Cavities shielded. I have seen some folks solder a wire between the insulation in the neck cavity and the insulation in the bridge cavity to make sure that cavity is grounded and one to the control plate. Just to make sure cavities grounded. Tomorrow’s job, I think.
Hi G-ManOriginally Posted by Groovyman32
I used strips of shielding tape on the back of the scratch plate to join the cavities together. But you might need a bit more a lip over the edge of each cavity to make sure that works?
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I loved your build! It was great.
I am going to put shielding tape on the pickguard, for sure but, as a telecaster, the pickguard really only covers the neck pick up and the bridge, control plate are all separate pieces of kit. I will certainly cover the slight lip, I have left over the sides on each of the separate pieces. I don’t see any harm in soldering in some wires just to be sure. I think, maybe it is possibly overkill?
The main control cavity shielding will be grounded by the control plate. The bridge pickup cavity can be grounded via the bridge plate - I'd just add a bit more foil on there on the top so it runs back by a couple of cm to be near where the bridge screws go, so taht the plate is pressed down with force onto the copper.
So it's only really the neck pickup cavity where you need to run a ground wire to. If the join between the control plate and the pickguard is visually tight, then you can always run a strip of tape over the top of the guitar from the control cavity to the neck rout. But if there's a bit of a gap, then you might see the copper shining through (though you can always colour it dark).
Hi Simon. That’s good advice. I had thought the control plate would sort itself out but wasn’t sure where the bridge grounded to, but the metal plate at the bottom of the bridge pickup is ground, so a little more tape on the bridge and that will be sweet.
I haven’t put it all together for a while...painting has taken way longer than I thought.....but I recall there was a slight gap between the pickguard and the bridge (about 2 or 3 mm) so maybe the wire option between the bridge and neck will do the trick.
Thanks!
Ah...just reread that post, Simon. I think the control cavity and pickguard are actually quite snug, so, your idea is probably a winner.
Will let you know how I go tomorrow
You'd normally expect to run a ground wire from the control cavity to sit under the bridge. But in most instances, the bottom plate of the bridge pickup is connected to the pickup ground connection. The mounting screws that screw into the bridge bottom plate then should ground the bridge through contact.
To guarantee a good contact I prefer to solder a small washer onto the end of a ground wire, and then put the washer beneath the underside of the bridge, held in place and in contact by the treble-side pickup height adjustment screw and its spring.
As long as the bridge and the screening get grounded, it doesn't really matter how you do it.
I have sorted out most things now. Paint and finish done, cavities coppered (with some extra pieces to ground back to the control plate) and the copper shielding extended so that the bridge screws had to punch through the shielding when I attached the bridge.
Before assembly it looked like this
The pickguard looked like this
The pickguard will provide shielding connectivity between the neck pickup cavity and the control plate.
The bridge pickup needed a little work with a chisel to properly fit and align but nothing major. It now looks like this
And with saddles attached.
The wiring I chose is solderless, so all I need to do is strip wires and insert them.
I should finish that this afternoon (so stand by for another post) and then fitting neck, stringing and nut reworking.
Pickups working and it is now together.
Going to string it and let them stretch a bit then intonate and cut nut slots during the week.
This is what it it looks like now.
It's really not worth intonating until you've cut the nut slots as you'll just have to do it again. It won't do any harm, it's just extra work. But lowering the slots reduces the tension you need to fret the strings and so reduces the intonation length slightly.
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