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Post subject: Best pup for recording
Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 7:16 pm
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Okay I'm about to take my vintage pups off and put on vintage noiseless.

Could my vintage pups just be bad now? They're about 20 years old now.

I was thinking about the vn because of the noise canceling. However I played both Tex Spec and SCN which seemed to have more bite. A shop tech suggested I try the 54s or 69s but could not find a strat with them to hear. I play mostly blues with a lot of gain want to drive my real tube amp. I'm also wanting to record directly into my MacPro using the Logic amps or my line 6.

My current vintage pups are killing me with all the hum and noise.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Any feedback on recording directly with a strat?


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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:07 am
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When you ask about "best" you will get several different responses. The pups that one might consider "best", perhaps you would not.

Is your guitar shielded well ? My experience has been that shielding works well for keeping the noise down.

Another possibility is using a gate. There are several hardware and software noise gates available.

If you decide to try different pups, you might like the hot noiseless :

http://www.fender.com/products/search.p ... 0992105000

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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:44 am
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if you want noiseless pups with vintage tone, i think i know one guy

http://www.kinman.com/Default.htm

he lives in australia, but his pickups are great! :D
just read some of the reviews and listen to some of the sound bites

he also sells his pups in a "no-soldering harness" so you don't have to solder the pups on, you just take out your old pups and pots and put in the new ones, it's pretty cool 8)


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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:43 am
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Miami Mike wrote:
When you ask about "best" you will get several different responses. The pups that one might consider "best", perhaps you would not.

Is your guitar shielded well ? My experience has been that shielding works well for keeping the noise down.

Another possibility is using a gate. There are several hardware and software noise gates available.

If you decide to try different pups, you might like the hot noiseless :

http://www.fender.com/products/search.p ... 0992105000


Thanks for the feedback.

I kind of figured "best" would be subjective. I play blues and a little classic rock. I don't use any pedals accept maybe my crybaby ever now and then. I'm playing through a fender tube, blues jr tweed. I also have a line 6 xt live and the amps in Logic. The line 6 is collecting dust right now.

I haven't decided which route to go yet with recording. I'm old school and always played through my amp with a mic. It's been hard for me to get the same sound through Logic and line 6 as my amp. When I go direct through the line 6 or into the MacPro the noise is really bad. I can only figure the noise is there with the tube amp but just not as noticeable.

My guitar is completely shielded with copper - all possible places. Was done really nice in fact. I checked to see if I have a ground problem and can't find one. No noise when the volume is turned off. Gets worse over 5 with 10 being total useless because of it. I tried two new cables and no change.

I found a Clapton active board and thought maybe I'd add it to whatever pups I go with. I'm assuming it will work with the VN since that's what on the the Clapton strat. I've heard the VN are not that hot. Will this board work with the 57/62? I'll see if I can find a guitar with the Hot VN.

Right now my plan is to just buy different sets and experiment. Last night my wife said why don't I just buy another guitar. Honestly I've played at least 20 guitars over the past month and none played better then mine. A few played as good and several played worse. It seems if you want something that plays well you need to get a custom shop master. So I'm thinking about that too but would want to give fender the exact specs which leads me back to experimenting.

I wish fender would post audio samples of the pickups on the same guitar with all the same amp settings so some one can compare. They could do different styles and settings. That would save me from spending several hundreds on pups to find my sound.


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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:26 pm
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I'd still try a noise gate and read the description in the link that I posted about the Fender Hot "Noiseless" Strat® Pickups.

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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 6:54 pm
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Have you also tried turning your monitor off? I understand that if you have a CRT monitor you will definitely get noise. I never had this problem with my laptop. I have noticed however, the noise decreases if I turn away from my DAW and remain somewhat stationary once I find my "sweet spot". I use an Amplitube Jimi Hendrix and have been pretty happy. Just bought a little 600 with the idea of mic'ing it up and I'll let you know how it goes.....


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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:48 pm
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Miami Mike wrote:
I'd still try a noise gate and read the description in the link that I posted about the Fender Hot "Noiseless" Strat® Pickups.


I'll check that out. There's a noise gate in Logic but I didn't like the way it changed my sound. Maybe I just need to play with it more.


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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:51 pm
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mortalengines wrote:
Have you also tried turning your monitor off? I understand that if you have a CRT monitor you will definitely get noise. I never had this problem with my laptop. I have noticed however, the noise decreases if I turn away from my DAW and remain somewhat stationary once I find my "sweet spot". I use an Amplitube Jimi Hendrix and have been pretty happy. Just bought a little 600 with the idea of mic'ing it up and I'll let you know how it goes.....


I'm using a flat screen so I'd hope I'm not getting too much noise from it. I wonder if the LED backlite screens coming out are less noise.

If I turn away it does get better but doesn't go completely away.


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Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 12:20 pm
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Ok thought I'd post what I found and did. Love the results I have now.

First I shielded everything with copper - complete pickguard and body routing. Next I used shielded wire from the output jack. For the rest of the wiring I used vintage cloth wiring.. I love this stuff. I made sure everything grounded was closed with no open loops.

Next I swapped in the vintage noiseless pups. Extremely quite across all my various amp settings including very high gain settings. Even more exciting to me was how clear I could the "bell" sound. On the down side the pups seems to not have a much tonal range and I lost bass and mid-range.

I decided to try out 57/62 pups. Again my guitar with the new shielding added is lot quieter but the 60hz hum was still present and with high gain settings I got a lot more noise artifacts. I did notice these pups have more low end but not as much high-end. They were not as hot as I expected them to be as well. The "bell" wasn't clear either. I liked the sound but decided to use the vintage noiseless. I'm going to use the 57/62 in another custom strat I'm building from parts.

I also decided to add the active mid-boost found in the Clapton strat. This really added some range to the vintage noiseless. I've heard other people complain about clipping. What I've found is you need to spend time with this setup and experiment. I've now got some settings that really kick without clipping. I did change the wiring of the mid-boost a little with respect to grounding and the resistor and capacitor values based on information from another source. This smoothed out the controls.

Anyway my guitar is now really noise free and has some incredible sounds.
I'd say my guitar sounds more like the Clapton strats I've played but seems to be more crisp, bright and the clarity of sounds is just amazing. I'm not sure if this is due to being a hardtail or other factors as it's the same materials nowl. I'd like to try some hot vintage noiseless to hear the difference but going to wait as I'm enjoying recording with my cleaned up sounds.


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Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 7:39 am
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Glad that it worked out okay for you. Sometimes you can tweak the pre and post track settings for a more favorable tone also.

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