Fender Vintage Noiseless experience

[PeterTSkelton]

Hi folks

Looking for any input on the Fender vintage noiseless pickups to go on a Clapton type strat. I've currently got three gold Lace Sensors, however I've never really got on with them too well, in particular the bridge pickup has always seemed to have a pretty low output, so I've got it cranked up pretty high, whereas the middle and neck pickups are almost level with the scratchplate to try and get the levels balanced out.

I'm going to try swapping out the selector switch as it may be the culprit, but if that doesn't help then I'll be in the market for some new pickups.

Vintage Noiseless are the first option as Fender seem to like them, but I'm interested to know what other folks like.

 

[zebra]

If you like that hi-fi/broad-spectrum thing that Lace Sensors have going on, you might want to check out Bill Lawrence offerings.  The L-45s are a twin-blade design along those lines.  If you want a more traditional/vintage tone-curve but stay noiseless, they have that, as well as the non-noiseless-but-still-low-noise Microcoils.  Something different, but still high-quality, and a very good price.  You just have might have to wait a while (but Imost folks that know agree that they're worth it).  I don't have any Strat pickups from them, but I have noiseless Tele PUs from them, and love them.

 

[Ace Flibble]

If your neck/middle pickups are too high in output and the bridge one is too low, I'd just swap the bridge pickup with the neck pickup. I had a Gibson LP Special that came with two P-90s that were supposed to be wound the same, but the neck pickup was actually wound hotter. Just swapped them over and that balanced them out.

But anyhoo, the Fender vintage noiseless are about as standard as you could want from a hum-cancelling single coil. They're not hot. They're not cool. They're not bright. They're not warm. They're not especially open nor compressed. Take the most bog-standard single coil you can ever possibly imagine and remove the 50/60 hum, and that's the Fender vintage noiseless. They could not possibly be any more generic. Which can be great, for the right player. Clapton liked them well enough for a while. Richie Sambora liked them for a few years. Prince liked them. Jeff Beck sometimes uses the Hot version, which actually aren't that much hotter and have the same totally flat EQ balance. The Vintage Stack single coils from Seymour Duncan and the DiMarzio Virtual Vintage 54 and Blues single coils are the same deal. They all sound the same.
If you just want to balance the outputs, and swapping the neck and bridge pickups around doesn't do it for you, then the Fender set will be fine. They're very well balanced. The SDs and DMs mentioned above will also be fine. But none of them sound like Lace Sensors. Lace pickups are a little more glassy and have a fraction more output.

If a 'Clapton' set up is what you want, the Fender Vintage Noiseless will do you just fine, though the Hot Noiseless play better with the active mid boost system that is synonymous with Clapton's own Strats. So if you're using a mid boost, I'd go for the Hot Noiseless rather than the Vintage Noiseless.


If you like the tone of the Lace pickups but can't get the output to work for you, take a look at EMG's SX, SAX, and SAVX pickups (S = ceramic, brighter; SA = alnico, warmer; X = better dynamic range than older versions; V = separate pole pieces for a more standard Strat tone not like Lace Sensor.) Lace Sensor and EMG single coils have more-or-less the same tone, but the EMGs are more even in output and have even less pull on the strings. Even less noise, too. But of course it does mean rewiring the guitar more significantly and finding a place for the battery. Since EMG make their own nice mid boost, too, they're a nice way of getting the Clapton set up.

 

[Cagey]

I have a set of the Bill Lawrence Strat "Microcoils" and highly recommend them, if you like traditional Strat tones sans noise. Plus, they're easy to get at $108/set. The only others I like as well for the same use are Fishman's Fluence Strat set, although they're pricey (and active, so you need a battery box). Next in line for sound quality coupled with low noise and low price are GFS' "True Coils".

 

[Great Ape]

Just my opinion, but I think the Fender noiseless are toneless junk...just my opinion...if you want your guitar to sound like a Strat, I recommend Seymour Duncan 'Vintage' or 'Antiquities' which aren't cheap, but are lovely, authentic sounding pickups.

 

[JD0x0]

Generally, not a fan. I'd go for the Wilde noiseless pickups. Bill's factory winds better noiseless pickups, IMO. You'd want the L200S if you're going for classic single coil tone, but noiseless. The L45's have more output and are a bit more 'hi fi' sounding. I've heard good things about the microcoils. I have an alnico microcoil tele set on the way.

As far as the output issue. It's because 3 golds are not calibrated. If you have 3 identical pickups, output will be lower the closer it is positioned to the saddles. You could try a 'hot gold' or one of the other color pickups for more output, but you will trade off some highs, usually. The Burgundy Sensor is right near the inductance of a tele bridge pickup. It should have plenty of output.

 

[PeterTSkelton]

Thanks everyone for the input. I put a multimeter on the lace sensors last night and the one in the bridge (out of circuit) measures at 4.3K, whereas the other two measure at 4.7K so that may have some bearing on things.

I'm tempted to seek out a Hot Gold for the bridge position, ironically when I bought this set many many years ago I had the option of a set of three Golds or two Golds and one Hot Gold. Likely a mistake in picking the matched set However, the listings on eBay for Hot Golds right now are only $10 less than I paid for the set so that's a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

I've tried EMGs on many guitars and have never got on with them, even though I'm a big Gilmour fan I find that EMGs seem to have a baseline tone that you can't get away from and it's just not for me.

I'm probably about to pull the trigger on the Clapton mid boost setup, so I might try a set of Hot Noiseless if I can find a used set, or I may just let the fanboy in me take over and just buy them and like them

The strat body I'm using right now is already copper tape shielded so I could also be tempted by a set of regular single coils, or if I feel like going crazy I'll take a look at a set of Microcoils as I can always be seduced by clever technology

 

[PeterTSkelton]

Thoughts the second:

Having gone and looked at the GFS option I may give those a try. I like to maximize bang for my buck (i.e. I'm a cheapskate whenever it makes sense to be), and I also have had very good experiences with GFS humbuckers on my other main guitar (an Ibanez SA320) which makes me think that despite the GFS's being cheap, they're likely to sound pretty good.

 

[Cagey]

Measuring a pickup's DC resistance to determine output is like weighing an engine to determine horsepower. There appears to be a correlation more often than not, but it's not a reliable indicator.

Sheilded pickup/control cavities do nothing for noise suppression, so if noise is an issue for you, don't install standard single coil pickups. Or, learn to love a noise gate. There are some good ones out there these days.

Those Bill Lawrence Microcoils are the whip. The sound quality is fantastic.

In many cases, if you need more output it's better for tonal quality and versatility reasons to use a little power booster pedal than a hotter pickup.

 

[PeterTSkelton]

Absolutely it's not a sure fire indicator, but in some cases it's as good a way as any of trying to suss out if one of these is not like the others or to diagnose any kind of gross fault. I've had a reasonably good business for some years building amps for people so I've got a better grasp than most on electronics and the associated errata.

I can't say that I concur on shielding the control cavity, as if you follow good grounding practices you will mitigate a lot of interference. It's not perfect, but it made a measurable difference particularly when I was running straight single coils and doing a lot of direct recording. As most guitars I've seen have pot grounds made by soldering one of the lugs to the shell of the pot I've found that there are a lot of other factors to address before its worth shielding the cavities.

That being said, working with the copper tape was one of the worst things I've ever done. Incredibly sharp edges and fingers cut to ribbons laying the stuff down.

 

[Cagey]

You're not the first to contend that shielding cavities returns positive results. But, since the pickups are guilty of gathering 95% of the noise you hear and they're deliberately mounted outside the shield, I'm pretty sure the improvement some people hear is the improvement they want to hear, driven by the expectations raised by the pain in the ass of doing the shielding. It's certainly not from any actual noise reduction.

 

[PeterTSkelton]

Well as a big sack of salt and water, a lot of the EMF which the pickups are subjected to is being blasted at them by the warm body sat right behind them. It's not an Eric Johnson "I can hear which way round the resistors in my pedals are soldered in" trick, it was something that actually allowed me to crank down the threshold settings on the noise gate I was using for recording at the time and you could see it on an oscilloscope too.

Back on more constructive stuff, I absolutely agree that the best setup is lower output pickups and either more gain on the amp or using a boost pedal or two for when you need that bit extra. It's always easier to add more than to take away

 

[Cagey]

Yeah, I learned to love little boosters back in the days before hot pickups or master volume amps when some raunch was needed but high volumes weren't allowed. I didn't particularly care for distortion boxes as they always sounded artificial compared to an amp pushed to redline  :laughing7:

 

[PeterTSkelton]

My favourite live setup by far was a good two channel tube amp along with a modded Wah pedal and a Boss compressor

 

[Ace Flibble]

Don't use non-hum-cancelling pickups if you do go for the Clapton mid boost. You end up with so much noise it's just not usable; even if you have a noise gate, you'll have to set it so strong that it'll kill your whole signal. For reference, Richie Sambora used to use the Clapton mid-boost with regular single coils (Texas Specials, specifically) and not long after starting, he had the boost modified to only be half as strong as it normally is, and not long after that he scrapped it entirely.

So if you are going for the Clapton thing, definitely stick with some form of hum-cancelling design.

Regarding the output of the Lace pickups, again, don't worry about what the multimeter says and just swap the bridge and neck pickups around and see how you get on with that. If your neck pickup is that much more powerful and your bridge pickup is that much weaker, simply swapping them over should balance out. Remember that pretty much all guitars before the mid-70s had the same wind for all positions; the concept of a pickup being for the bridge or neck didn't really exist until the Super Distortion caught on. So rather than hunt down a Lace Hot Gold, just move your existing pickups around.
Also don't forget that you can get a bit more power from the bridge pickup (or any other position, for that matter) by disconnecting it from any tone controls, if it's not already.


And quickly regarding a comment above about the Vintage Noiseless being "toneless"; no pickup in the world can be "toneless". Every single pickup has a tone. Tone is not something you can have more or less of. If it generates a signal, it has a tone. May not mean much to some people, but this is a big bugbear of mine. The phrase "toneless" simply does not make sense. Of special note is that one of Prince's guitar techs used to call the Vintage Noiseless pickups "toneless", too, but Prince liked them and stuck with 'em, and I'll take the ears of Prince over a random tech, any day. :icon_thumright:

 

[PeterTSkelton]

Well a combination of payday and a GFS sale won the day. I ordered a Clapton mid boost from amazon and the vintage set of TrueCoils from GFS, and I'll pick up a new five way switch over the weekend.

I'll try swapping out the switch first if I get the chance, but otherwise the lace sensors will likely be retired and the GFS pickups put through their paces

 

[JD0x0]

Noiseless single coil comparisons

[youtube]c2uM0PVtcuo[/youtube]​

 

[Cagey]

I hope you don't mind - I edited your post to show the video. It's an interesting piece of work that shows how blessed we are with noiseless pickups that actually sound like single coils. There's really no reason to tolerate hum any more.

Incidentally, there's a How-To thread here that explains posting YouTube videos if you're interested.

 

[PeterTSkelton]

The GFS's are here and strapped onto a new white single ply scratch plate. Test fitting shows that they fit just fine in the factory standard route on my MIM body. I need to get out to Home Depot tomorrow and pick up some crimp terminals for grounding everything and some velcro to mount the Mid Boost circuit board and battery, then time for sound check.

Something I did note was that the wiring diagram in the box shows the green wire as the hot, with the white and red wires joined together and the black wire as ground, but as received the white and green wires are soldered together. Some googling found some posts elsewhere where this was raised, and it seems that the diagram as supplied is correct (ie. red and white tied together, green as hot) in order to get the noise cancelling to work properly.

I'll report back once I have checked out the polarity issue, and once I've had a chance to put them through their paces.

 

[Slackjaw]

And quickly regarding a comment above about the Vintage Noiseless being "toneless"; no pickup in the world can be "toneless". Every single pickup has a tone. Tone is not something you can have more or less of. If it generates a signal, it has a tone. May not mean much to some people, but this is a big bugbear of mine. The phrase "toneless" simply does not make sense. Of special note is that one of Prince's guitar techs used to call the Vintage Noiseless pickups "toneless", too, but Prince liked them and stuck with 'em, and I'll take the ears of Prince over a random tech, any day. :icon_thumright:

Fender "noiseless" are indeed toneless junk... IMHO. Humbuckers were initially designed with the coils side-by-side for a reason. When coils are stacked one on top of the other... without some kind of modern "trickery" certain frequencies tend to cancel out. Fender's implementation seems to have none of this "trickery" and are rather dull sounding. Even with the 1meg pots Fender uses with them...