Hey all,
 
Disclosure:  I am not a guitar player; however, I have a great 61 Strat Reissue that I love.  But when I use it in Sonar with Guitar Rig 4/5, the combination is insanely noisy.  I'm going from the guitar into a Grace M101 preamp into RME Multiface II into Sonar.  Any recommendations on a solution for that?  Switch position and distance from monitor make a difference, but I was wondering if there were other things I could do as well.
 
Thanks!
Donny

Strats are generally noisy because they generally have single coil pickups which pick up all the radio interference noises given off by computers, screens, amplifiers, light dimmers and anything else. The hotter the pickup output the worse the noise problem. Telecasters are generally noisier than Strats and P90 pickups noisier still.

Technological solutions are to change the pickups for Lace sensors (still single coil but much less hum, though some think they sound "sterile", I happen to like them). Or replace the pickups with "noiseless" ones. These are really variations, depending on make and model, of dual-coil humbuckers. They do alter the tone (often quite a lot) and sometimes the volume and tone pots have to be changed as well. It can be worth while thoroughly shielding the pickguard and control cavity as well, though Fender seem to do a reasonable job of it mostly. Switch positions two and four are usually humbucking on modern Strats because the middle pickup has reverse wiring and magnets to the other two and the combinations make a humbucker.

However, if you want the classic single-coil Strat sound you need single coil pickups. You can use noise gates but they have consequences for attack and sustain.

Guitar forums are full of discussion about this, and google can be very useful as well.

What kind of noise are you getting? Hum/buzz, whining, chattering noises? The simplest solution if practical is often to find a spot where the noise is least obtrusive and play there.

I haven't used them in many years but I used to get pretty good results (live) with a Rocktron HUSH noise reduction pedal.

My Telecaster is very noisy in all amp sims, as soon as I dial in any kind of high gain tone. However, I have found that if I move my guitar around there will be one freak "sweet spot" that's comparatively quiet. A couple of nights ago it happened to be when I faced away from my DAW and tilted the guitar toward the floor. Not the most comfortable of playing positions 
 
However, luckily for me, I prefer super-clean or mild-crunch tones and stay away from high gain. 

I put David Gilmore pickups in my Strat - Active electronics, and sound great without a bunch of noise.
 
Bob Bone
 

I use humbuckers, but like the sound of single coil on occasion. So, I wired the humbuckers I use as single coil pickups, analyzed the spectrum, and came up with an EQ curve that imposes that spectrum on the humbuckers. It's kind of roundabout, but it works.
 
I wrote an article that shows the spectrum for single-coil vs. humbuckers, as well as talks about some applications.

Anderton
I use humbuckers, but like the sound of single coil on occasion. So, I wired the humbuckers I use as single coil pickups, analyzed the spectrum, and came up with an EQ curve that impose that spectrum on the humbuckers. It's kind of roundabout, but it works.
 
I wrote an article that shows the spectrum for single-coil vs. humbuckers, as well as talks about some applications.

Have you ever recorded JUST the noise, reversed the polarity and then played that with an audio track with the same noise? I recorded a scratch vocal a few weeks ago and wasn't too worried about any noise levels on it, which was good because I had recorded my air conditioner running in the background. I used Adobe Audition to extract the noise from the audio and copied that to a new audio track in Sonar. After flipping the phase of the second track, and playing them together, the noise from the original vocal track was imperceptible.

+1 on the "sweet spot" my Blade RH4 has those "lazer" type things (though branded differently) but even those aren't totally quiet. Sitting in your preferred spot, try turning 360 slowly to find the quietest spot. This has always worked for me.

Funny someone should start this thread after the fun and games I had yesterday. I was trying to record some slide playing with my Ibanez into a Balance interface and GR5 in Sonar and kept getting "crackling" sounds. After changing leads and using my son's PRS I decided it wasn't the guitar!
Slightly stumped and frustrated at the moment .

Grum.

There are vintage sounding single coil pups that are as noiseless as humbucking pups.
I once had a set of lace sensors ( maroon ) and they were awesome sounding and very quiet.
I now have 2 warmoth strats that have Alembic strat systems in them. Very VERY clean and also very powerful and they're close enough to vintage sounding for me.
If I wanted to build an other strat I'd most likely go with the lace sensors again but maybe a different color.
They use color to designate the design of the pup and it's sound.