Fender Strat 60 cycle hum: noiseless pickups or Kemper Noise Gate?

Single coil guitars do indeed hum to some extent..... It's the nature of the beast I'm afraid. The noise gate will only kill the hum whilst you are not playing of course - as soon as you hit a note, the note comes through but so does the hum.

I've only ever had one set of noiseless pickups which were in a Telecaster - they were OK but (from a sound perspective) I preferred the more traditional ones I put in.

Before you spend lots of money, there are things worth trying. First of all, turn the noise gate all the way off so as you can fairly judge any improvements you make..... You may still feel you need it when you've done everything but hopefully at a lower level so it's less 'in your face' and the background hum behind the notes is minimised.

1. First, plug in the guitar but turn the volume all the way down. Noise gate off. Does the hum go away? If it does, it's airbourne. If it doesn't, go and read up on ground loops.

2. Select the bridge pickup alone and crank volume / tone to full on the guitar. Listen to the noise level. Now touch the bridge on the guitar. Hopefully the noise level on the guitar will go down..... This is because your body is kind of like a sponge for the noise and, when you touch the bridge, you earth yourself and that noise reduces..... If there is NO difference when you touch the bridge, you have a poor earth on the guitar which is easily fixed if you're OK with a soldering iron but if you're not, seek the help of someone who is..... You want decent earth continuity between the outer screen of your guitar cable and the bridge. With a decent earth, you should find that your hand goes automatically to the bridge in quiet passages and this will reduce noise.

3. Once you've done the bridge test, sit on your chair / stand where you usually play and turn around whilst playing. Pretend you're a lighthouse Does the noise get worse or improve? Also, tilt the guitar up and down. You may well find there are a couple of directions you can face which are like the eye of the storm..... Very little buzz compared to elsewhere. Could you consider facing that way when you play the strat? If so, all is well - put a poster up on that wall so you don't feel so bad about it

4. Investigate noise in the room you play in. Likely causes? Your computer. Any light dimmers in the house (especially in the room you play in but could be elsewhere in the house - make the family sit in darkness whilst you investigate ). Fluorescent light fittings / energy saving bulbs (LED light bulbs seem fine in my experience). Also, watch your cables that are floating around in your room - all can be sources of noise.

5. Screen your guitar. Once you've ensured you have a good earth on your guitar bridge (point 2 above) then take off your pickguard and remove the pickups. Glue some aluminium foil to the underside of your pick guard and, whilst it's drying, screen all the body cavities in the guitar so that all the pots / switches are sitting in a sea of aluminium foil. More well to do people use copper tape for this but I am too mean to do this so aluminium foil is what I use. Re-mount the pickups and carefully screw the whole lot together. If you've done it right, you'll be able to test continuity between any of the screws in the pick guard and the bridge which is, of course, going to ground.

If you do all of the above and still can't live with the noise then yes, consider noiseless pickups but the above should get you a lot happier for no little / no expense

As you may have gathered from the above, hum and buzz drives me nuts. My computer lives at the other end of the room with USB extension cables so the guitars don't pick up the inevitable digital mush from it and I now know which wall to face when playing a humbucker guitar (yes, they still buzz a little) vs a P90 guitar so as to minimise the buzz.

Good luck

Edit - final thought!! There is a setting in the system menu to cope with 50hz or 60hz. Make sure you've got that set appropriately

Good advice here!
Except for one Les Paul and one Tele with humbuckers I only have SC equipped guitars (3 Strats, 4 Teles, 2 P90's guitars). Some bad lighting (in clubs or at home) can give you problems but I never felt to go the noiseless PU direction because you lose something of the uniqueness of SC's.

No problem Matt and good luck in finding the culprit or culprits

Changing pickups can be fun and can also yield great improvements but IMO it's always a gamble..... You risk changing the sound for the better, for the worse or even staying pretty much the same. Any of these is possible and you have the certainty that you've parted with your money. It's difficult to be honest with ourselves after the change because the money has gone..... I put some new humbuckers in a Burny a couple of years back and, if I'm completely honest with myself, it made no difference to the guitar. On the other hand, I've had some custom winds done and, because I've described what I wanted and the guitar they were going in, they've all been worth the asking price. Which is fortunate because otherwise you and your wallet wonder why you bothered

Pickup manufacturers websites crack me up really because the actual sound of the pickup they are selling can vary a great deal with so many factors! The pots you use it with (and the caps), the body you are putting it in, the height you set the pickups at, the string gauge you use, the amp you are using it with (which is every amp in the world due to our lovely toasters ). One thing that does seem consistent is if you do some research on noiseless pickups you seem to find very little love for them. There are some that fair better on forums than others but I've only had one set so, overall, I can't say anything other than they seem to have a poor reputation. I have to say the ones in my Tele were nowhere near as bad as 'The Internet' would have you believe but certainly they were not as nice as the ones I replaced them with. What I do know is that, when I replaced them, I screened the guitar as I've described here and believe it or not there wasn't much difference in the noise I got from the noiseless pickups vs my treatment with the aluminium foil and some vintage custom pickups

I love DiMarzio noiseless pickups. I put them in just about everything I play, my favorites being the Area 61, 67, T (neck, haven't tried the bridge yet) and Virtual Solo.

Good read...
Thx @Gary_W for the lucid and meaningful steps offered above in order to combat this age old issue.

IMO - too many resort to swapping out otherwise great sounding pickups instead of addressing the root cause.
One of my guitars has a mild case of 60 cycle hum but so far have refused to change them out since I admire the tone they deliver so much.
I for one look forward to trying some of the recommendations to temper the issue a bit.

Check out this site: http://www.ilitchelectronics.com/

This is an amazing product. It lets you use your favorite pickups and get rid of the hum without degrading the sound.

Quote from mattt67

Thanks all for your tips.

Dlaut, I've read great things about this system; I'd definitely consider it if it was a higher end strat.
But I will !
I'll keep you posted

The system is pretty easily removable if you ever change guitars (and easy to install); so I wouldn't let that be an obstacle. All in all, I think it it more cost effective than changing pickups - particularly to pickups that may not sound as good as what you are used to.

Just something to think about....YMMV

You can also check out the Clarity in the Amp section for your high gain profiles, If it's not at zero you can drop it down a bit to bring the gain more to the forefront, then turn the main Gain knob down slightly to decrease the noise. This worked great for me, allowed me to get rid of a lot of the noise but keep the sound I wanted. The Clarity is a very subtle adjustment, worked for me because my noise was minor.

Quote from Dlaut

The system is pretty easily removable if you ever change guitars (and easy to install); so I wouldn't let that be an obstacle. All in all, I think it it more cost effective than changing pickups - particularly to pickups that may not sound as good as what you are used to.

Just something to think about....YMMV

I have the Ilitch backplate system, and agree with everything Dlaut has said about it. Works great, and relatively quick and easy to install. It is about 99.9% sonically transparent (I sometimes think I can hear a TINY difference if I really really try, but even then I'm not sure it isn't just in my head). So, it allows you to have your pick of any single coils in the world and have them be largely noiseless (about as much so as humbuckers, anyway).

One thing I'd note is that it is often recommended to use this with all three pickups having the same magnetic polarity, rather than having a reverse-wound/reverse-polarity middle pickup as is often the case (which is what allows the in-between combinations [neck + middle, middle + bridge] to be humbucking). Otherwise, those in-between combinations will have noise once the backplate is installed. However, there are wiring options that get around that. Alternatively, you can buy some strong magnets and use them to change the polarity of the middle pickup to be the same as the neck and middle, which is cheap, easy, and completely reversible if you later decide to go back to a RWRP middle.

Quote from burningyen

I love DiMarzio noiseless pickups. I put them in just about everything I play, my favorites being the Area 61, 67, T (neck, haven't tried the bridge yet) and Virtual Solo.

Agree! I've had all sorts of noiselesses and these are that will stay with me untill they invent something better. They're closest to reguler top class singles.