Pickup Cavity Shielding

[RobSm]

Hi.

Is pickup cavity shielding required for humbuckers?

If not in general, what about for coil cut function ?

Would you line the bottoms of the pickup rings like the underside of (say) a tele pickguard?

TIA

RobSm

[Mike Sulzer]

The complete old-fashioned humbucker comes in a metal box that is really all the shielding that it needs. Hum does go up a bit when you take the cover off, but since it still sits on a grounded metal base plate, I doubt that cavity shielding will make much diference; never tried it though.

Hi.

Is pickup cavity shielding required for humbuckers?

If not in general, what about for coil cut function ?

Would you line the bottoms of the pickup rings like the underside of (say) a tele pickguard?

TIA

RobSm

[crafty]

The cover on a humbucker actually makes very little difference in the amount of hum coming from a pickup. It's electromagnetically transparent brass and nickle. The reason why some humbuckers reject more noise than others is a result of having balanced versus unbalanced coils. The balanced coils will be better able to reject more hum than unbalanced coils, but you lose clarity between chords.

I've used Duncan '59s and APHs, with no noticeable noise difference between covered and uncovered models.

Pickup cavity shielding is recommended for all applications, but you don't need to go overboard and shield the mounting rings unless they're just huge like a pickguard.

[has-sound]

I agree with crafty. You can never shield too much if you have the resources to do so. Nothing is 100% effective so anything that you can do will help!

-Stan