First kit build - AG-1F

[McCreed]

Noice!
If it plays as nice as it looks, you'll have a real winner there!

[Andy40]

Dude. I love this guitar man.

Also, how fricken aussie is your name!

[Simon Barden]

Looks good. I doubt the shielding is the cause of your hum (double check your ground connections and that you've got the output jack connections round the right way). Also make sure that you fitted the bridge ground wire. You may have needed to scrape awy some of the black paint to get a good ground connection.

However, if you are going to shield the cavity effectively, you need to create a full Faraday cage. This means that all the top, sides and back of the enclosure need to be covered in copper and grounded. So run tape all over the rear of the control cover and run copper tape up over the edges of the cavity cut-out, so that the control cover tape presses against the cavity edge tape to give a good contact and box-in the controls.

Edit: Just read that you are awaiting more tape, and your picture shows that the output jack is wired correctly. The long legs of the tone capacitors means that if they moved, the signal could be unintentionally grounded, so I'd either shorten the legs, put some heatshrink over the legs or put insulating tape underneath them.

[Simon Barden]

The ground connections on the back of the pots look a bit 'blobby' to me. The solder hasn't melted properly as it should be smooth and shiny if it had. Worth checking for highish resistance readings from the ground tab on the output jack to the metal back of each pot. Should be as close to zero ohms as your multimeter will read (i.e. same reading as direct probe to probe contact). Anything above an ohm and I'd re-do the ground soldering on that pot. The copper tape will also help with the ground connection, but I'd prefer to rely on the soldered links.

[DarkMark]

I’m not an ‘AG-F1’ man myself, but man, I wouldn’t mind picking that up and strapping it on.

[Mcgaz]

Thank you for the praise lads!
Tonight I popped on the bone nut and truss cover, gave the nut a good soaking in the black dye used for the body. And boy aren't those stock nuts dodgy! It snapped on me when removing it, so i spent a good part of the night slowly digging out a chunk of plastic glued in very well.

Simon, cheers for the thoughts on the electronics.
One massive thing i noticed was that the hum/static was getting quiet/loud when i turned and faced certain directions, so hopefully finishing off the shielding will do the trick. But wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't remove all of it.
The soldering on the pots was something i thought was a bit shoddy too, definitely will have another crack at it to just clean up the longer wires at the very least.

EDIT: And now proudly can boast a nice build profile pic for the forums!

[Mcgaz]

Just a short sample of the sound it makes... still waiting for the post man to bring the copper shielding tape

Please excuse the mediocre playing skills and the horrible video quality

[Tassieaxeman]

Soldering earth's to pot chassis is accepted method but is fraught with danger, it is so easy to fry a lot.
If your shielding it is far safer and quieter, to earth your bridge to the sheilding and running all earth back to the sheilding, making sure the shielding is right up to the control holes so pots earth out there. It also makes for a simpler cleaner installation.

[Simon Barden]

Standard soldering to pots is not that dangerous and is a lot more reliable.

[Tassieaxeman]

Standard soldering to pots is not that dangerous and is a lot more reliable.

On that we totally disagree, someone experienced can solder to pots with minimal pot failures. But in most cases on this forum we are talking about hobby electronics experience at best! As indicated by "blobby solder joints". It takes a bit of experience to get the chassis hot enough to take solder and not fry all the nylon bushes creating either slop and static or worst case dead short and dead pot. I would bet all my axes that 80% of builds on this forum have dodgy pots.
But pots are cheap and and trial and error is a good teacher.