Fender Marketing Propaganda?

[ashtray]

I honestly would have assumed the P coils would be stacked in the same way the Jazz and Strat “Noiseless” pickups are. I’ll have to look at my Am Dlx Strat - it’s HSS with “Noiseless” pickups, but I don’t recall if the humbucker had the Noiseless branding on it (as it’s already humbucking…).

 

[monsterthompson]

Well. Ultra is a model series of guitars and basses. The “ultra noisesless” seems to largely apply to the single coil pickups in the line. The naming convention just spilled over onto the P. Think if it as “Fender Ultra” + “Noiseless” pickups. Not “Fender” + “Ultra Noiseless” pickups.
As for what’s under the hood, I’ve got no clue.


Invalid Link Removed
American Ultra is Fender’s most advanced series of electric guitars and basses – where cutting-edge craftsmanship meets nuanced design to push your playing forward
…
ULTRA NOISELESS™ PICKUPS
American Ultra features two new types of hum-free pickups: Ultra Noiseless Vintage pickups deliver authentic Fender single-coil sound while Ultra Noiseless Hot pickups offer high output and modern performance.

 

[mikewalker]

I honestly would have assumed the P coils would be stacked in the same way the Jazz and Strat “Noiseless” pickups are. I’ll have to look at my Am Dlx Strat - it’s HSS with “Noiseless” pickups, but I don’t recall if the humbucker had the Noiseless branding on it (as it’s already humbucking…).

There are humbuckers... and then there are Truely Noiseless humbuckers... (granted, not all humbuckers are created even - I ran a suite of tests a couple years ago testing the noise rejection of several popular brands of split-coil humbucking J pups, and the results were surprising)

 

[Clark W]

View attachment 5094027
What's the deal with the "Ultra Noiseless Vintage split-coil P Bass® pickup"? All Split P pickups are noiseless, right? I imagine Fender wanted the logos for the P pickup to match that of the J pickup. But under the hood, I'm assuming this is just a regular P pickup. In which, case, what is it actually? Fender sells the Ultra Noiseless™ Vintage Jazz Bass® Pickup Set separately, but not the Ultra Noiseless Vintage split-coil P Bass® pickup. So is he ultra noiseless a rebrand of one of the pickups they do sell (PV 62, PV 63, CS 62) or something different?

Well look at the American Performer Series. Greasebucket tone circuit with specially designed "shellacked" pups instead of waxed pups because the shellacked pups breather better.

Really? We're talking about pups, not a bottle of wine.

I bought a Performer Precision PJ and I also ordered Aguilar's hum cancelling PJ pup set and had someone make me a new set of controls using CTS and Switchcraft components.

If "shellacked" pups are so much better than waxed ones, then why does Fender only offer them in their lowest level of American made basses? They didnt use them in Pro series. Or the current Pro II or Ultras either.

Everything is a marketing ploy.

 

[Deleted member 271037]

The Ultra P-bass is possibly the only stock PJ-bass I've played where the bridge pickup is louder than the neck pickup, which makes me suspect the bridge pickup is a split or stacked coil J-bass pickup while the neck pickup is an ordinary P-bass pickup. Of course, even standard P-bass pickups are hum-cancelling so I guess the "Noiseless" part isn't strictly speaking a lie, although maybe a bit misleading. The "Vintage" part is a different matter. The Ultra J-bass pickup is described as a Noiseless "Vintage" pickup, even though it doesn't sound like a vintage J-bass pickup at all.

Fender often invent silly marketing terms for standard parts that everyone except Fender have been using for decades, and present them as Fender "innovations". For example a Bi-Flex™ truss rod is just Fender-talk for a double action truss rod and a "Posiflex" rod is just a graphite rod. And of course, a "Noiseless" P-bass pickup is most likely just a standard P-bass pickup.

Fender also like to stretch the use of the term "vintage" (unless something is presented as a game changing Fender "innovation" of course...). One example is their three, completely different sounding "60s" P-bass pickups that according to Fender will all nail the early 60s P-bass tone, even though these three pickups have a COMPLETELY different tone.

It's amazing how many times Fender have "revolutionized" the P/J basses while at the same time selling more or less the same product for DECADES. If you want a FSO that has truly evolved and gotten rid of the obvious design flaws (like the poor break-angle over the A-string nut slot) you shouldn't buy Fender at all but maybe Sandberg, Yamaha BB, etc. Whether you like the objective improvements other brands have made to the P/J-format or prefer the traditional "feel" of a Fender is a matter of taste of course. I like both. At least Fender have recently fixed the issue with the A-string break angle on SOME of their models but only on their most expensive MIA models.

Fender's marketing is VERY effective though. These days most younger guitarists/bassists seem to want either a guitar with a severely flawed bridge/trem (Jazzmaster/Jag) or an overpriced re-issue of a cheap student model bass (Mustang). Some of them might use a Strat or a P-bass but 90% of all younger bands I see play Fender/Squier exclusively. That's very impressive marketing! Surely Fender must have a bigger share of the market than EVER? Gibson on the other hand... they will soon be dead and buried if they can't get rid of their "old geezer" image and find a way to connect with younger musicians.

 

[pglaser01]

Learning quantum physics is easier than trying to understand Fender's naming strategy.

That’s actually a fairly good way to look at it!

Fender gets all excited, so much that they feel like jumping up a level based on their energy consumption with a product, only to then blow/emit that energy load with a short burst of brightness.

The transmission of this excitement quickly diminishes their energy so much, that they’re forced back down to the level they’re actually supposed to be at.

 

[RichardW]

Reminds me of the bottle of water I saw with a big "No Calories!" printed on the label.

uhm, OK...

 

[atquinn]

...Gibson on the other hand... they will soon be dead and buried if they can't get rid of their "old geezer" image and find a way to connect with younger musicians.

Quite some time ago, Gibson seemed to pivot to "lifestyle" branding, pitching their stuff to old folks with more money than sense like me who can now afford to indulge their childhood rock star fantasies (unfortunately for them, I don't like Gibsons ). Doesn't seem like a horrible way to make money in the short term. But I think it's going to take another Slash to revitalize them with young musicians. Don't see that happening any time soon though.

 

[mattyrudes]

I happen to really like my Ultra P. Sounds great in passive mode too.

 

[ebo]

The thread title says one thing but the OP’s real question was asking if these pickups are the same as another of fender’s branded pickups and if so, any guesses what they really are? They should have been branded vintage quark 62’s, those would sell like hotcakes apparently. “They sound out of this world “ would be the marketing tag.

 

[2112]

Yup. Marketing. No different than when we list a bass in the TB classifieds that "plays like butter" or is "the most amazing bass I've ever ever ever owned ever (I promise)".

 

[LBS-bass]

I dunno, the OP is literally just asking what the pickup actually is, seemingly as someone genuinely interested in one of these basses. I sensed curiosity rather than snark.

Then what's the point of such loaded language? Why not just ask the question?

 

[sunbeast]

Then what's the point of such loaded language? Why not just ask the question?

I don't know- certainly not a very good way to get people to actually read the meaningful content (the same problem with clickbait news headlines), but the comments make it clear that few people actually understood the point of the OP (the emphasis wasn't on Fender's marketing intentions, but on understanding what this particular P pickup actually is)

 

[Hoochie Coochie Man]

I thought that understood the OP perfectly, and I made some frivolous replies that were in my opinion of the same nature as the original post.

This thread seems to be more about entertainment than about being informative in my opinion, and it did not really seem like a serious question at the outset to me.

 

[atquinn]

Then what's the point of such loaded language? Why not just ask the question?

Who's to blame, all the people who responded without actually reading the post or me for playful use of hyperbole in my thread title? I've seen completely concise, sober posts where the majority of the respondents clearly did not read the entire post, so I'm sure plenty of that is going on here, but I'm sure I didn't help my odds. Still, if I haven't been enlightened, at least I've been entertained.

 

[Killing Floor]

Anyone else investing heavily in these?

 

[Hoochie Coochie Man]

If you are looking for concise, sober posts, please ignore the majority of what I say around here.

I did manage to slip in a link to the OPs for sale thread, so I hope he will forgive me for my irreverent comments.

 

[LBS-bass]

Who's to blame, all the people who responded without actually reading the post or me for playful use of hyperbole in my thread title. I've seen completely concise, sober posts where the majority of the respondents clearly did not read the entire post, so I'm sure plenty of that is going on here, but I'm sure I didn't help my odds. Still, if I haven't been enlightened, at least I've been entertained.

It's certainly not the end of the world; it's an internet forum, not a super serious place, but the obvious reaction you're going to get here will involve the polarized world of Fender fans vs Fender detractors. If that is what you wanted to incite, 'twas a good way to do it, but normally when one wants information they just ask for it straight out.

 

[moon-bass]

My first thought was that not every bass player reads TB, and not every bass player knows that a P Bass pickup is actually noiseless by nature.

It's not as bad as Tito's adding "gluten free!" on their vodka label.

 

[sunbeast]

Actually a P is truly noiseless and a "noiseless" pickup is almost noiseless
Technically , a "noiseless" single double coil Shares the same pole direction so... reality it's a kinda sorta noiseless
Then again if a pickup doesn't work it is truly noiseless

A stacked coil with only one magnetic pole direction can be just as noiseless as a split coil. Both magnet polarity and coil polarity affect the phase of the musical signal, while only coil polarity affects the phase of the hum signal. Mains hum is picked up by the coil as it is an electromagnetic force (just like that of the magnetized strings) and the mains hum is usually fairly similar regardless of coil position (to a reasonable degree anyway, ideally the two coils are on the same plane and close proximity), so having two equivalent coils out of phase with each-other is all it takes to cancel that hum out. So the reason a side-by-side humbucker also has to have reversed magnet polarity as well as reversed coil polarity is that both of the coils in this orientation are also picking up the same strings in equal measure, so if you only reversed the coil phase you would be putting both the hum AND string signal out of phase resulting in a super thin sound. In a Precision pickup it actually isn't necessary to have reversed magnet polarity for humcancelling purposes as the two coils aren't sensing the same strings, so it wouldn't matter that the string signals from each are out of phase with each-other (a traditional Mustang split-coil looks like a Precision pickup but actually uses two magnetically identical coils wired out of phase with each-other and is still equally humbucking).

The main "issue" with a typical stacked coil humbucker is that the bottom coil does pick up some signal from the string that is out of phase with the top coil (in this case full-frequency since they are picking up the same part of the string), so the total output is decreased vs comparable other types of humbuckers or single coils. Both a side-by-side and split-coil humbucker will usually have a noticeably higher output everything else being equal, sometimes split-coils are even lower output than single coils. Stacked coils can also be brighter than both (unless compensated for), which can result in thinner sound.

Stacked coils make the most sense in a guitar for thin pickup routes like Strat/Tele because split-coils on a guitar often exhibit some out-of-phase behavior on the two middle strings due to the tighter string spacing (read reviews about the discontinued Super 55 Strat pickups), but I feel like bassists generally seem to favor the tone and output allowed by a split-coil design in small form-factors (not sure why Fender discontinued the Super 55 Jazz Bass split-coil humbuckers, as they were really nice- perhaps the guitar pickups with the same name ruined the line). I haven't tried this current generation of Fender noiseless stacked Jazz coils, but experiences with past designs sounded relatively weak/thin to me. Hopefully they've improved things!