Hello fellow guitarists,

I've been thinking of modifying my MIM strat with some new pick-ups. Right now I have the Texas specials that came with my roadhouse strat but I have been looking at the Fender Hot noiseless pick-ups and I had a few questions.

First if its noiseless is this a single coil pup or is it a humbucker in disguise? Also are these pickups going to give me a more overdriven sound out of my tube amp or are they still very clean sounding?

One more quick question. I have also been looking at the Fender preamp mid range boost like in the Eric Clapton strat. Could someone explain what exactly this does?

Thanks for the help!

I can only speak to the difference in my 06 MIM Tele after I swapped out the stock pu's for a set of SCN's. Most noiseless pickups are literally "stacked" single coil pickups, that like humbuckers have noise cancelling capabilities.

Depending on what you are looking for, you can get noiseless pu's that retain most of the sound quality of single coils, or you can order noiseless pu's that sound more like the traditional, high gain humbucker. Seymour Duncan and Dimarzio's web sites have numerous sound clips of their models.

BTW, the SCN's in the Tele tend to boost the mid frequencies a bit, and yes, they do handle higher gain settings much better. I understand the Strat version of these pickups have similar qualities. It was money well spent in my opinion.


Rich

As it is noiseless, it must cancel the 60 cycle hum which is inherent in a single coil pickup. Therefore, it is a humbucker in disguise (the coils are stacked).

A word of advice: They call them, "Hot" Noiseless because of the ceramic magnets in them. DO NOT expect a beefy, powerful pickup. As a matter of fact, compared to what you have in your Strat now, they will sound quite anemic.

The, "balls" of any pickup comes from midrange frequencies. Typically, any heavy metal, etc. pickup has a pronounced midrange which usually goes hand in hand with it having to be a high output pickup. This is due to the number of coil windings necessary to ramp up that midrange. The Clapton preamp essentially adds a huge midrange hump into the circuit, regardless of what pickups are used. So, it gives the pickups 'teeth' while boosting the circuit's output a bit too. This in NO way should be presumed that you will 'love' what it does. Some love it, some hate it. It also runs on a battery.

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Well when it comes to talking about the inner workings I dont stand a chance next to Martian .lol The only thing I can say is I have a Clapton which has the vintage noisless but as Martian explained because of the mid boost and tbx you dont get a clear listen to the tone of the pickup because it is masked, you can almost make the guitar sound like a Gibson in a way. On the other hand I also have a Jeff Beck strat which has the hot noiseless pickups and I really like them I can pull out all my strat tones from them,but then again some guys dont like them. I can only speak for me and you might have to adjust the height till you get the tone right.And finally I have my 62 reissue tele that has Dimarzzio fast tracks in them which is a stacked humbucker and I can pull ZEP to AC/DC with them. So if you want to keep it as close to your strat sound I would go with the hot noisless. Before you change go to your guitar store and go play an hour so you can hear for yourself to be sure because it is hard to base a decision on other peoples taste which are going to run different on something as important as your tone. Good Luck

Thanks for your help. I will definitely test out some of the guitars with the noiseless pickups before I make any changes to my strat. Thanks

When you check out the noiseless pickups make sure you try the Kinman's and the Damarzio's because the vintage noiseless designs are as stated earlier but the newer designs of the noiseless pickups differ because the bottom coil uses it own rods and different winding turns it is about 1/4 of the induction of the top coil. Because of this design the canceling is enough to pick up the interference but lets the top coil sparkle more like a single coil.

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