Holy S%$T Martian!! I posted the thread because I wanted opinions of people WHO HAVE DONE THE WORK!! I didn't ask whether I should do it. Leave that kind of choice to me. I have gone the noiseless pickup route with EMGs. Love 'em! Love 'em so much, I put them on 2 of my favorite guitars. I have guitars with humbuckers. Love 'em too.
Why would Fender add sheilding to their most recent Strats if the guitar buying public(you and me and him and her)didn't complain about it? We all know that stacked humbucker single coils dont sound like true singles. I have them on my Charvel. They sound great, but not the same.
We tend to on this forum go off into left field on occasion(okay, all the time) and deviate from the initial question, which was about what works best. Period. You know if you have ever tinkered on a guitar, it is never truly "Finished". There is always something you can do to tweak it, or make it more of our own. If you ever owned a muscle car, you know what I mean. I know I am obsessed!! No doubt about that. But heck, it is way better than some other obsessions I could list that Brad would have a problem with.HaHahahah!!!

I want to sheild my Strat that has STOCK pickups, not the ones with EMGs.
Why would I not want to improve my signal to noise ratio on a guitar that I want to use for recording if at all possible????

This whole, "I must have my guitar totally shielded" thing is overrated. As I've said in an earlier post, this phenomenon is more a product of a mass hysteria initiated by pickup manufacturers when their stacked humbuckers starting coming on the scene. If you think about it, if absolute shielding was/is such a big deal, you'd never see any artist using a guitar with single coils. And guaranteed, those who have the real vintage instruments and/or the artists from back in the day, never considered 60 cycle hum as a problem nor would shield their guitars.

Ironically, shielding in most cases is an unnecessary overcompensation as the component that would truly benefit the most from shielding doesn't get any at all. I'm talking about the outright pickup coils themselves. They are in fact, the chief "antenna" for reeling in and passing along the unwanted hum, noise or whatever you want to call it.

Granted, total shielding will suppress hum in some cases but that is because the shielding has increased the resistance in the circuit as a whole which in turn, will decrease the overall output and a tad of high end as well. So, if you reduce the volume and treble of a guitar's circuit, by necessity the hum/noise in the circuit will be reduced as well.

Some people do take the Stratocaster's pickup covers off and meticulously foil the inside of the covers. The drawback with this is that it changes the magnetic field of the pickup and creates eddy currents; to put it plainly, it reduces the frequency response and the output of the pickup.

Either way, the results are similar to lowering the volume and treble a notch in an unaltered guitar or as simple as when you touch your hand to the strings and ground the guitar through your body.

I have no problem with single coil pickups and for all the obvious reasons, do indeed like the benefits of stacked humbuckers as well. My whole point of this diatribe is to simply keep things in perspective.

OK, let me have it.

hehe IMO trying to make a strat not hum is like when turner tried colourizing all those old movies. They thought they were improving them, but all they did was destroy the character of the pieces.

try using fully shielded power cord for the amplifier
& also high quality fully shielded guitar cord

I have EMG pickups on 2 of my Strats, and love them. They don't replace passive pups, just different....and quiet!