FenderUltra Noiseless Hot Stratocaster Pickups

So my first “real” guitar is this 02 Strat that honestly has just always sounded terrible. I never liked playing it but have always loved the look of a sunburst Strat, and it has tons of sentimental value to me. It’s more or less been wall art in my house for 10 years.Well, I’m in the market for a new guitar, leaning towards a jazzmaster, but can’t find one I’m stoked on. Was working the other day watching Tame Impala playing innerspeaker at the wave house, and saw he was playing a sunburst Strat with a cool red tortoise pickguard and parchment knobs and coils. It looked so good I just thought to myself, hey… I can recreate this.So I ordered the pickguard, knobs, and found these parchment noiseless pickups. I always knew that this guitar suffered from the coils, I just never thought I could install them. Well, a couple of YouTube videos later, I grabbed my soldering iron, took my guitar apart, and performed open surgery on my Strat. It was a very simple process (if you know how to solder) and I plugged in. Nothing. There was no sound……and that’s a good thing. The pickups are amazing. This thing has almost 0 feedback from coil hum, something that has plagued this guitar since I got it. But not only that, this guitar sounds like a $1500 Strat. (Yes while I was at it I also tuned my string action which I’ve never done on this guitar and it feels so much better).I’ve played and owned a lot of guitars. I’m not the smartest or most well versed in pickups. but I saved myself about $1500 doing this instead of buying another guitar, and may even replace the neck for better feel.All in all: if you’re looking for a great pickup that’s clean, quiet, and has a lot of dynamic range, get these.

If you are considering these, you probably know they are included in Fender's premium Ultra guitars. To my ears they sound just like good single coil Strat pickups. You get the expected 'quack' in positions 2 and 4 and great neck and bridge tones. You may need to rout your pickup cavities deeper, since these are deeper than normal single coils. I wish they came in more colors than just the cream, but I paired them with a similar color pickguard and knobs, and it looks great.

Sound ok. These things are TALL so measure your cavity height before installing.

I installed this in a MiM strat (2020 era model). It didn't fit properly. I had to router out about .25 to .5 of an inch to get them to fit properly.It wasn't hard or concerning but this cut off the shielding that was already in there and I had to re-shielded it. Overall, worth it because these picks-ups are wonderful but it's not a drop-in replacement. Takes some work.But, they sound amazing with both cleans and high gain amps. I use an HX stomp with them and run all sorts of AMP models. Sound so freakin great. And the noiselessness is awesome.Note that they are basically humbucking pickups but instead of being next to each other, they are stacked or something. It's a simplistic understanding of how they work but it's why they are much taller than standard single-coils and thus require trimming.

I bought a set of used (like new) Fender Noiseless pickups. The neck pickup ended up being faulty. I took it to a guitar luthier and had them installed which is where he tested them and found that the pickup was faulty; as I had suspected because of how much quieter it was then the other pickups. I didn’t have them installed until after the return date was closed and now they’re saying that it’s too late to make a return. But this is irrelevant as they sent me a faulty product. I contacted them and they haven’t replied in days. Do not buy from this company.

Fender keeps improving on their noiseless pickup design. This is my third set of Fender noise less pickups. I have owned vintage noiseless, hot noiseless and now ultra hot noiseless. The ultra hots are a big improvement on the older Fender ceramic hot pickups. I also have Dimarzio injector noiseless pickups. The Dimarzio pickups are louder but but Fender ultra hot pickups get closer to single coil tone and retain that snappy.strat sound. They also retain certain single coil qualities I have not heard in other stacked single coil pickups.

I bought these through another site and I wish I could return them. Firstly, the schematic to set these up is complicated and you will likely have to redo it often if you aren’t skilled. Even then it will not be truly noise canceling. The tone is not great. You lose a lot of highs. They aren’t hot. This is simply false. Furthermore, there are better options. Dimarzio makes better noiseless strat pickups that retain the highs. But at the end of the day, even the cheap Fender pickups have notch settings that are truly noise canceling. These aren’t, and that defeats the purpose

I ordered these originally to put in an Amercan '57 Reissue Strat. They were not a good fit due to the depth of the pickups and gage of the wiring on the underside of the pickups - I removed them and put them in a Custom Shop Set-neck Strat with a "swimming pool" rout. Plenty of clearance this time and they sound amazing through my Super Reverb with absolutely NO HUM! ( I bought a set of Fender Vintage Noiseless for the '57 - they fit and also sound great).