Noiseless single coils and high gain

Evo

Anyone got any experience?

I love my strat, love the tones, but it's frustrating to be restricted to only two pickup selections once the gain gets cranked. 

So i've been toying with the idea of trying out some noiseless single coils in the hope that i'll be able to have some lovely, creamy strat neck pickup tones with some seriously chonky gain and no hummy, buzzy, fuzzy, wuzzyness to deal with.

Odd things start to happen when strats go high gain. Wooshy, harmonicy, hummy, feedbacky craziness. So can anyone either recommend some pickups that'll make a strat behave itself, or maybe stop me from wasting my money because i'm setting my hopes too high. 

If it helps, i'm running a schecter diamond nick johnston through a victory super kraken. Just to clarify as well, it's not a noisy rig. I don't have a "problem" when i'm using reasonable levels of gain, it's just that every now and then I get the urge to get a little unreasonable.

Tell me what you think fellas!

axisus

I don't play live or loud, but I do like to crank gain at home. I have some Kinman noiseless and I have always liked them a lot.

Funkfingers

Lace Sensors are good under high gain. Unfortunately, in my opinion, their low gain and clean sounds are disappointing.

digitalscream

I'm quite partial to Lace Sensors, but they're still a compromise - if you like the natural tones of a Strat, you're not going to get them with any but the lowest-output Lace Sensors...but the lack of output strangles the high-gain tones. They aren't completely noiseless, but they're very low-noise.

Incidentally, I've got a set of DiMarzio HS2 noiseless singles going cheap(ish). They weren't powerful enough for me, but they might work for you.

xscaramanga

I've got some DiMarzio noiseless (Injector and the catchily-named Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2) and high gain is where I like them best. No noise issues, and they sound suitably Stratty (arguably under high gain the differences in tone between these and true single coils are less obvious).

Corvus

I went Mojotone and liked them enough both filthy & clean to buy another slightly different set, without a guitar to go into, but that's being built soon. Shitty vid cam recording is all I've got but it's a fuzz maxed out - vid link 

skullfunkerry

EMG SA are very Stratty-sounding, by all accounts...

normula1

The Kinman's are quiet, I much prefer the Woodstocks to the Traditional.
I've also got a set of Dimarzio Virtual Vintage '54s and Blues (in the bridge) that work really well with gain.

Greatape

skullfunkerry said:

EMG SA are very Stratty-sounding, by all accounts...

The S's are more like a regular strat than SA's. Add the SPC and you have versatility. 

I've heard their new Retroactive range is good. 

Bill Lawrence Wilde and Zexcoils are also solid choices.

guitarmangler

I’ve had dimarzio hs something’s, and the emg david gilmour set and both were great. I loved them with gain. But I always missed something about not having a singles coil ‘sound’ when in less gain.

I now have just a set of single coils in my strat and used to gig with an isp decimator to stop the noise. I now just turn the volume down very quickly in any gaps.
I play with loads of gain, and a tube screamer for solo, and use the strat for punk/rock covers gigs. As long as the hum isn’t louder than your guitar it’s fine. It seems less of a problem these days. Better lights maybe? Recording used to be difficult as computer monitors would hum like crazy.