I have a 2000 American Deluxe Start and I am thinking about swapping out the stock pups for a "noiseless" version and possibly adding the S1 switching. There seems to be three different versions of the Fender "noiseless" pups out there. Can anyone tell me the differences or at least point me in the right direction? I am considering the SCN, Vintage Noiseless or the N3...are there any other "noiseless" pups out there, Duncans maybe? Thanks.

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Swifty Nelson

REMEMBER...WHEREVER YOU ARE, THAT'S WHERE YOU'LL BE.

Go with DiMarzio's Virtual Vintage "Area" series instead. They've got more spank, more balls, more grunt, more grit, more of everything compared to your three possible candidates. They use standard 250k volume and tone pots so you can keep your existing wiring.

HTH

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

+1

What he said!

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-T

"You can't spend what you ain't got, you can't lose what you ain't never had" ~ McKinley Morganfield

Love my SCNs.

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Bill

I'm a little confused. I also have a 2000 Deluxe Strat, and mine came with the Vintage Noiseless. If your Strat has something other than Vintage Noiseless, then it sounds like the pickups have been changed out already.

Personally the Vintage Noiseless are outstanding pickups, and I don't have any plans to change them out anytime soon.

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2000 American Deluxe Stratocaster
2011 Gibson Les Paul Trad Pro 50's
2007 Epi Les Paul Custom
90's ESP Eclipse
JH-1B Jimi Hendrix Crybaby
Analogman KOT
Korg Pitchblack
Boss NS-2 PH-2
Blues Deluxe Reissue
1999 & 2007 Marshall TSL 100 w/1960BV cab

The SCN's are Bill Lawrence designed for Fender and were introduced when the guitar was reworked....(2004??). You can search Bill Lawrence's website for the whole story on that design if you desire the gory details. Fender made quite a big deal out of the fact they these were going into the new guitar. Search the Fender website for similar details on the N3's. As for the Vintage Noiseless, other than the fact that the sent them to EC for a tryout and he liked them enough to swap out the LS's in his stage guitars, I've never seen any detailed discussion on them.

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"Another day in paradise!"

+1 anything Bill Lawrence http://wildepickups.com/
great pup's

Love my SCN's too...........

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The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

Correct.

http://support.fender.com/service_diagr ... B_SISD.pdf

Maybe the OP's pickups have gotten "noisy". Might want to check the ground wiring if the guitar has ever been opened up.

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Bill

Sorry guys operator error. My axe is a "Standard" not a "Deluxe". I do enjoy the tone of these stock pick-ups, but the noise is buggin' me. If I could get the same or better tone without the noise that would be great.

I looked into the DiMarzio "Area" pups, guess what there's three vesions of those too.

I do like Kenny Wayne Sheppards' sound as well as Hendrix (clean & dirty) tones too.

Thanks for help so far. Still trying to sort it all out.

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Swifty Nelson

REMEMBER...WHEREVER YOU ARE, THAT'S WHERE YOU'LL BE.

They are really more like three variations of the Areas. The 61 is the hottest, the 58 is the most vintage-y, the 67 is an attempt to get that late sixties Strat sound. I have a total of eight Area singlecoils in three guitars:

B--M--N
======
61-58-58
61-67-58
PG-61-61

The 61-67-58 has the best "quack" in position 4 (neck + middle). The HSS has a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates F-spaced humbucker in the bridge with two 61s in the middle and neck.

Of course, the best part is that there is no hum.

IIRC, Dimarzio is now selling loaded Area pickguards with the 61-67-58 combination that just need to be wired to ground and the jack.

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A bunch of Strats, some Gibsons, a couple clonewheels, a few Fender amps, various stompboxes

I paired my Area 58 and Area 61 (respectively, middle and neck) with a now-discontinued Virtual Vintage Solo Pro (DP414) at the bridge and this combination HONKS. The Solo Pro is just a skosh hotter than the other two, which provides some real bite and growl when it's time for serious riff and solo work. I have two guitars configured thus.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

W/Dimarzio's, you're tastes are probably more suited with a Pro '54/61/Heavy Blues. Have fun wiring up the S1 switch, be prepared to swear and burn all day...

+1

I desperately wanted to make that work with the DiMarzio's but it just wasn't in the cards. They sound pretty ballsy nonetheless with conventional 5-way switching. I did wire the Solo Pro (my bridge pickup) to the bottom tone pot to provide some "bite" control.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

I desperately wanted to make that work with the DiMarzio's but it just wasn't in the cards. They sound pretty ballsy nonetheless with conventional 5-way switching. I did wire the Solo Pro (my bridge pickup) to the bottom tone pot to provide some "bite" control.

Arjay[/quote]

Unless you're really handy with a soldering iron, and i mean really handy, like you have no problem jumping into a PCB board; you're better off just getting a couple DPDT switches or push/pulls. Days i work in the shop, if i hear someone come in and I hear them mention American Deluxe and wiring in the same conversation; i find that i need to use the bathroom or need to run an errand. They are the worst things next to the Gibson Varitone to wire up.

I was bored to tears a couple weekends ago, had some switches and push/pulls hanging around, so i decided to try some different wiring. I had one extra switch in for Neck/Bridge, or all 3. So i rewired that for series/parallel with that one, and put in a push/pull for in/out of phase.

The phase switch (coupled with n/m/b; Area 58/58/61), while not entirely useless, really needs to be paired up with a hotter set of pickups, or a boost thats really tuned for those frequencies, maybe an EQ pedal (my Timmy, or EP boost didnt do the trick). The series wiring, IMO, is good in the neck position, but the bridge, while having an interesting sound, would never be mistaken for a humbucker. It's got a good deal of output (a reading of about 12 ohms), but it has no definition at all. The neck is cool in series, real warm.

You may get better results if you messed around with different cap values (Strats/Tele's w/S1 have 2 different capacitors), or using a no-load. I think to get the most useable tone out of single coils in series is to have 1 Vol, 1 Master tone, and having the 2nd tone knob used as a blender pot hooked up to the middle pickup. That way you could add in the middle to the neck or bridge, and fine tune it.

Another usefull would be series/parallel, in conjunction with a switch or blender for Neck/Bridge ( or all 3, but I NEVER used that, except for tuning). Then you could get your Strat tones, and a good mock-Tele with the 4 way switches.

Ive put in countless different single coils and stacked humbuckers, and the 'house brand' are Fralins (which make the nicest sounding PAF IMO, better than some real PAF's). I had decided a while ago i wanted noiseless. At the time, the band i was with, and my own place had ancient wiring in the walls, and 60 cycle hum was an issue. The Dimarzio's blew everything else out of the water, especially for a real vintage-stratty tone. Real dynamic, and resonsive to pick attack. Plus while they do compress a bit more than say; a set of CS 57/62's; its in a pleasing way, and not nearly as much as all the other stacked humbuckers I tried.

SCN's are nice, but they have a more modern sound, which may be what you're looking for. My issue with them was the amount of pull the pickups. The first time i used the 6" ruler I use to get /64" measurements, I couldnt believe the amount of pull they had. So you really have to set them relatively far from the strings. Farther I find than even the vintage noiseless. The Area pickups are like the polar opposite. Next to Lace pickups, i havent used single coil sized pickups that i could set that close, and get that many tonal changes from really small height adjustments.

The Pro 54, and heavy blues both still use the Alnico 2 magnets, and use whatever technology the Area pickups do that make them sound so good, but are warmer, and the heavy blues has more output. Its probably somewhere in between the Area 61 and a Solo pickup.