My Build Diary

[OEG69]

Hi All,

Question, does the shielding also need to be applied to the back of the pick guard? I have seen bother yes and no answers. I also noticed that yo can buy an aluminum shieling plate for underneath the pick guard. If so, where might I get one of these? I am currently building and STA-1. I haven't noticed these for sale on the Pit Bull site.

Would appreciate any advice.

Thank you

OEG69

[fender3x]

Question, does the shielding also need to be applied to the back of the pick guard? ... I also noticed that yo can buy an aluminum shieling plate for underneath the pick guard.

You should always shield (IMHO) unless you have some compelling reason not to. The electronics in your guitar are designed sense the movement of your strings through a magnetic field and turn them into an electronic signal which is sent to the amp. Unfortunately guitar pickups and electronics have a tendency to act like an antenna and pick up unwanted RF noise as well, which also gets transmitted to the amp. What shielding does is surround the electronics and prevent most of the RF noise from getting to the electronics. The shielding blocks RF noise and sends it to the ground.

On a strat, its best to shield the cavities, at least on the front, and on the back of the pickguard. Your pickguard doesn't have any shielding. The one in TD's pic only has shielding over the control cavity. Most of us shield the pickguard around the pickups as well as over the control cavity.

My 40 year old Fender P-bass has a copper plate under the pickup, but those are relatively uncommon these days. What is more common is to use aluminum or copper tape, or to use conductive paint. Copper tape and and conductive paint can be purchased on-line from guitar building websites and electronics stores. Some gardening supply stores sell copper tape as a slug/snail barrier. By far the cheapest is aluminum HVAC tape that you get from hardware stores.

The problem with virtually all aluminum tape and many of the copper tapes as well is that it needs to be grounded but solder often does not stick to it well. I get around this by using a steel screw with an eyelet and piece of wire attached that I drive into the tape to get a good ground. Copper tape sold from for guitar shielding is usually conductive on both the "shiny" side and the adhesive side, so all you need to do is make sure pieces overlap.

Aluminum tape is hit-or-miss as to whether the sticky side is conductive. Still, aluminum tape is so cheap that I have a lifetime supply of it, so as a workaround, I shield the cavities with alu tape and then use small strips of copper tape to make sure there is continuity to all parts of the shield. I do this because it works and I am a cheapskate. Most others just shield with copper tape which is, admittedly, not that expensive.

Conductive paint is good for tight spaces...and it also looks very tidy. That said its pricey and can be messy. Some people also don't think it conducts as well as tape (not sure I believe this...it's either conductive or it isn't...right...?).

The only reason, for me anyway, not to shield are because (a) I can't...as with semi-hollow or fully hollow body guitars, (even then I try to shield at least the wiring if I can) or (b) because the guitar already seems pretty noiseless*.

*It should be noted that a guitar that is noiseless in your garage may be noisy if you take it somewhere else. Even unshielded guitars are only noisy where there is RF to pickup.