Fender Noiseless Pickups for a Tele

i want to know this too

The Samarium Cobalt Noiseless are great (although I would recommend finding a current American Tele Deluxe and making sure you hear what I do.) They are finally available as an after-market part, under the Fender "mod shop" line. My Fender rep is coming in on Friday, so I'll be able to report back with a price then, presumably (I'll guess $100 to $120 for the set.)

The Vintage Noiseless are godawful in my opinion. Really tinny, almost as if the designer was one of those poeple who hates teles because they're "twangy", and designed accordingly. Some sort of pinful Tele caricature. Ish.

um. "painful" not "pinful"
OK then.

Thanks, John. I will defintely try a American Tele Deluxe. Do you know if Fender use the vintage noiseless on any Tele models as standard?
When you compare the standard single coil vs the vintage noiseless, can you tell me a bit more about the difference that you didn't like? Obv I want to retain the bite of the bridge p/u. Did it screw that up?

The vintage noiseless just sound sort of anemic in comparison to a real tele bridge pickup...almost as if someone took the snappiness and removed the hidden undertones and growl. The same problem occured in the vintage noiseless jazz bass pickups, so it might be endemic in the design...

The samarium cobalts have more depth to them, which is what I've always liked about teles.

I'm not sure if any current Teles have the vintage noiseless in them, but if you find an older American Tele Deluxe, it will. The Samarium pickups have "SCN" molded into the pickups, and the vintage noiseless have "noiseless" in gold script on the pickups.

where can you find these samarium pickups online as after-market parts? I searched but found nothing.

They just announced it, but they haven't sent me a price list yet. They come in some odd-ball new packaging marked MOD SHOP. I'm sure they haven't made it to online dealers yet. If you have no luck in the next week or so, let me know, and I'll see what I can find out/do.

I guess it will be a while before these make it to the UK?

I guess it will be a while before these make it to the UK?

Do you know any other noiseless p/us that might be good, maybe non-Fender?

I don't know if they are noiseless pickups, but there is a couple of good local Tele players around here that swear by Lindy Fralins and I can attest that both have great guitar tone out the yin yang.

Might investigate Fralins, Seymour Duncans etc if I don't get any joy with the Samarium Cobalts.
Fender UK haven't had any from the USA yet, that's one thing I've found out.

Official confirmation from Fender that the Samarium Cobalts are not here yet :

Thank you for your enquiry.

The SCN range of pick ups have been used in the American Deluxe series of guitars and basses. However for the first time, they are available as upgradeable parts. They were officially launched in the US at the NAMM show last week, but unfortunately we are yet to receive information from the US as to retail prices and stock levels.

They will certainly be released into the European market. In the meantime, you can contact your local dealer to be added to our enquiry list. As soon as we have the information, we will make a call to the dealer on your behalf.

I hope that this is okay.

Kindest Regards,

Jamie Latty

Fender GBI Services Coordinator

Price USD $174.99 Retail - should be about $120-125 a set street (at least here)

According to my Accessories guy, should be here in the next 30 days...we'll see.

John,

Out of curiosity, does your store have a website?

No. We're stupid like that. (actually, we do have a placeholder site that links to our ebay auctions...but I don't know the address, which shows how often we use it.)

I've been kind of guarded about mentioning the idea of selling stuff to people on here, because I didn't want to look like the universally hated "Hey guys, buy from me, cuz I'm yer internet buddy" message board dude. On the other hand, I'm more than happy to do what I can if somebody can't find something or only has access to stores that suck.

I was just wondering what kind of stuff you guys might have, especially used stuff.