Jump to content

Shielding And Grounds


Recommended Posts

I decided to go a little bit apeshit on my MiM strat. Don't know why cuz it already was pretty amazing (it holds itself pretty well against my PRS in sound quality and definitely defeats it in the fearceness department!). I guess I just needed something to do. So I decided to try out the shielding as presented in the guitarnuts article...and failed. I didn't have enough copper tape to shield the whole cavity, but I did have copper paint. So I decided to go for a tape shielded pickguard, painted cavity with some copper strips running across it. I tested it at some point and it was pretty noiseless. I don't know what I did after that, but I can't get it to quiet down anymore. Thing buzzes like mad and is unplayable. I pulled out the tape and decided to start looking for more copper tape.

While I wait for the tape, maybe someone here has some thoughts on shielding? Basic summary of what I did:

-Shielding with a combination of paint and copper tape (conducting adhesive)

-Disconnected the tone controls all together.

-I decided not to put in the DC protection capacitor. No stock strat has it and I don't see players dropping dead by the millions.

-Star grounding, which comes down to lifting the pickup ground wires from the volume pot casing and connecting it to the pot's ground terminal, since the tone pots where taken out.

One thing that may be trivial: because I didn't want to solder/desolder everytime, I tested it with long wires running from volume pot to input jack and connected the wires to the jack using metal clamps. Granted, that might give some noise. Also, the volume pot took quite some heat from the soldering (but still gives good readings on the ohmmeter).

One thing I don't fully understand about the guitarnuts article: one makes a Faraday cage of the cavity and grounds the cage to the bridge/trem. The audio circuit inside stays isolated from this, if I interpret the article corrrectly. Wouldn't that leave the audio circuit floating?

Edited by Rockhorst
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...