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...