Noiseless pickups in a Strat, yay or nay?

impmann

I had a set of those Fender Noiseless 'Hot' pickups - allgedly the ones Jeff Beck uses.

Crap. Horrible. Flat. Lifeless. Plus they weren't noiseLESS they had LESS noise.

I have a set of SAs in my synth guitar - nice but they sound different to a good strat.

To misquote the great John Peel

"Background noise? Life's got fucking background noise"

So NAY from me.

olafgarten

Veganic said:

olafgarten said:

Ancient_Mariner said:

olafgarten said:

Unfortunately both you and @Veganic are wrong. 

Both of those are the same track with Noiseless Pickups except with the second I added more noise artificially.  

Technically I said 2 was noiseless

I just guessed - I couldn't tell any diffrence other than 2 seemed to has less 'noise.'

The fact that you can hear less noise is strange, I literally simulated a big muff on my Zoom on full gain and recorded the noise then added it to the track.

Ancient_Mariner

olafgarten said:

Veganic said:

olafgarten said:

Ancient_Mariner said:

olafgarten said:

Unfortunately both you and @Veganic are wrong. 

Both of those are the same track with Noiseless Pickups except with the second I added more noise artificially.  

Technically I said 2 was noiseless

I just guessed - I couldn't tell any diffrence other than 2 seemed to has less 'noise.'

The fact that you can hear less noise is strange, I literally simulated a big muff on my Zoom on full gain and recorded the noise then added it to the track.

Perhaps it masked the more detailed qualities of that particular recording, making the second track sound smoother? The point of not using noiseless pickups is so that the actual pickups sound more interesting - it's not to add (inaudible) noise. At least that explains why it was so hard to hear much difference.

Evilmags

Depends where your playing. A modern wired house won't make much noise if it is properly done and lit with LEDs . A pub with old wiring then noiseless is better and EMGS much better.