I had sent this in a PM to Mike_the_red, but he hasnt logged in for 5 days, he might be away.... so maybe yall can answer this for me...

I just started playing guitar recently, and I was wondering about pickups. I have an Epiphone SG G-310 and it comes with 700T humbucker on the bridge. If I changed it over to a Seymour Duncan SH-8 Invader, would I really hear a difference? I picked that pickup, because thats the pickup that one of my fav guitarists uses and I LOVE her sound. Although she says the sound comes from her Mesa-Boogie triple rectifier...lol

 

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I wish I had an answer but I'm sorry I don't. I've been playing guitar for 30 years and have only swapped out a pickup once.
Seymour Duncan's (and the model you refer to) are beasts from what I've read. Depends on what kind of sound you want. Great shredding beefy metal sound.

 

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not into shreading, but love that beefy metal sound...lol

 

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It all depends on how different the pickups are (I really dont know the specifics of your 2 models) and also how much of a noob your ears are to detecting differences in tone, but to generally answer your question:

For very clean tones (low volume, little gain) there might not be a very large difference in tone. Also, this small difference can be greatly overshadowed by the tone controls/setting on your amp. So you may or may not notice any change.

Where you can notice a bigger difference in sound is when putting a 'hotter' (more gain) pickup in. I get the impression this is the situation you are dealing with. At moderate volumes/gains you will notice that these pickkups have a bit more distortion/overdrive to the sound, and may even be much louder than the previous pickup. This effect can be exaggerated when using a distortion pedal or lots of gain on the amp. So for achieving metal style tones it might help a bit.

keep on rocking in the free world!