Prior to this evening I had not been familiar with the American Deluxe Jazz Bass, but I just got back from the local GC where I checked out a new one and a used one side by side. The new one was a 2012, the used one was a 2011 that had been ridden pretty hard. Both had the N3 noiseless pickups. I checked them out with an SVT-7 Pro, a PF-500, an RB700-II and an MB-200.
I definitely heard the "noise" that people complain about. Actually, I heard two kinds of "noise". To put a finer description on the problem: I heard hiss and I heard what sounded like shott noise. I didn't hear hum. Shielding wouldn't help with the noise problems that I heard.
The hiss sounded like the kind of hiss that you get out of a J-fet that wasn't hand selected to have a high mho. I'd be willing to bet that Fender isn't hand selecting high-mho FET for the preamps, so their preamps are hissy. You can't fix that problem unless you hand select better semiconductors.
Both basses also had a bit of sporadic crackling when first plugged into an amp. It subsided after a minute or so and then was never heard from again. It reminded me of the thermal noise that you'd get out of a heat stressed carbon comp resistor in a tube amp. I can't explain why a SS preamp with opamps or FET make this kind of noise. FET aren't supposed to have this kind of problem.
The transient crackling that went away wasn't all that bothersome, but I thought that the constant FET hiss was particularly annoying. I'm surprised that there are people who aren't bothered by it. To me, it's a good reason to stick with a passive fender bass.
Was anybody else bothered by the control layout? To me the layout seemed particularly bad, with the stacked Bass/Treble knobs on one shaft, and the Mid / Passive tone on the other. It definitely seemed like the designers were more focused on maintaining the look of an old J-bass layout than in designing something that was easy to use. I absolutely hate the control layout. I left the store thinking that I was going to look for a passive American Standard.
