L.P. Shielding

syscokid said:
Once the cavity is shielded with the copper, all the pots will automatically be grounded together because they are now in contact with the copper. There is no need to connect jumper wires between the pots to complete a ground circuit. The overall finished look of the wiring layout will look cleaner.

And to be clear:
You still have to make sure the output jack is grounded to any one of the pots, or the copper.
Make sure the bridge or stop bar is grounded to a pot, or the copper.
Make sure the pup selector switch is grounded to a pot, or the copper.
Click to expand...
Thank you my friend.

Post highlighted for reference on re- assembly.

Thanks for the knowledge, and for your time and efforts.
 
Well here's my take on shielding the guitars.

Re: L.P., shielding reduced noise floor a very small amount, not, imo worth doing again. But good news, moving amp heads, and turning off phones and monitors have made enough a difference that tracking is not really affected.

Now, when it comes to the Strat with vintage single coils. Night and Day, seriously.

With my new found interest in recording I will be shielding all single coils from now on. Never have used P-90"s, so can't comment.
It allows those cool old school pickup's to be used without all that back ground noise, the hum gets taken care of post tracking with a de-hum plugin.

Thanks for all the help much appreciated everybody.
 
steveb63 said:
Re: L.P., shielding reduced noise floor a very small amount, not, imo worth doing again. But good news, moving amp heads, and turning off phones and monitors have made enough a difference that tracking is not really affected.
Click to expand...
I agree with this experience. Remove the offending emitters, and play on. Do not place large transformers at pickup height, and do stay out of field range(this is usually only a matter of a couple/few feet).
Not an easy task for live performance(this is where the shielding is most helpful IMO), but usually doable in recording settings.
 
steveb63 said:
Well here's my take on shielding the guitars.

Re: L.P., shielding reduced noise floor a very small amount, not, imo worth doing again. But good news, moving amp heads, and turning off phones and monitors have made enough a difference that tracking is not really affected.

Now, when it comes to the Strat with vintage single coils. Night and Day, seriously.

With my new found interest in recording I will be shielding all single coils from now on. Never have used P-90"s, so can't comment.
It allows those cool old school pickup's to be used without all that back ground noise, the hum gets taken care of post tracking with a de-hum plugin.

Thanks for all the help much appreciated everybody.
Click to expand...
Excellent post and thoroughly, planned and executed, whatever the difference’s are all worth the effort put in to paint the big portrait, thanks for sharing windfalls of the project brother
 
Thatbastarddon said:
I agree with this experience. Remove the offending emitters, and play on. Do not place large transformers at pickup height, and do stay out of field range(this is usually only a matter of a couple/few feet).
Not an easy task for live performance(this is where the shielding is most helpful IMO), but usually doable in recording settings.
Click to expand...
The part about the transformers and proximity is gold, pure gold. I'm almost certain this alone would have quieted the LP, now the Strat I'm not sure......

Gold I tell ya, pure gold.
 
steveb63 said:
Thanks brotha

Not to derail ha ha, but how you feelin man?

Any relief?
Click to expand...
Yes brother I ditched the crutches yesterday and I can bend my knee, staying off of still till the swelling in the foot/ ankle comes down been icing the swelling since night before last and now can go back to work, thanks to all my buddies here and afar for home brew remedies that my wife already knew quite a bit about, and my dumb ass following orders no matter how much I want to get around!
Cheers Brother’s
 
Mitch Pearrow SJMP said:
Yes brother I ditched the crutches yesterday and I can bend my knee, staying off of still till the swelling in the foot/ ankle comes down been icing the swelling since night before last and now can go back to work, thanks to all my buddies here and afar for home brew remedies that my wife already knew quite a bit about, and my dumb ass following orders no matter how much I want to get around!
Cheers Brother’s
Click to expand...

I know you well enough to know, you probably weren't following any orders but your own.

Yes, listen Mrs Mitch, she knows better than you I bet lol.

Well that's enough kicking you when you're down, get better. I'll be sending mojo your way.
 
steveb63 said:
now the Strat I'm not sure......
Click to expand...

The Strat will require proximity, and axial alignment, to find the sweet spot. P90s are worse than Strat single coils by a long shot IMO.
So vertical placement, general proximity, and you will need to rotate slowly to hear the ebb and flow of the 60 cycle hummmmmmmmm.....
If you look at the transformers inside of an old tube amp(they are essentially large coils of copper wire), you may notice that most of them have the coils oriented in different directions...this is to cancel out noise build up.
Not the nicest example, but a dead quiet amp....my 18watt....for example...
FF9D977E-A451-49CD-84CE-AF3A361A7E22.jpeg

Or a Fender Deluxe Reverb(not mine) perhaps...
8A5DDACA-D2BD-4FDF-85CA-803680DFAE21.jpeg
 
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steveb63 said:
Well here's my take on shielding the guitars.

Re: L.P., shielding reduced noise floor a very small amount, not, imo worth doing again. But good news, moving amp heads, and turning off phones and monitors have made enough a difference that tracking is not really affected.

Now, when it comes to the Strat with vintage single coils. Night and Day, seriously.

With my new found interest in recording I will be shielding all single coils from now on. Never have used P-90"s, so can't comment.
It allows those cool old school pickup's to be used without all that back ground noise, the hum gets taken care of post tracking with a de-hum plugin.

Thanks for all the help much appreciated everybody.
Click to expand...

When you say, “I will be shielding all single coils...” are you referring to shielding the actual pickup, per some other posts, or do you mean just shielding the cavity of a single coil guitar, without shielding the pickups, themselves?
 
smitty_p said:
When you say, “I will be shielding all single coils...” are you referring to shielding the actual pickup, per some other posts, or do you mean just shielding the cavity of a single coil guitar, without shielding the pickups, themselves?
Click to expand...
Sorry bad form lol.

Sheilding the cavaties, I would avoid altering my pickups sound at any cost.

Love the tone, they're just vintage repros and the old drawbacks as far as noise goes.
 
steveb63 said:
Looking great!

Run into anything that I should keep in mind?

I did my LP, going to start the Strat tomorrow, so if you have run into anything out of the ordinary.... I'd sure be grateful for the heads up.
Click to expand...

So, you haven’t actually shielded your Strat, yet?

I must have misunderstood. From your earlier post, I thought you had already done it.

Looking forward to your results!
 
steveb63 said:
Well here's my take on shielding the guitars.

Re: L.P., shielding reduced noise floor a very small amount, not, imo worth doing again. But good news, moving amp heads, and turning off phones and monitors have made enough a difference that tracking is not really affected.

Now, when it comes to the Strat with vintage single coils. Night and Day, seriously.

With my new found interest in recording I will be shielding all single coils from now on. Never have used P-90"s, so can't comment.
It allows those cool old school pickup's to be used without all that back ground noise, the hum gets taken care of post tracking with a de-hum plugin.

Thanks for all the help much appreciated everybody.
Click to expand...

Some thoughts....

My biggest influence in shielding was to eliminate RFI signal interference. In some venues, being near the neoreceived and/or row of light dimmers also drove my unshielded guitars nuts. The copper shielding eliminated that. Also eliminated was the 'chirp-chirp-chirp' that a cell phone emits just before a message is recieved.

Of all my humbucker pickups, the genuine Gibson's are by far the noisiest. When they are plugged in, they have a low volume hum that never goes away and that hum will increase when your fingers get near the pickup and increase further when you touch the bobbins.

My Mom's 1979 Gibson Les Paul Custom does this, as do most all the other guitars with genuine Gibson pickups, so I consider it just a normal part of Gibson pickups. Even with all grounds having zero resistance and full continuity, the Gibson humbuckers display this characteristic.

In contrast, the Epiphone H8BN/H6BN pickups - despite being viewed as a pauper's version of the Gibson 498T/490R - make no noise whatsoever. The H8BN/H6BN also cannot be sonically identified in back to back recordings except for the persistent hum from the Gibson's.

My feeling is the Gibson's are probably unbalanced coils and the Epiphone's are balanced.

Notwithstanding, I'm in the process of replacing all the genuine Gibson pickups in my 2016 Gibson Les Paul 50's Tribute and my Von Herndon double neck with the Epiphone H8BN/H6BN combination.

My custom aluminum Stratocaster pickguard - fitted with Gibson 498T/496R - and played once at Mojave Wasteland Weekend 2018, has been pulled and is being sold.

For your Stratocaster...

Go to Guitar Fetish.com and pick up one of their thin, aluminum pickguard shields. Very good and quick method of shielding a Stratocaster.
 
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