I read that this is the pickup that Iron Maiden used during the early 80's (like for the Piece of Mind album), is this true? If it is then I'll defintely get one but I just want to make sure I'm buying the right thing.

Also, my guitar is a Fender Strat and it has 3 single coil slots, so how would the super distortion, being a humbucker, fit into it? Could I just leave the guitar and the pickup into my local guitar shop and they would make the pickup slot big enough for the humbucker to fit into it?

Sorry if these seem like really stupid questions but this is my first time buying new pickups and I don't really know how a humbucker would be fitted to my guitar. Thanks for any help.

as far as i know the fender iron maiden signature had seymour duncan hotrails in it (and jb junior i think ).
I dropped a sd hotrails in the bridge of my squier and it's a whole new guitar. take the pickguard out and see how the wood is carved. my guitar can fit 3 humbuckers if i want it to
if a hbucker can fit in there go buy a hss or h h pickguard and drop all the humbuckers you want.
now realy are you sure you want to make a metal guitar out of your fender? fender are sweet guitars for rock but for metal?! if you have the money for a real metal guitar imho the strat dosen't deserve such punnishment.
my 2 eurocents

Don't worry I won't be thrashing it! Just playing some "tasteful" metal if you know what I mean

Yeah I know about the Duncans in the Maiden signature guitar, but that's not for the pickups they used in the early 80's. Quite a few people have told me that a DiMarzio super distortion was used.

I'll have a look to see if I can fit a humbucker can fit and if it can then I'll buy a new pickguard. If not then I'll just get hot rails for the bridge pick up, which isn't a bad thing!

If you haven't got enough space in there, you could do the routing yourself, or take it to a tech. I took my strat to a tech, and it wasn't that expensive to do.

Do you mean just take it to a professional in a guitar shop? I would rather do that, wouldn't trust myself to do it.

routing is not such a hard thing to do. just read the fucking manual and use the solder gun wisely don't be afradid and yes, practice makes perfect.
last time i checked a new pickguard was about 15-20$ .

All right I'll get a new pickguard for the humbucker and, depending on how much it costs, get a tech to install it for me. I'm sure I could do it myself but I just don't want to mess it up.

If you care about how the routing looks, then take it to a pro, like I did. If you want to save some money, and don't really care if there's a messy routing job, you can just do the routing yourself, and only if you're unsure about installing pickups, take it to a pro.

listen to the man ^

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To my knowledge Iron Maiden has always used the JB

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Yeah I was watching Rock in Rio there and Janick has a JB Jr. in the neck and bridge slots. I really like the tone he gets from the bridge JB Jr., so can anyone tell me would it be possible to have one of those in the middle slot of my guitar? Thanks.

As long as your slot is the same size as his, I don't see why not.

Yeah it's the same size, but I'm just not sure whether it would be possible to have a pickup designed for the bridge in the middle slot.

I say try it.

Yeah I think it would work. I'll ask the guy in the shop when I go to buy it if it would be suitable for the middle slot. The reason I want a bridge JB Jr. in the middle slot is because I will have the Super Distortion in the bridge so I need somewhere else to put it.

If anyone else can confirm that it wouldn't be possible to have a bridge JB Jr. in the middle slot then could you tell me please. Thanks

the jb jr is a replacement for any strat pickup(aka single coil). i have a hotrails in my bridge and i didn't modify the pickguard. buy the damn thing

Yes I know it would fit in the slot, what I mean is would it work there because it is a bridge pickup and I thought that it might be too hot for the middle slot, because I have only heard of a neck pickup being used in the middle slot. Hope you know what I mean.