guitar body shielding material.

[Light]

The difficulty is getting the different pieces properly and permanently fused without the right tool.

No, it's really not hard at all. People always assume that the glue keeps the foil from conducting, but it doesn't. There MAY be just a slight bit of capacitance, but it's no more than a couple of picofarad - completely not an issue.



Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[dgatwood]

And cost about 5 times what aluminum foil would cost, while not improving the result one bit.

The shielding ability of a shield depends on the thickness of the metal and its conductivity. The conductivity of copper is a lot better (about half again more) than the conductivity of the same volume of aluminum, and the copper tape is generally orders of magnitude thicker than even the heaviest aluminum foil. Whether the improved shielding matters or not in your particular environment is a different question, of course, but if it doesn't matter, then chances are neither does the presence of the aluminum foil in the first place.

Besides, we're talking about under ten bucks for enough copper tape to shield a half dozen guitars here.... Unless you are manufacturing or reworking the things in large quantities, why cut corners on a couple bucks worth of shielding for a multi-hundred- or multi-thousand-dollar guitar? That just doesn't make sense to me.

 

[dgatwood]

No, it's really not hard at all. People always assume that the glue keeps the foil from conducting, but it doesn't. There MAY be just a slight bit of capacitance, but it's no more than a couple of picofarad - completely not an issue.

Depends on the adhesive and whether it is backed or not. The slug tape I described conducts just fine that way. Unfortunately, the copper tape I can buy at Fry's that is supposedly designed for use as trace material when taping out printed circuit boards doesn't!!! Talk about backwards....

 

[Slowrider]

If it has a thick adhesive, clean it off, and solder any joints for a good connection.

 

[famous beagle]

The shielding ability of a shield depends on the thickness of the metal and its conductivity. The conductivity of copper is a lot better (about half again more) than the conductivity of the same volume of aluminum, and the copper tape is generally orders of magnitude thicker than even the heaviest aluminum foil. Whether the improved shielding matters or not in your particular environment is a different question, of course, but if it doesn't matter, then chances are neither does the presence of the aluminum foil in the first place.

Besides, we're talking about under ten bucks for enough copper tape to shield a half dozen guitars here.... Unless you are manufacturing or reworking the things in large quantities, why cut corners on a couple bucks worth of shielding for a multi-hundred- or multi-thousand-dollar guitar? That just doesn't make sense to me.

In general, people expect too much from cavity shielding, that it will cure problems that originate elsewhere, and are usually disappointed in the results -- or imagine magical improvement. I have more projects than I can do, so messing with that is far down on my list.

I'll just speak from personal experience. I have a basic old standard Strat with single coils. I used to get significant hum --- nothing drastic, but it was your typical single coil hum.

I used the aluminum foil method, and I taped the pieces together with electrical tape because I read that the glue wasn't conductive. (Light says differently, and I guess he would know, but I hadn't seen anyone say this at the time, so that's what I did.)

The results? Incredibly noticeable difference. My guitar is quieter than a humbucker guitar now. There's no detectable hum at all now, no matter which way I orientate my guitar with regards to fluorescent lights or whatever, whereas before, there was significant hum.

I did do two other things during this operation: 1) I star-grounded everything to the same point, and 2) I installed a treble bleed capacitor. Everything else remained the same.

 

[apl]

Copper looks cooler than aluminum. If you use pieces, even with conductive adhesive, or paint check the continuity to ground. Take your ohm meter, one side grounded, and start at the cavity close to ground and work your way over the shielding. If you see a jump in ohmage, you can connect pieces of copper shielding with just a tiny dab of solder. Oh, and shielding a body cavity without doing the cover isn't effective.