Musicians Roadhouse

I have a Mexican strat, and I'm thinking about upgrading the bridge pickup. I came across a Fender N3 noiseless bridge pup, brand new sealed package for $50.00. Anyone have any experience with these?

I have, in the sense that I've tried quite a few Stratocasters with N3 pickups when I was on the search for a good Stratocaster...
Now, obviously I did not try to change the pickups in those guitars, but all guitars I've ever tried with N3 sound lifeless...

Noiseless pickups comes at a cost on sound quality in general though... if you buy proper fender-vintage-ish singlecoils you will get noise, but they sound better to.
For me, that noise is unacceptable, so I have Dimarzio noiseless in both my Stratocasters and the compromise in sound is acceptable to me...

I have the same pickups as on Andy Timmons signature guitar on the Jeff Beck Strat (with exception of bridge, but that one is quite similar still)... they really sound good.
The original pickups in the Jeff Beck Strat was a mystery to me... I could not get a proper distorted sound even with diming the amp and put OD pedal in front and those pups are specified as HOT...

I can't jive with that noiseless balderdash.
Lace Sensors are the only authentic-sounding noiseless pickups IMHO.
When all is said & done nothing will beat true single coils

I installed Lace pickups on my Strat. After a while I put back original pickup to bridge position
I believe that killing noise is double edged sword. It kills your tone too.
That's why I never use any NR effects either.

As is often the case, I'm the contrarian I guess. I love, love, love my strat with N3s. I actually couldn't care less about noise (I'm so used to rolling off the volume knob in situations where it matters). But they came standard on my American Deluxe strat, and the neck pickup on the thing is particularly good. Can't say the same thing for the S1 switching (which seems to only go along with these pickups) but I just never use it in that mode, so no worries there. But I like a strat with a rosewood fretboard, so that calibrates me I guess...

A couple of years ago I got obsessed in the search for the ultimate strat pickups. I have 4 American strats and I cycled through countless pickups.
For me my strats have to have a SRV vibe, clean/semi overdrive.....nothing crazy, heavy rock etc. For me the N3's lacked character, they lacked that woody neck pickup tone.
I got rid of them pretty quickly. I had a bloke come over the other day to buy an amp of me and he brought his deluxe strat with the N3's, he said he loves them! Matter of taste I guess!