Daveyob first build diary TLA-1

[Andy40]

Frettys bang on Davey, dependant on how thick you put it on it might take a while to dry sometimes more than a week in winter or if humid. Then I usually flatten any bumpiness between coats with wetsand 1200 grit and 2000 grit

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[daveyob]

Hi all

I've just finished staining and finishing the body and neck on my TLA-1 build. I've got some shielding tape and think I'll apply that next. I've seen a video on YouTube where a guy applies the copper shielding tape, but also solders a wire that joins all three cavities in the body. He called it a Faraday cage. Is this necessary? Will it further reduce buzz or do you think the copper tape will be enough? (First build so I have no experience with this).
Thanks

[Simon Barden]

The tape needs to be grounded to work most effectively. You aren't creating a complete Faraday cage as the 'cage' will have gaps in it, so grounding the copper really helps.

The metal control plate is earthed through the pots. If you let the tape come up just over the edge of the control cavity so that it sits on the top of the body, but hidden by the control plate, then contact with the cavity plate will ground the cavity foil.

There is a ground wire you need to run from the control cavity so that it sits under the bridge and grounds that. If again the foil comes over a bit onto the top of the guitar (don't do this at the very sides of the bridge pickup cavity as it will show), then the bridge pickup cavity is also connected to ground via the bridge plate.

Which leaves the neck pickup cavity. As the control cover plate butts up to the pickguard, you could continue to run some copper tape over the body so that it connects with the foil in the neck pickup cavity as you shouldn't be able to see the copper tape at the cover/pickguard join - or you could use a black Sharpie or some black paint on the tape in this area to hide it. Or you can run a wire soldered to the back of a pot up to the pickup cavity and solder the other end to the tape.

If you had a guitar with more isolated cavities, say a Les Paul type, then you would have to solder links between the copper in all cavities. But with a Tele (and it's even simpler in a Strat), you can get by without doing any soldering at all for the cavities if you don't want to.

Hopefully you will be using tape with conductive adhesive, If you aren't, then each piece of tape needs to be soldered to the next piece to ensure continuity - a small blob per join will do - you don't need to solder each and every seam.

I'd just check with a multimeter that there's a low resistance across all your shielded tape areas. Any highish of unstable readings and try flattening the tape together with something that has a hard round edge and maybe add some more tape running across the existing tape.

[daveyob]

Thanks Simon. This is great advice. I'm going to try this out this weekend and feel more confident of what to do now.

[daveyob]

Up to soldering the pickups. Next question. I'm watching the pitbull tutorial video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=pj3NLscxD0U

And I have a couple of things I'm not sure of. The hot wires from the pick ups are identified as the ones with the white covering on them. (Earth is bare). The instruction is to thread the hot wire through the end hole on the pick up selector and back down through the hole next to the end one. My first question is...
Does the part of the wire that contacts with the selector need to be bare wire, or can it be a part of the wire that has the white covering? My wire has about half a centimeter uncovered, but in the video there seems to be more. So once I loop my wire through, the exposed end section is sort of down through the hole and not up on top where the solder will go. That bit has the white shielding stuff on it. But I'm not if I can strip that white stuff off though??

That's the main question. The second question may not matter but if the bridge wire (which will get soldered to the neck end of the pick up selector) doesn't have enough earth wire to reach the middle volume pot, can I strip the outer (red) shielding off this wire and pull apart the hot and earth wires to make it reach? Or is this not done and you leave them as is and just make sure they reach? It looks like it might just reach as long as I don't loop the hot wire to far through.

Thanks in advance for any advice on this.

[daveyob]

one quick thing to add to that. I assume the wires through the pair of holes in the pick up selector need to both have solder on them. So this comes back to the question as to whether there needs to be exposed (not white) wire, contacting and soldered to both holes and not just the outside ones. I can't quite see that detail in the video.

[daveyob]

Hoping someone might be able to help me with this question about soldering the pickups on a TLA-1. I'm not sure if the hot wire with the shielding is required to contact only on bare wire, or if a shielded section of the wire can be soldered on. The tutorial video seems to show wire with a good centimetre of bare wire to solder with, but my wire only has a few mm bare. So as is it's hard to get bare wire in contact with the bridge selector. Should I strip some of that white shielding off. It looks so thin, I'm not even sure I can.

[ILRGuitars]

If you don't have a pair of wire strippers, a razor blade will do fine. Just be gentle when cutting through then run around the plastic shielding. I use to cut through then bend the wire to check if I could see the wire then run the blade around the rest of the shielding, then pinch the shielding and slip it off, then twist the wire together. Measure off how much bare wire you need so not too much is exposed, thus reducing the risk of short circuiting. Just solder the bare wire as the shielding is plastic and will melt. Practice on some scrap wire first. Hope this helps.

[Simon Barden]

It's probably easiest to refer to the PBG wiring diagram for the TLA-1. https://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-co...f/PBG-TL-1.pdf

It sounds like you will need to strip some of the insulation off the 'hot' wires as all the red solder points in the wiring diagram need to be made onto bare wire. This sounds like it may also entail stripping back some insulation on the overall cable insulation so you can expose some more of the earth/ground/shield wire (which is woven around the single insulated signal/hot wire), pull back the shield wire so that you have more of the signal wire exposed in order to get a longer length of the wire to strip the insulation back from.

I don't know what tools you have handy, but a pair of small wire cutters is always very handy when doing any soldering work, something like this:



Not too big a pair; ones around 100-120mm in length will do. You can get much bigger cutters with a similar shape but they are more for cutting domestic mains (or larger) wiring and generally don't have fine enough blades for small work and they won't fit into small spaces.

You can also buy dedicated wire stripper tools, which are a good investment if you do a lot of soldering. I have some like this:



You adjust the screw so that you've got an opening in the jaws that's the approximate size of the central wire core, clamp the jaws round the wire and pull off the insulation. Good for single wires, less good for stripping the outer insulation off complete cables with a shield layer and a central core.

You should be able to find very low cost versions of the above at places like Jaycar or Bunnings. For serious amounts of work you can easily pay $200 for some wire cutters that will stay really sharp for ages, but for under $10 you'll get some that will be sharp enough to start with but will loose their edge over time.

For the outer insulation on the pickup wire, I'd probably run a sharp blade around the insulation first, being careful not to press too hard. You should be able to feel the blade when it runs across the shield wire. Don't press to hard as the shield cable strands are thin, and whilst you can cut though a few without any ill-effect, you don't want to cut through too many. Once you have scored through the insulation, then put the wire cutters on the wire at the score line, gently squeeze them a bit so that the blades catch on the insulation then (without increasing the pressure on the blades) pull the cutters towards the end of the wire so that they pull the insulation off.

You can then pull the shield wiring back to the new insulation cut point and twist the shield wiring so that you get a more solid piece of wire.

With the central wire, I'd either use dedicated wire strippers to expose more wire, or use the wire cutters to strip the insulation off, using just enough pressure to bite into the insulation with enough grip to pull it off, but without cutting through the wire itself.

If you go and buy some cutters and/or strippers, I'd buy a small coil of thin wire at the same time to practice on. You don't want to make mistakes on the real thing if you can avoid it.

As for the second question, If you look at the PBG wiring diagram, I'd do it like that and solder both pickup wire shields/grounds/earths to the back of the volume pot. The back of both pots are linked to ground, so the reality is that it doesn't matter which pot they get connected to, so it's best to do what's easiest from a physical layout point of view.

Hope this answers your questions.

[daveyob]

Issue with positioning the neck pickup.

Watching this video now on fitting the neck pickups to the TLA-1...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=laydhFzTAQM

In this video the neck pick up comes up slightly above the scratch plate, which is used as a guide to position the holes to drill for the screws. The only problem is that my guitar body seems to have deeper cavities and the pickup sits flush with the top (as opposed to sticking up a few mm above it). So I can't use the same trick to position the pickup. This also makes me wonder if the screws will be big enough to raise the pick up high enough. I think the height thing with the screws should be ok, but the positioning by lifting above the scratch plate is a bit of a challenge. Maybe I should chock up the pickup with a bit of wood or something to position it for screwing?