I'm in the process of doing some work sorting various issues on a friend's left handed strat - it's a candy apple red Japanese Fernandez strat, made some time in the mid 80s I guess. Rather a nice guitar in fact, but the pickups, which do look to be the original fitted ones, are the (I assume) cheap type with metal slugs for pole pieces, and a single ceramic bar magnet at the base - to my surprise. I measured the DC resistances, and all the pickups come out to aboutr 4.8Kohm. Anyhow, I would assume with specs like that, they would sound rather harsh, trebly and thin - am I right? I have to admit that I haven't tested the original pups through an amp, so I don't know myself what the sound would be from experience.
FWIW, the owner is now looking to upgrade to some sort of proper alnico magnet strat pickups, though has yet to decide exactly what those will be.
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"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Cheers chaps, this is very interesting to hear, not least because my mate actually does have a couple of old Tokai Goldstar strat pickups kicking around - having looked at these, they are definitely not the same low-wind/ceramic as the ones from the Fernandez strat. The Tokais do have individual alnico magnet poles, and are wound to about 5.8K-ish. Friend thinks they might sell well on the web, but of course another option would be to use them in the Fernandez, and we would just need to buy a suitable bridge pickup to go with them.