Will copper shielding fix a ground buzz?

[Rick Turner]

Rule #1. Just remember...high voltage AC? Keep one hand in your pocket...

Tesla...

And you're better off glistening with sweat...the current will go through that, not your heart when you forget rule #1. Maybe...

[Paleo Pete]

I've mostly stayed out of this thread, I basically had no more to say, and don't know a lot of the technical details of how the shielding idea works, I just know it did make a little improvement on my Squier Strat. I still have the typical single coil noise, but not much, I can stand 3 feet in front of my Super Reverb at max volume and barely hear it. Not bad..and I already knew shielding wouldn't do a thing for that before I started.

But before I ever posted the first time here (or even joined) I lurked around for a couple of months checking things out. As I did with several other similar forums. I settled on this one because I saw very knowledgeable people, very little nitpicking and name calling, and usually if I did a little research I found out most of the people here knew what they were talking about. So here I am, and I hope you folks have noticed I don't even think about answering electronics questions, I don't know what I'm doing.

But I can also usually sort out the BS from the knowledge, which a lot of newcomers can't do. So far I haven't used the ignore button although I've considered it. But I do depend on my bullshitometer now and then and it has gone off a few times here...I don't think I have to name any names...but I do think someone needs a good talking to...

Without any technical stuff, no matter what pickups you have, you occasionally have noise to deal with from outside sources, not the pickups themselves. Shielding does help that, as you can prove for yourself by just plugging your guitar in with a speaker cable. Neon or florescent lights, I've even heard radio stations at times...just to name a couple. That will be reduced. But not the hum from single coil pickups.

You guys do a good job, I've always had a lot of respect for the people here. But the insults, name calling and nonsense instead of factual information do certainly seem to be an issue worth consideration...

[Paleo Pete]

Double post for some reason...sorry

[bsco]

Hi Paleo. I have a question for you...When you shielded your Strat,,,what did you use...I did mine back a few years ago(I have an 80's model), and used self adhesive foil at the time...I never knew anything about shielding paint...until recently....before I did mine the noise was bad but after I shielded the cavity the noise was greatly reduced...it's not 100% by any means but the improvement was amazing.....just curious......
Cheers,
Bernie

[bjfly17]

I rewired with shielded wire. Tried to just replace the existing wires without taking everything apart. And now I have no output whatsoever. It's so frustrating...

Don't know if I did something wrong, the shielded wire is grounding the output somewhere, or what...

[Rick Turner]

Time to learn the art of trouble shooting. Start as far "up-stream" as possible and work your way down with an Ohm meter. Yep, you've shorted something out somewhere.

[bjfly17]

I woke up this morning and did a little troubleshooting before work. Checked the switch area first. Turns out that my shielded wire (the grounded braid) from the ground lug side of the switch was making contact with one of the hot lugs on the switch due to the small restrictive switch cavity. Wrapped it in electrical tape and seems to have fixed it. I'm very relieved that it was that easy of a fix - saved a lot of frustration. It appears at this time that the buzz is gone, but I'll have to put everything back together before I can make any guarantees. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

Thanks again for the help!

[Rick Turner]

Another "gentle art" worth learning is how and where to use what size of heat shrink tubing. It's much, much neater than wrapping electrical tape around solder joints and break-outs. When applied over wires and solder tabs on pots, heat shrink does a great job of strain relieving connections, too. I keep about five sizes on hand for various jobs, and then quite a few colors for color coding. Great stuff.

BTW, I also follow a fairly strict color code with hook-up wire going back to my Alembic days:

Red = + Voltage
Black = - Voltage
Green = Ground and Shield connections
Orange = Bridge pickup
Purple = Neck pickup

Other colors as needed...

Obviously this is for unshielded hookup wires.

[big_teee]

My favorite colors are White, yellow, and black for control cavities.
Might use white for the neck volume, and tone side, and yellow for the bridge side.
I like to heat shrink over several inches of the bare shielded push back wire in the cavity area.
I use the small white 22 pvc on strat pickguards along with yellow, black and bare.
It is much easier to work with and neater looking than cloth for the control area.
I use the cloth wire on SC pickup leads, except for high gain players, I sometimes use 2 wire shielded and ground the shield on the Pot end only.
On Strats you can use insulated shielded wire from the jack to Vol. Pot.
My Cloth wire gets dipped in the wax pot when potting pickups. It gives that vintage look and helps seal out moisture.
On LPs I sometimes use the small guitar coax from the jack to the switch, the small coax cable that comes with cheap import guitars.
It is small and usually shielded good, You can use these cables in certain places in amp building.
If vintage is what you want, use the bare braid push back wire, and slide tubing or heat shrink over it in areas where you can have short outs.
Lots of little anti hum, and noise tricks with guitar, and amp wiring.
YMMV,
GL,
T

[Paleo Pete]

bjfly17 - I used extra heavy duty aluminum foil and spray glue. Covered the entire pickguard (cavity was already painted from the factory but pickguard was not shielded.) Then cut out pickup holes etc with a hobby knife. Done carefully it works well, it's still there after around 10 years, and I made sure to add a short ground wire to connect it to the existing ground. I didn't have much noise at all, but it did help when plugging in at clubs near those damn beer signs...Pickguard originally just had a couple of strips of aluminum tape on it. Took that off and did the whole thing. If you start at one end and use a flexible plastic spatula it helps work all the air bubbles out.

Glad you found your problem, I agree with Rick about heat shrink, but never thought about a color code. That sounds good too. I also use it on guitar cables, helps relieve stress at the jacks, which is where 95% of my problems have always been. It sucks to loan out a spare cable then have to solder another one 10 minutes before a gig...

[Rick Turner]

The only problems with aluminum foil are 1) that you can't solder to it; you can with copper or tin plated copper foil, and 2) you can get the copper foil tape with conductive adhesive, hence conductivity through lap joints...not so with aluminum.

[Rick Turner]

My bad, look at this:

  EMI Foil & Fabric Tapes: Electronic Solutions : 3M United States

conductive adhesive...

Still can't solder to it, though.

I use the 1183.

[Rick Turner]

And for some really interesting stuff to mess with:

Electromagnetic Field Shielding Fabrics

Yeah, it's the tin-foil hat crowd, but what cool fabrics...

[Chuck H]

Last year I had a customer request that I paint his house with EMF shield coating. He lives very near a cell phone tower (you can see it from his back windows). He paid about $2000 just for the materials. Just for giggles I stuck my DMM probes to the surface and as far as I could stretch the leads I couldn't get more than about 35 ohms of resistance on average! The customer rented a meter to measure EMF levels in his home and as it happens the coating works. To what advantage is up for debate.

[The Dude]

Wouldn't this be cheaper?