS-2's with the double coil disconnected, nor are they '54's with the poles pushed down by EJ himself, but he's used them quite a bit. I have an HS-2 I bought years ago for this exact purpose, but after I get more familiar with the EJ bridge pickup I'm going to swap it out and give the HS-2 a shot (disconnected 2nd coil).
I said it in another thread but I've never had this experience of hearing the acoustic sound of the guitar and then the sound coming out of the speakers being so identical before. They're like microphones with 5 different EQ settings with fairly subtle curves until you hit that 2nd position and the mids and bass drop right out.
This was the night I got 'em working, you can kinda get an idea of what I'm talking about when I'm playing clean and changing the pickups-
On the topic of EMG's, I actually sat down today with the intent of noting the differences between the EJ's and the Gilmour EMG's. When shooting out the Dover Drives the other night I found I would have to use the Dovers with either a distorted amp or stacked with another dirt pedal to get what I get out of them with the Gilmour pickups (with both boosters off).
I'll make a little clip. I've wanted to have some kind of comparison with a lower output set of single coils and the EMG's because I definitely feel they're far more misunderstood than acknowledged for what they are. Even I had the wrong idea of them before I actually used them.