My Guitar Time

After looking at two different multi-effects pedals, I’m going to change gears here and talk about the Fender Noiseless Pickups.  Now pickups are one of the MOST crucial parts of your guitar, let alone your whole set up!  If you have a great amp and killer pedals, none of it really matters a whole lot if you’re not using right pickups, or if you’re using poor quality ones.  While there are a lot of pickups to talk about, today we’ll focus on the Fender Noiseless Pickups, just for those strat and tele players out there.

Before I switched my tele over to Vintage Fender Noiseless Pickups, I was struggling with noisy pickups.  Every time I stopped playing, a relatively loud hum kept going, especially if I had any overdrive or distortion on.  Fluorescent light made the problem even worse.  Once I went noiseless, all my problems were resolved.  I was worried they wouldn’t sound as good as my custom shop ’62 reissue pickups, but once I popped them in there, I was more than happy with the sound.

Here’s a brief youtube video demonstrating a Stratocaster with noiseless pickups:

Fender offers a variety of noiseless pickups for those looking to improve their sound and clarity without being limited to one or two types of pickups.  One of the most popular sets is the Vintage Fender Noiseless Pickups for Stratocasters or Telecasters.  These offer a nice vintage strat sound that so many strat players crave, in a pickup with 5 beveled alnico 5 magnets and enamel coated wire.  If the vintage Fender Noiseless Pickups don’t do it for you, there’s also the Hot Fender Vintage Noiseless Pickups. With more DC resistance, these offer a more screaming sound on the bridge with high gain, suitable for harder rock, but switch to the neck pickup and settle into a smoother bluesier tone.  You can buy these pickups either individually, or in a set of 3 (for strats, 2 for a tele) with pots, resistor and a capacitor.

Now there’s another option as well in the noiseless pickup department, the Fender SCN (Samarium Cobalt Noiseless) Pickups.  Samarium cobalt refers to the fact that these combine traditional magnets with samarium cobalt.  These pickups offer the same great noiseless ability, but have a slightly different tone than the hot or vintage pickups.  There is definitely a bit more of that traditional snappy strat sound with these, and a lot of player who play with higher gain prefer these (or the hot noiseless as well).

In short, if you’re like me and you can’t live without a nice Fender single coil axe in your lineup, and you’ve got this nagging hum, Fender Noiseless Pickups are the way to go.  With Hot, Vintage, or SCN, you can let your tone be your tone, and leave the single coil hum behind.  Fender makes the benchmark single coil guitar, and with the Fender Noiseless Pickups, they’re the cleanest sounding out there.

One Response so far | Have Your Say!

1. 

   opthamologists
   December 24th, 2010 at 8:07 am #

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