John Suhr BPSSC

I installed this device (precisely as per installation instuctions) in a thoroughly shielded strat with Lollar pickups. It made no diff whatsoever in the noise level.

A waste of money.

This is a system meant to cancel single-coil pickup noise. It installs with a few wires, and then you adjust some trimpots, and the whole thing lives in your control cavity, and in a new backplate. Meant for stratocaster type guitars.

I used this on a strat with Lindy Fralin "Real 54" pickups. These are very noisy vintage style pickups.

As I said above, I used this on a strat with Real 54's, which were so noisy that using anything but positions 2 and 4 on my strat was not an option. This product lowered the hum, but did not get rid of all of it. However, I found my solution with the combination of these factors:

1.) Shielding the guitar
2.) The BPSSC system
3.) Star grounding the guitar's electronics (ie: Getting rid of all ground loops, the BPSSC instructions should recommend this, instead of suggesting staying with stock fender wiring)
4.) Using a Boss NS-2 noise suppressor.

So, on its own the BPSSC didn't do the trick for me. However, with the 3 other factors in play, things worked out. Your results will vary depending on how noisy your pickups are to begin with.

As far as "tone" goes, the BPSSC doesn't effect it at all, it only gets rid of the hum. I don't know how it works, some kind of dummy single coil system? Unsure, but it will not mess up your tone.

This product is nice, but for the results you get, the price is prohibitive. It's roughly $250 for the system itself, and then you have to spring for a new regular round (not-reverse wound) middle pickup, or it won't work. So this can push you up into the $300 range.

You'd probably save money by getting some noiseless pickups instead. As I received it as a gift, it was worth installing for me. However, I would never have bought one.

For $300+ investment the product needs to work perfectly.

N/A Passive

Fender Relic 60'

Using with Working Dog amp primarily. Sometimes with a Victoria amp. Playing Jazz and Blues mostly. This is not a "pickup' but applies to the "pickup" section. It is a "Back plate" system that you wire into your "Strat" to kill the hum. It works quite well. Pretty much dead silent in positions 1 and 5 with a bit of hum still present in the remaining positions but no where near what it was. If you like the tone of your single coils but hate the noise this is a great alternative. I have tried noiseless pickups (a couple different sets of Kinmans) which are dead silent but just dont have the vibe of my favorites (Van Zandts). This is a bit pricy but worth it if tone is your jones.

Been playing a long time...since I was a kid. Been through the college music school years, the gigging years, the family years. I would not have a Strat without one of these now that I have installed one. They are not difficult to install if you are used to tearing down your guitar. Had to do a bit of drilling to add another hole to the trem cavity for the wires, beyond that it was just a bit of soldering and fine tuning. What a great invention!