shielding

[JrMaFia]

Whats going on i just started playing and i get a low grade buzz when the pickups are in the 2 and 4 position on my strat style guitar. I know single coils pick up low frequencies. My father was telling me about putting aluminum foil under the pickguard. Have any of you guys done this?

[mrbrown49]

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Supplies:_Shielding/Conductive_Copper_Tape.html

 

works great, but needs to be wired to ground of the circuit to be effective.

[ten56gibby]

Of all positions in a strat to have buzz, 2 and 4 would not have been my suspect. But, yeah - shielding should do the trick.

[zbasstringer]

In the useful links thread, I believe the first person to list has a link for a site that shows you how to properly shield a guitar.

 

http://www.guitarnuts.com/index.php

[JrMaFia]

In the useful links thread, I believe the first person to list has a link for a site that shows you how to properly shield a guitar. http://www.guitarnuts.com/index.php

 

 

THis seems really complicated

[zbasstringer]

THis seems really complicated

 

 

At the bottom of the page, there is a link to download a powerpoint. Believe me, the power point helps a lot. Essentially, you are making you guitars body and pick-guard a part of the ground circuit, which effectively better shields the guitar.

[ashasha]

THis seems really complicated

Yeah, and I don't believe in the whole star shielding system inside a guitar for a bunch of reasons. If a guitar had AC power running through it then it would make more sense to me because a star ground system is intended to decrease chances of a ground loop or dangerous potential differences between two pieces of powered gear.

 

Signal or source destination grounding is what is usually used for interference picked up along the signal path and it has to be a balanced audio signal that uses common mode rejection to work. A guitar is an unbalanced signal and the signal ground is the same as the circuit ground. There just isn't any actual powered components in a guitar unless you have active pickups so star grounding is just silly to me.

 

Out of desperation I did try the whole thing with my strat and it didn't do anything to help at all. But in my case we are talking about an insane amount of hum in my house. Its the worst I've ever seen or heard about and I had to go with noiseless pickups on almost all my guitars and use an ISP decimator for my P90 guitars.

 

But with that said, the shielding itself should help a lot because you are blocking the RF interference. Ground the shield and you should be good. If you are getting just a little hum it could be all that you need. In my case it wasn't.

 

Bottom line IMHO is that if rubbing bacon grease on it works for someone than you do it. It may be just what you need.