Interference recording US Fender Strat

Hi, Fender Strats are renown for noisy pickups hence the development of humbuckers. Love my strat but there’s a lot of noise partic noticeable between notes when I use a cubase/UR824/Guitar Rig 6. setup. I could get the pickups screened but think will be costly. I could change the pickups but that affects the originality of this 76 strat. I guess I could keep the old pickups. I do like a thicker humbucker sound partic for lead though lighter strat sound good for folkier stuff. . Think source probably my 22" monitor but could be monitors or even UR824. Smallish room so can’t move too far away. Turning helps a little. Would appreciate any advice. I’m not so good with tech. Not sure if this is the right forum. Thanks

In my experience it’s likely the monitor, not the audio interface.

With my single coils, I find that changing the angle of the guitar (and thus the pickups) relative to the monitor can make a significant difference in reducing the interference noise.

Hi Nico5 thanks for replying so quickly. Yes I found the angle definately makes a diffference but I need it quieter. As you know from answering my earlier post I’m considering a monitor change. Could some be shielded better than others? It’s a Dell P2714H 27" not 22" I think I’d said!) . Seeing a good guitar repairer tomorrow so will ask re screening - Looking at YouTube it looks a bit of a chore. cheers

I don’t know what it would take to shield a monitor enough not to interfere with pickups - I’m generally recording single coils from my PRS 513, which has very quiet single coils.


Not sure if 76 Strats already had 5 position toggles. If not - that might be an option to discuss with your guitar technician along with ensuring that the middle pickup is wired in opposite phase to the neck and bridge pickups. That configuration would give you less interference prone sound in positions 2 and 4.

Another option is simply getting clean pickups (there are clean single coils). – That can be a rather non-destructive and therefore reversible operation. It’s probably what I’d go for if the budget was there.

For optimizing sound and flexibility, you could shoot for something like an HSS, with the humbucker being one of the slim one’s that designed for replacing the single coil bridge pickup.

Or (if you can find it), an HSH setup with coil splittable humbuckers via push-pull knobs. That would give you the most sonic options from a single guitar.

Thanks Nico very helpful. My guitar repairer said he could shield the strat electrics with thin copper sheet for £75 to almost completely eliminate interference. It is a 5 position switch. He said newer strats reverse the polarity to avoid some other effect I don’t fully understand but I tink he said it was some sort of sonic abnormality when playing the bass strings up the neck.

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iZotope’s RX8 has a mode just for guitar noise, might be something to think about for the future…I have the MPS4 bundle and it includes the standard version of RX8 which is all you need…I’m not sure if RX8 Elements has the guitar noise module or not…Using humbuckers here :wink:

Bill

thanks for the advice Bill I’ll look at that. My guitar repairer said he could create a faraday cage of copper sheet for £75 which he says should get rid of almost all the interference so I’ve that option too.