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Post subject: Vintage noiseless pickup volume.
Posted: Thu May 24, 2012 9:13 am
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I recently put a set of used vintage noiseless pickups in my MIM standard strat and need some opinions from those of you who have them. I took out the stock electronics and installed the noiseless using 1M tone pots and a 500K volume pot and while they do sound good, they are very low in volume as compaired to the ceramic magnet pickups I took out. I'm not talking about how hot they are. I mean volume in general. As an example, unmodified strat playing clean on my amp at a volume of 4. In order to match the volume with the vintage noiseless installed, I have to turn the amp to 8.

For grins and giggles I took it apart and swapped out the pots with my stock 250K to see if they would be any louder. Nope! Still very low volume.

So I ask, is it normal that they are such low volume or does it sound like there might be a problem somewhere? It's not one pickup but all 3 so I highly doubt there is anything wrong with the pickups. I downloaded a wiring diagram of an american deluxe with vintage noiseless and plan on wiring to this spec tonight but I don't want to go thru the trouble if this is normal and my results don't change.

Thanks!


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Post subject: Re: Vintage noiseless pickup volume.
Posted: Thu May 24, 2012 9:50 am
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Hmmm...does not sound right to me. I have the VN in a Tele and I don't discern a "low volume" though to be honest I also have nothing to compare with as these came stock.

Do each pup individually sound "low" or only in combination with others? If in combo then it could be that they are wired out of phase with each other.

Pickup Guru, Martian, will hopefully see this topic and reply with better troubleshooting.

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Post subject: Re: Vintage noiseless pickup volume.
Posted: Thu May 24, 2012 10:22 am
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It's not a specific pickup combination. All 5 selections are very low volume. The pickups were already wired to the 1M tones and 500K volume when I got it. I just had to put them on my pickguard and re-ground and re-solder the jack. Knowing that my ceramic MIM pickups were much higher in volume, I then tried the 250K pots to the same outcome.

Here is what I come up with.

1) I don't think the pickups are the problem because it is unlikely to me that all three are bad.

2) I don't think there's an issue with any of the pots because the 250K pots were fine on the old pickups.

This leaves me to believe there was a problem with the wiring of the electronics assembly I got and coincidently also my wiring. My wiring logic was simple. Anywhere I took a wire off, I put a wire on.

The only other variable I can think of is that either my jack or ground wiring was done poorly.

:?: :?:


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Post subject: Re: Vintage noiseless pickup volume.
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 1:27 am
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MIM ceramic pickups are pretty high-output. Vintage Noiseless are much lower output (like vintage Strat pickups). So the MIM ceramics are louder.

I don't know if having to turn the amp up twice as loud is normal. But part of that could be the amp -- volume knobs don't always respond in a progressive linear way.

Another variable is pickup height. Vintage Noiseless pickups have much less string-pull so you can set them closer to the strings. If you've got the VN's set to the same height as the stock pickups were, you're not getting all the output that's possible from the VN's.


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Post subject: Re: Vintage noiseless pickup volume.
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:37 am
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The VNs are noticeably weaker than most 'average' single coils and herein lies an irony: The general consensus agrees the VNs sound best when lowered away from the strings, thus making them even weaker. Also of note is the fact that many a Strat's string spacing does not line up well over the VNs' polepieces, thus making the picking up of certain strings even weaker.

They also sound best with 250K pots all around.

Granted, certain faulty wiring(s) can cause an extreme volume drop in a guitar's circuit but in this particular situation, once you've verified the total wiring to be sound (How's that for a play on words?), what you're left with is the way the VNs intrinsically are.

Sight unseen, my personal opinion is that odds are, there's nothing wrong with the wiring for if there was, odds are again, there would be intermittent jumps in the volume to outright shorting out due to all the wiring manipulations from your troubleshooting.

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Post subject: Re: Vintage noiseless pickup volume.
Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 5:11 am
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My VN's are very LOW output


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Post subject: Re: Vintage noiseless pickup volume.
Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 10:27 am
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My VNs are really loud compared to the stock Alnico Vs in the AmStd pups.


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