I think the Crawler excels in bolt on ash/alder guitars.
Works fine on my maple (+walnut stripes) going-thru neck / maple sides japanese Vox.
It's a pretty versatile pickup for all kinds of music. It's muscular with some PAF-pedigree, round but not dull topend, a superb midgrowl
Totally agree so far.
and soft bass and therefore not the tightest in the BKP-range.
The lows are quite tight on my Vox - at least on the bridge PU - so I bet it also depends on the wood and construction.
Splits very well. Single coil sounds still have weight.
Can't comment on this as I still not rewired the splits :-|
Way you describe it it sound really nice for what I am thinking about right now....exept for the bass. I like fullness and weight from the lower mids but my actual bass not that present. Really love the bass response I get from the MQ neck in my Feline downsized semihollow les paul when clean. Sound so direct lively, full, but not going deep. Crisp and very acoustic. Though I think the guitar does most of the work here.
yes, possibly. I have not tried Crawlers in another guitar nor other pups (except for the cr@ppy stock X2Ns) in this guitar so I can't really comment here, but the RR bridge's low end response was somewhat different in my SG than in the (semihollow) Hofner verythin.
on the bridge I think that might put me off (especially since I like to throw in rather many palm mutes on the bridge). Especially since this guitar is neck through which I feel adds low bottom and softens it a bit too.
While not the same my Vox and this guitar are somewhat similar and well, yes I do get rather deep lows but still quite tight and not prominents. wrt/ palm mutes, I have less troubles with "excessive" low end response from the Vox/Crawler than with the SG/ABomb.
Not to say the Crawler will work for you, but from the guitar's description, your whishlist and my experience with something "close enough" it's an option here IMHO.