Are Fender Noiseless Pickups Under-Rated?

[walterw]

Those pickups are wound to give a low output because the preamp runs on 9V and won't have enough headroom to handle the boost it can produce with normal output level pickups.

I suspect it's the other way around; the pickups were made as stacks to kill hum, which makes them inherently lower output and kinda "polite". The preamp was then tuned to have a loud and bright output to compensate for the pickups.

 

[khutch]

Given that the noiseless pickups are wound to give a low output, I wonder would the fender super 55 be a compatible replacement using the same preamp?

My expectation would be that the Super 55 pickups would have too much output for the preamp unless you run it from 18V. But that is just a guess, I don't have the Super 55s right now. If I can EVER find a new job that will allow me to buy gear again I may put the the Super 55s is a passive bass I have and then see if they are something I would want to put in my active basses too. To be honest while I would like to kill the hum of the single coil pickups in the passive bass I find no fault with the the Noiseless pickups in my active basses.

I suspect it's the other way around; the pickups were made as stacks to kill hum, which makes them inherently lower output and kinda "polite". The preamp was then tuned to have a loud and bright output to compensate for the pickups.

Fender has told me that that preamp (on a Deluxe Active Jazz) is designed to run down to around 4.5 to 5V battery voltage and I have confirmed that it will. The pickups on every other bass I have (my other active is an 18V bass) have way too much output to work with that preamp at 4.5V and my other active bass is a Reggie Hamilton that also has a Noiseless pickup in the bridge position. That Noiseless pickup is much hotter than either pickup in the DAJ and somewhat hotter than my two passive basses in fact. It is clear to me that Fender underwound the DAJ pickup to allow it to work well at 9V and perhaps overwound the RH pickup since it is running at 18V. You are entitled to your own opinion, of course! I've also done a frequency sweep of the preamp in the DAJ and I find that it is neither loud nor bright. When set flat it is flat and 0dB. Now it surely will boost and cut in three bands as advertised and it certainly can be adjusted with the treble/mid/bass knobs to be loud and bright but it is not an inherently colored preamp with a built in boost. In fact Fender uses the same preamp in the Reggie Hamilton except that it runs off dual 9V batteries and has a two section volume pot that gives you a volume control in passive mode. The output level difference between the RH and DAJ is due to the output levels of the pickups in the two basses, not to preamp settings. But YMMV since my comments are based only on measurements of the two basses I own. I have no idea how Fender production of these models may have varied over the years.

The preamp in my DAJ does not compensate for the low output of its pickups. It is the quietest, by some 6 to 10dB, bass that I own. They may not all be this way but some (mine is a 2011) most definitely are.

Ken