Copper Shielding

[JD01]

What's the copper shielding that you see people use inside the cavities of guitars?
Is it actually any good? Is there a real point to it? Would you do under the pick-guard too?

Cheers,

[Armistice]

I think it's mainly a single coil thing, given their greater propensity to pick up your local radio station and other electromagnetic sources nearby, but I don't know for sure. I've certainly seen strats with copper and/or aluminium shielding on the inside of the cavities and on the back of the pickup plate/guard as well.

One for muttley I expect. My Blade strat was never noisy in that way when I gigged with it. But that was also in simple set ups at not ear splitting volume. I wouldn't have thought it'd be that much of an issue at bedroom volume, but again, I don't really know.

[JD01]

My tele didn't have any sort of shielding like that, my old strat copy didn't either. I bet my Jr. Doesn't and I know my Crimson doesn't.

[Greg_L]

What's the copper shielding that you see people use inside the cavities of guitars?
Is it actually any good? Is there a real point to it? Would you do under the pick-guard too?

Cheers,

Shielding.
Yes, usually.
Yes.
Yes.

[JD01]

Cool - just looked it up on amazon, its pretty cheap.

[WhiskeyJack]

I just had a discussion with a guy recently that was coaching me on some guitar work i am doing for some one and in the end his opinion and experience he boiled it down thus:

Copper shielding is great on the underside of a pickguard so long as it comes into contact with any shielding done in the cavities. Preferrably shielding paint inside the cavity's.

Copper sheliding in the cavities was, in his opinion cork sniffing no advantage to it. Paint the cavities, copper tape the underside the pick guard.

So that is what i am doing on this one guitar i am working on.

[Lt. Bob]

I use the copper tape for everywhere .... it's easy as can be since it's tape ... just stick it on.

CAVEAT: .... it's basically a razor blade so be careful

[Greg_L]

I've shielded many guitars. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it does little to nothing.

[JD01]

Are we saying that it can't hurt?

[Greg_L]

Are we saying that it can't hurt?

Sure but if you got a solution looking for a problem then don't bother.

[Armistice]

Are we saying that it can't hurt?

So long as the local copper thieves don't know that you have copper in the house...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-02/ ... /102678522

[WhiskeyJack]

I just had my first kick at the can with copper shielding last night (i will go into a little deeper in another thread when i am ready to discuss the project) and it went ok-ish. NOt greati-ish, just okay-ish.



Why did i do the whole thing? Great question that will get answered in another thread in the coming days.

In hindsight, i should have wet sanded the back of this pickguard to get out all the imperfections for a job i would be more personally proud of. The thing i keep telling myself is that no one is going to really see this technically. It isn't a focal point or anything it was just something that was asked for pro bono. Doing a favor for a friend of my wifes and just to learn some shit. It wasn't bad to work with. A few little slices into the fingers but nothing i would say is worse than a paper cut. I used a soft cloth to really work out some air bubbles and wrinkles as best i could. But the worst of this could have been avoided with bit of a scuffing / wet sand.

I have enough that I will do my own telecaster when I go to put the new pots in it in here in the coming next couple weeks and test that theory.

Here is a question for @muttley and @Greg_L :

Should i cut back some of the shielding around these four holes around the opening for this humbucker? If the height adjustment screws for the neckbucker on this thing touch the copper shielding will it introduce some noise or a ground loop or anything? Cut it back? or maybe insulate with a bit of electrical tape maybe ?



Yes i am ware of haven't trimmed out the holes yet, I need to find my precision scalpel looking trimmer thing.

[Lt. Bob]

What's the copper shielding that you see people use inside the cavities of guitars?
Is it actually any good? Is there a real point to it? Would you do under the pick-guard too?

Cheers,

Shielding.
Yes, usually.
Yes.
Yes.

That ^^^^^^

The copper tape is super easy to do ( it is basically a flexible razor blade so be careful ) and you need it on the pickguard too and all of it has to be connected together so any sections that are on separate spots have to connect .... once done that's a faraday cage and blocks rf fairly well.

[Greg_L]

Here is a question for @muttley and @Greg_L :

Should i cut back some of the shielding around these four holes around the opening for this humbucker? If the height adjustment screws for the neckbucker on this thing touch the copper shielding will it introduce some noise or a ground loop or anything? Cut it back? or maybe insulate with a bit of electrical tape maybe ?

Nope, won't hurt anything if the screws touch it. That shielding will/should go to ground so the screws won't have any effect on it.

[muttley]

............
Here is a question for @muttley and @Greg_L :

Should i cut back some of the shielding around these four holes around the opening for this humbucker? If the height adjustment screws for the neckbucker on this thing touch the copper shielding will it introduce some noise or a ground loop or anything? Cut it back? or maybe insulate with a bit of electrical tape maybe ?



Yes i am ware of haven't trimmed out the holes yet, I need to find my precision scalpel looking trimmer thing.

As gerg said.

You actually want those screws to be grounded so it wont do any harm. They are already ground via the threaded holes on the pickup bassplate so no biggie either way. Rarely I come across a grounding issue with continuity on things like so report back if you do get issues having it grounded twice. If you do it's normally due to not having a decent route for the grounding over all. As I sat though it's pretty rare.

[muttley]

Also that looks pretty tidy to me so don't worry about the look of it, you will put hours of work into something that will make very little difference other than cosmetic. It's more about making sure that each copper strip has continuity with it's neighbour.

[WhiskeyJack]

Cool. Thanks @muttley and @Greg_L !! I won't sweat those holes then!

I'll be back into this project here this weekend and I'll follow up with the continuty test.