does a non metal base plate need shielding?

[copperheadroads]

i built a couple of humbuckers for a guy ,i never had any nickel baseplate at the time so i made them out of some hard plastic i had on hand . the wax pot did not warp them at all . they turned out really nice he love the sound nice and bright not to muddy . i was wondering would the baseplate need to be shielded

[trevorus]

A plastic baseplate is not going to do anything electrically, nor will it do anything magnetically. I wouldn't worry about it. If he likes the sound, don't bother changing it.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

adding shielding may negate whatever sonic advantage there is to using a non-metal material. Or it might not. It is more important that conductive materials be always grounded, rather than all parts always being shielded.

They'd only need shielding if he says they are too noisy, in which case shielding the cavity would probably make more sense.

[copperheadroads]

that's what i was thinking as well ,i just tried in my guitar here it seemed so quiet as any other humbucker not much road testing haha ....thanks

[Steve A.]

adding shielding may negate whatever sonic advantage there is to using a non-metal material. Or it might not. It is more important that conductive materials be always grounded, rather than all parts always being shielded.

Good point! If conductive material is not grounded (where I come from we call that "metal" ) it can act as an antenna picking up all of that RF/EMI crap out there. So shielding not connected to ground can make a guitar noisier. Like lining a tele pickguard with aluminum foil or coating it with a conductive paint and forgetting to ground it.

I would be more concerned that the plastic baseplate was not a ferrous metal (i.e., attracted to a magnet). Like on a traditional tele bridge pickup with a metal baseplate, I believe it has an effect on the magnetic field created by the pickup. But if it sounds good, what the heck... a lot of the newer tele bridge pickups do not have the metal baseplate and people seem to like them.

Thanks

Steve Ahola

[David Schwab]

I would be more concerned that the plastic baseplate was not a ferrous metal (i.e., attracted to a magnet). Like on a traditional tele bridge pickup with a metal baseplate, I believe it has an effect on the magnetic field created by the pickup. But if it sounds good, what the heck... a lot of the newer tele bridge pickups do not have the metal baseplate and people seem to like them.

Part of the Tele bridge pickup tone is the steel plate under the pickup. Also the whole bridge base was steel.

But that;s a single coil pickup, so the poles on the bottom of the pickup are touching the plate. If you did that on a humbucker you would "short out" the magnet, sam as stacking a piece of steel between the pole pieces would.

There is no need for a humbucker to have a metal base. That was probably done for shielding purposes. But some humbuckers don't have it, like Bill Lawrence.