Fender Limited Edition American Professional Classic Stratocaster Silent System, Rosewood Fingerboard, 3-Color Sunburst

The Silent System — the hum goes, the single-coils stay

Every quiet Strat pickup before this one asked you to give something up: a stacked coil, a dummy coil in the cavity, a preamp and a 9-volt block in the back. Fender's Silent System is patent-pending, entirely passive and battery-free, so there is nothing to charge, nothing to go flat two songs into a set, and no active circuitry sitting between the pickups and your lead. What it takes away is the mains buzz that follows single-coils around a stage full of dimmers, LED walls and dodgy house power. What it leaves alone is the pickups themselves.

Two tone controls, one of them a Greasebucket

The wiring splits the tone controls rather than doubling them up. Tone 1 covers the neck and middle pickups the traditional way. Tone 2 runs Fender's Greasebucket circuit on the bridge pickup, which winds the top end down without letting the low end swell up to fill the space — so the bridge position stays usable and tight when you roll it back, instead of turning to mud. Master volume sits where it always has, under your little finger.

Vintage hardware, chosen not decorative

A six-saddle vintage-style synchronised tremolo with bent-steel saddles and a white-tip arm handles the wobble, and ClassicGear staggered tuners hold the string break over the nut without a row of retainers. Chrome throughout, aged-white knobs and pickup covers, a three-ply mint green pickguard over an alder body in gloss urethane, and the angled chrome jack plate on the lower bout. The 3-Color Sunburst is the real thing — dark chocolate edge into red into amber, with the back burst run all the way around. Fender packs it in a deluxe gig bag.

Set up in-store by Guitar World Australia's techs before it ships to you, so it plays perfectly the moment it arrives.