'lo,
I've just shielded all the routing on my Tele using copper tape. Now I've got to the pickguard, and the guide I have says to use a sheet of aluminium.
Is there any reason for this, or would I just be able to use the copper tape I'm already using? I'm sure there must be a reason for it, but I'm stuck as to what it is. :/
i bet this really annoy's you if your a grammar freak.
Anything metallic will work. I use cheap tape from the hardware store myself..
Copper works better than fine.
it probably says that cause that's how fender did and still does it on some guitars. mark is right, anything metallic will work. just be careful of ground loops.
"don't worry, i'm a professional!"
IIRC I used aluminum foil on my Strat pg, as per some website that was floating around on this forum several years back. Can't remember what I used to glue it down though...
Thanks everyone :)
Quick question - how do I avoid ground loops? I'm reading up on it but all I'm familiar with is the "star" topology it references - linking all parts that need grounding to the ground rather than via another part that needs grounding.
i bet this really annoy's you if your a grammar freak.
one path to the shielding is what you're looking for. if there is foil on the pickguard (strat for example) then you really don't need to link the pots, and then the pots to the body, since you've got the ground running through the pots, thru the pickguard and then into the body shielding.
i'm sure someone has a better and more scientific answer, but that's the meat and potatoes of it.
"don't worry, i'm a professional!"
I don't believe that ground loops are a concern within a guitar (I read that somewhere).
Shielding and grounding are not the same. A properly installed sheild does not need to be grounded.
"No harmonic knowledge, no sense of time, a ghastly tone, unskilled vibrato, and so on. Chuck is one of the worst guitar players I know" -Gravity Jim
If the shield isn't grounded, then how does it work? I thought the whole idea was shunting interference off to ground.
Nope, it is not dropping a potential to zero, shielding is to have EM (RF in this case) reflected and not superimposed on the shielded circuit. In fact, a shield can be a screen as long as the holes are less than half of the wavelength of the highest frequency you want to shield from. And, since the guitar cord has resistance, if you ground the shield you could basically turn it into an antenna, so it is no longer reflecting, and you can get noise from the shielding in the form of a zero-bias AC signal superimposed onto your ground. Which is nerdspeak for "hum".Originally Posted by silent j.
We could get into B dot DA and right-hand rule and all that, but suffice it to say, shielding does not need grounding.
"No harmonic knowledge, no sense of time, a ghastly tone, unskilled vibrato, and so on. Chuck is one of the worst guitar players I know" -Gravity Jim
Whatever. Dan Erlewine says to ground the shield. Fender shoots shielding paint before shooting color and then scrapes off a bit of color to attach the ground wire. Every how-to online says to run the shield to ground. Even the foil shield on the back of a Strat pickguard is grounded by contact with the pot nuts.
My Stratty guitar has ultra-quiet active pickups so I've never needed to try shielding, but if I did I think I'd probably have to take the advice of The Entire Rest Of The World.
Well, only if The Entire Rest Of The World includes engineers and scientists.
So, how would you ground the shielding in a spacecraft which is bathed in EM orders of magnitude higher than any guitar will ever see? That's a long chunk of wire! Not to mention the fact that if it's orbiting, each differential piece of the wire between the spacecraft and the planet would have it's own orbital period, hence, the spacecraft would need to expend significant amounts of energy to stay in orbit - so it wouldn't actually be in orbit. And since the Earth has a magnetic field , the wire would get a pretty impressive current induced as it moved though it on a polar orbit!
Not that I would know anything about that.
The ground wire on the shielding is not there for shielding, it is there for static charges. The guitar's body is an insulator and thus, is susceptible to static charges. Pesky cations.
"No harmonic knowledge, no sense of time, a ghastly tone, unskilled vibrato, and so on. Chuck is one of the worst guitar players I know" -Gravity Jim
The human body is typically the best shield.
If I leave a guitar "on" and on the bench, or hanging on the wall, or (forbidden), a stand, there is buzz.
When I pick up the guitar then the buzz goes away.
Even more so when touching the strings.
The shielding helps the grounding and mimics what your body is doing.
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