fender strats with "noiseless" pick ups

Hootsmon

zat mean they don't hum like single coils of days gone by?

monquixote

Indeed 

They also don't sound quite like them either. A bit "polite" for my ears.

sunshinewelly

The lace gold pickups on my strat plus are tge best sounding pickups I have heard

guitarfishbay

I am still not sold on Dimarzio Areas, but noise doesn't work for me either when the gain gets higher. I feel like I should have two pick guards, one with vintage singles and the other with noiseless and swap them every couple of weeks as per my mood. Cheaper than a second guitar would be!

jeztone2

I liked the SCN pickups when I tried a US Strat Deluxe, but I hated the original Noiseless ones. I guess it's a case of try as many guitars as you can.

It's all subjective

Basher

I've got a set of Lace Holy Grails somewhere that sounded OK to me.

Possibly missing a tiny bit of extreme top end - although I had them in a dark-ish sounding guitar. Keep meaning to try them in my ash-bodied partscaster but I don't really use that much gain these days so there's probably no need.

ToneControl

some noiseless pickups sound better, some worse
some people simply compare them with a 1950s-spec design and declare them as inferior, because they don't sound identical.
Of course nothing stops any single noiseless design sounding better or worse than an old-style SC

I tried SD stacks and hot stacks, wasn't really happy
I bought hot Kinmans and they were good, but a little dark in my mahogany strat, so I put in a DG20 set, which are amazing
I have EMG SAs on 4 guitars now,
I have a low-output Kinman as a neck pickup - that one is really good too, not as high an output as the stock Fender Tex one I took out, but just as good,

I put SCNs in a 2008 USA strat, they sounded considerably better than the standard USA ones. Very slightly less bass

I put SCNs in a tele, they were not as good as the strat ones (The neck one disappointed a little).
btw SCN tone improves when you get them very close to the strings. They don't pull the string, so you can get much closer

Tried N3s in my Tele, they were better than the Tele SCNs

Tom Anderson ones are OK, I prefer the SCNs myself

axisus

I have kinman noiseless pups in my strat. Wasn't sure at first but I warmed to them a lot after a while and much preferred them to the BK apaches that were in before. Really don't like the look of lace sensors. I might try them again if you could buy a set with mock covers that look like they have poles. (Had a strat plus, sold it cos of the pups)

ThePrettyDamned

I'm with @tonecontrol.

They don't sound the same as proper single coils - and that's okay. The best ones I've heard are also EMG's though I'm not sure which ones. They were silent and sounded quite stratty, if a little different.

The stacked passive types I've heard have never impressed me, but I've not tried any more than the standard fender ones, no Duncans or anything.

OilCityPickups

You don't get owt for nowt in this world: when you remove hum you remove part of the signal too. Now if you like the sound of noiseless pickups that's great. They don't sound quite the same as 'full fat' single coils, but that's not to say they don't sound good. The sort of music you play and your expectations will all play a role in what you think of noiseless units.
The physics means that to have a hum cancelling coil under the 'signal coil' (which is how most Strat and Tele noiseless units work) you end up with twice the amount of wire picking up the same signal. This is totally unlike a conventional 'side by side' humbucker where both coils 'sense' the string vibration pretty much equally. Therefore to achieve the same output a 'stack' pickup has to be wound much hotter. We all know what happens as you go to finer wire gauges and hotter winds, treble response tails off and mids become more prominent. Various companies try dodges to make their stacks more treble friendly: introducing lumps of steel to shield the lower coil, asymmetric coil shapes etc etc ... with varying success.
It is down to preference ... and to some extent the musical environment you work in.

I have been researching and prototyping noiseless pickups for four years and have not found any solution that 100% pleases my ears ... but my ears are a bit notorious for being hard to please :-)

ToneControl

I think the ones based on using many diff magnets work best (or manipulating the fields), e.g. the SCNs, rather than just stacking the coils in a traditional design.

They do sound different, that's all personal taste, but when other people (not you) reject all noiseless SCs as inferior without trying them I do reflect on the fact that people rarely complain that cars don't drive like those from the 1960s!

For me the hum was so annoying that I'd tolerate a slightly less attractive tone, but I believe the pickups I use now sound as good or better to me. Some folks seem to rejoice in the hum, but to me it's a veil drawn over the music, distracting from the quieter parts of the playing and the note decay

monquixote

I don't think anyone is rejecting them without trying them.

ToneControl

monquixote said:

I don't think anyone is rejecting them without trying them.

not talking about you guys on this thread - just comments over the years from various places

robinbowes

I have Kinmans in my main Strat and my Tele. I like them a lot.

The Strat has a very early blues set and I have in the past thought they were a bit "polite", but these days I really love the lack of that icepick top-end and lack of noise.

R.

Philly_Q

I'm pleased to see several comments on this thread along the lines of "they may not sound exactly like vintage single-coils but that doesn't mean they don't sound good".  That's exactly how I've always felt, but so many of us seem to be locked in the mindset of '57 Strat, '52 Tele, '59 Les Paul... and anything else is "wrong".  There are certain places you'll get shot down at the mere mention of hum-cancelling Strat or Tele pickups.

That said, I have in recent years slowly come back to the position of generally preferring the sound of traditional single-coils!

I've tried lots of different hum-cancelling pickups.  DiMarzio HS and Virtual models, the early Duncan Stacks, Kinmans, Bardens (which are a different thing altogether), Lace Sensors, some EMG models, an SCN Tele neck pickup, Gibson P-100s.  In general terms I'd say they all sound pretty close to (but not as nice as) true single-coils clean, then get more "humbuckerish" as you turn up the distortion.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Nowadays I would probably opt for true single-coils in a vintage-style guitar but I'd still consider noiseless pickups in a "modern" Strat or Tele - I think they go hand in hand with the more polite/polished, high tech styling.

guitarfishbay

I really want to try some EMG sets. I've heard a few people using them live and thought they sounded great. The Dimarzio Area 67s I have are ok in the middle and neck positions but the Area 61 is too bright and thin for me in the bridge and though it is better in the neck I still think I prefer the 67.

monquixote

ToneControl said:

monquixote said:

I don't think anyone is rejecting them without trying them.

not talking about you guys on this thread - just comments over the years from various places

Ah, fair enough. 

Headphones

I find it varies instrument to instrument.

I've three Strats and have tried a lot of different pickups in them.

All three Strats sound different in themselves and all the pickups vary (whether low noise or single) too.  The art is to pick the best combination that suits your ear/style/need.

No short cuts that I've found beyond trying them in the guitar.

Equally I've never really found the language that's used to describe Pus in adverts and review that helpful - just what does "softer" really mean in any difinitive sense (for example)?

As to the noiselss point specifically, they vary in a similar range to the variation of typical single coils. 

Philly_Q

guitarfishbay said:

I really want to try some EMG sets. I've heard a few people using them live and thought they sounded great. The Dimarzio Area 67s I have are ok in the middle and neck positions but the Area 61 is too bright and thin for me in the bridge and though it is better in the neck I still think I prefer the 67.

I've had two Area 58s and an Area 61 for ages but never got round to trying them.  I thought they might go well with a Fender Eric Clapton mid-boost setup (which I aso have squirrelled away somwhere).

mark123

I've owned 2 u.s.a strat plus guitars and to me they sounded sterile flat and 1 dimentional

but that's just my opinion

OilCityPickups

I think many manufacturers shy away from the 'best' solution to hum cancelling 'single coils': that is the split single coil (like a P Bass).

Because both coils 'read' the strings, you get a true single coil sound with no need for messing about with 're shaping fields' and bollocks like that. The down side for the manufacturer is they involve tons more work to make! More parts, more assembly, more faff ... to the point where they become uneconomic to manufacture .... that is if you have to fit them into a Strat or a Tele form factor.

I produced a totally noiseless Tele bridge prototype ... the 'B1' that was closer than I'd ever had to a true noiseless single coil sound before. I would have had to sell them for a daft price however ... and two prototypes still sit on my shelves. Fender make a similar pickup but it sounds different as it uses a rail rather than pole pieces.