Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless.........anyone?

[Justice4all]

Hi,
i am looking to upgrade my strat pup's. And was wondering has anyone tried
these new ones out? I know they were made with the help of Bill Lawrence. Im after a classic start tone with "no" noise. If so any feed back would be of great help!
As for the bridge pup, im getting a scratchplate made up to fit a humbucker
in with the new singles...
What bridge bucker would you reccomend to give me nice full cleans, but then still a great rock tone to! ?

Cheers.

[sean hood]

Re: Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless.........anyone?

I am currently doing something very similar to you. My understanding is that the Fender Samarium Cobalt are not available as after-market products yet. A similar product that I am leaning towards are Kinman single coils.

[beandip]

Re: Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless.........anyone?

at the Fender Forum, many have said that the the new SCN pickups are wonderful. Something like "Great vintage tone and notch position quack but w/ more power" but I dont remember for sure. Go check it out yourself in the "PUP Tent"

[Gamera]

Re: Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless.........anyone?

I love 'em. They came in my new Fat Strat and sound great. They have a lot of character and are completely noisless. They're hotter and have a fatter, rounder tone than vintage pups but they still have some vintage qualities. But as previously mentioned, they're not available as after market pups yet.

Now if I could only say the same thing for that DH-1 humbucker that's in there. Definitely a challenge getting that thing to work for me. I might replace it with a Custom.

[Thames]

Re: Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless.........anyone?

They were designed by Bill Lawrence... they have to be good !

[Metalman_666]

Re: Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless.........anyone?

They were designed by Bill Lawrence... they have to be good !

agreed! Yeah, they're supposed to have the silence of a humbucker, and I think better tone than standard single coils (stock ones)

[Gamera]

Re: Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless.........anyone?

They were designed by Bill Lawrence... they have to be good !

I'm not convinced of that yet. It turns out the DH-1 humbucker that also comes w/ the Fat Strat is a Bill Lawrence design. I'm not sold on that one yet. It has some nice, PAF-ish tones to it but I'm getting a lot of mud now when I'm doing crunchy, power chord stuff. Maybe I need to adjust the height or something. But so far I'm not terribly impressed. Apparently it was an earlier version of one of his 450 pickups. But between the initial DH-1 and the current 450 Bill offers apparently that design has been revised numerous times and evolved significantly. So apparently Bill wasn't even happy with the DH-1 incarnation of that design.

[Quencho092]

Re: Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless.........anyone?

I have the SCN pickups in my deluxe AM Se strat. They sound generally good, quack nicely in position 4, but the bridge is kinda thin. the only pickup thats really good all around is the neck PU. Its fat, and shines on bends in clean. The middle pickup is pretty much useless, except to quack on position 4. I think that the SCN's are just a really fat interpretation of Lace Sensors, that were really thin. Sadly, i was out for a more single coil sound- the SCN's could almost pass for humbuckers in the tonal range. They are really nice overall pickups, but because they are low on mids and are bassy they have difficulty cutting through the mix in my band. I'm looking for a good set of "noisy" pickups, and will perform a 20 point star grounding job on the pickgaurd and cavity. There are better pickups out there, but if you like noiseless, these are the best.