ez_willis
.
TravisinFlorida said:
It didn't work, or it wasn't worth the effort?
It didn't work, or it wasn't worth the effort?
jimistone
long standing member
The thin metal shielding plate that goes under the pickguard, on my '66 strat seems to do a very good job on cutting hum. Better than the modern "tin foil on the back of the pickguard" IMO
T
Thurgood
New member
Jimistone PM me. Enjoyed your tunes. Lots a folks here know about that kind of blues.
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
I had my Johnson DeSoto electric apart to replace the neck pickup with a Vintage Rails (and may I just say wow, what a difference---I particularly like the combination of the rails neck pickup with the stock middle EMG single coil pickup).
While I had it torn down, I took copper tape from the garden section of Orchard Supply Hardware and thoroughly covered every square millimeter of the inside of the cavity and made sure that it made good contact with the grounded foil on the back of the pick guard. I also added some wood putty in a couple of holes where the screws didn't grip well enough so that the pick guard would stay completely flat against the added foil.
My jaw hit the floor when I tried it out. Settings that would have had an uncomfortable hum level before are now silent. I'm really shocked that something so easy to fix doesn't come that way from the factory....
While I had it torn down, I took copper tape from the garden section of Orchard Supply Hardware and thoroughly covered every square millimeter of the inside of the cavity and made sure that it made good contact with the grounded foil on the back of the pick guard. I also added some wood putty in a couple of holes where the screws didn't grip well enough so that the pick guard would stay completely flat against the added foil.
My jaw hit the floor when I tried it out. Settings that would have had an uncomfortable hum level before are now silent. I'm really shocked that something so easy to fix doesn't come that way from the factory....
ez_willis
.
I can say without a doubt that you did it right. Empirically. Period.dgatwood said:My jaw hit the floor when I tried it out. Settings that would have had an uncomfortable hum level before are now silent. I'm really shocked that something so easy to fix doesn't come that way from the factory....
How about you, do you think these guys did it right?
Light
New member
ez_willis said:
It's not that simple. There are way too many reasons for single coils to hum to be completely sure of anything. There are times when shielding doesn't do much. It will help, but maybe not as much as people expect, and there are times when it just simply doesn't work hardly at all.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
ez_willis said:
My guess is one of the following:
1. They didn't lap the copper tape enough to contact the back of the pick guard, and thus the copper tape isn't grounded.
2. Their pick guard tape/plate isn't grounded.
3. Their cable sucks and thus none of it is solidly grounded.
4. The internal cable between the jack and the switches inside the body isn't shielded.
5. They didn't shield the entire inside of the enclosure including around the switches, and all the way up to and wrapped around every place where a cable comes into the enclosure.
If the shield material isn't grounded, it's just a wave guide, which is probably not what you want. Note that by grounded, I don't just mean connected to the shield on the cable. The amp's input has to solidly ground the shield to earth ground, too, and your cable has to not suck.
If external noise is really bad, copper taping the back of the pick guard won't hurt, either.
Light
New member
dgatwood said:My guess is one of the following:
1. They didn't lap the copper tape enough to contact the back of the pick guard, and thus the copper tape isn't grounded.
2. Their pick guard tape/plate isn't grounded.
3. Their cable sucks and thus none of it is solidly grounded.
4. The internal cable between the jack and the switches inside the body isn't shielded.
5. They didn't shield the entire inside of the enclosure including around the switches, and all the way up to and wrapped around every place where a cable comes into the enclosure.
If the shield material isn't grounded, it's just a wave guide, which is probably not what you want. Note that by grounded, I don't just mean connected to the shield on the cable. The amp's input has to solidly ground the shield to earth ground, too, and your cable has to not suck.
If external noise is really bad, copper taping the back of the pick guard won't hurt, either.
As I've already said, even if you do everything right, sometimes it just doesn't help. It really all depends on WHAT is causing your particular problem. It is, for instance, completely impossible to shield the pickups, and they are the single biggest way for hum to enter the guitar.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
G
Greg_L
Banned
did that. verified with multimeter.dgatwood said:
ditto. did it and verified.
have a good cable.
replaced the stock wiring with new shielded wiring.
I even made small 'boxes' out of posterboard to enclose the pots and switch and covered them with foil which are grounded with the rest of the shielding.
I'm not kidding when I say I followed the instructions precisely and it didn't kill the hum. It did help some, but not enough to warrant the work involved.
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
Greg_L said:
Hmm. Ever consider moving out from under that AM radio transmitter tower?
G
Greg_L
Banned
Lol. I thought about it, but damn, these 3 armed kids I keep having sure are handy around the yard.dgatwood said:Hmm. Ever consider moving out from under that AM radio transmitter tower?
T
travelin travis
New member
ez_willis said:
I didn't notice enough of a difference to justify the work. Every guitar, amp, and environment are different so I won't say that others shouldn't try it. Have you tried it? If so, what were your results?
I can tell you that I shielded every inch of the cavity, the back of the pick guard, grounded the shield, and soldered everything to a common ground. I didn't cut out little boxes for the pots (that's just mad
). I'll admit that I don't use expensive cables but that doesn't mean that I haven't tried them 
. I roll my own with good quality solder and a pretty decent iron. No problem there. The fact is, single coils hum.I can tell you that I really did want it to work.......really. It just didn't help much, if any.
Every now and then I see someone suggest shielding to fight interference from crt monitors. That's just bad information. It's not going to help.
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