Shielding pickup covers article

[Larry Mal]

There was some discussion of this around here a little while back, and I happened across this article.

[Embenny]

That's pretty cool. I'll probably tinker with that this winter when I have more time for guitar projects.

Are you going to give that a shot on any of your instruments?

[jvin248]

.

It works, I've shielded the inside of Strat pickups.
You don't need copper, I use aluminum flashing tape.

3 things:
-Make sure to not cut the hair-fine bobbin wire. It can be really easy to cut, especially if you are using the more rigid copper tape than aluminum
-Run a leader from the bobbin shield to the pickguard shield to ground it.
-Use electrical tape to protect any potential signal grounds touching.

It probably works better on JM pickups due to their shape and size.

.

[Larry Mal]

Yeah, I thought about doing this to a Bullet that I'm rewiring, but man, the wires on those pickups are slender, aren't they? There's also not much room in the pickup cover and I don't know how I would really go about shielding either the cover or the coil itself.

I did order the tape recommended for the pickup coils so I might wrap them in copper.

I agree that a Jazzmaster might be a much better choice to work with, maybe I'll get around to that some day. It seems like it would be easy to wrap the coil and the cover with those.

I also might do this with the Microcoils, and see if that doesn't negate the need for any kind of other solution. As much as I love Ilitch, I haven't heard back, and don't know that I will.

[DeathJag]

Thanks a lot for the link Larry!

Dan

[alexpigment]

I also might do this with the Microcoils, and see if that doesn't negate the need for any kind of other solution. As much as I love Ilitch, I haven't heard back, and don't know that I will.

Do you have a Tele lying around Larry? If the neck pickup still buzzes/hums, I think you can probably determine how much/little effect this will have. From what I gather from the article, you're just emulating a metal pickup cover. I can tell you that my Tele single coil pickups still buzz about as much as any other single coil pickup.
.
Also, I don't want to keep barking up the tree, but a dummy coil is seriously your easy ticket and is as simple as buying a cheap used pickup on eBay/Reverb (like a tele neck pickup roughly at the same DC resistance as your current pickups) and soldering it between your pickup toggle switch and your volume knob. The black wire of the pickup goes to output of the toggle switch, and the white wire goes to the left/hot lug of your volume pot). Wrap the dummy pickup in something like bubble wrap and face it upward inside your guitar cavity. That's going on the assumption that your pickups are not RWRP as you mentioned before.

Apologies if you feel like I'm being too pushy about this. I just hate to see you wait on Ilitch and spend all that money when you'll get the same result. Ilitch is really just a dummy coil with adjustable resistance (albeit with some interesting form factors)

[alexpigment]

I also might do this with the Microcoils, and see if that doesn't negate the need for any kind of other solution. As much as I love Ilitch, I haven't heard back, and don't know that I will.

Do you have a Tele lying around Larry? If the neck pickup still buzzes/hums, I think you can probably determine how much/little effect this will have. From what I gather from the article, you're just emulating a metal pickup cover. I can tell you that my Tele single coil pickups still buzz about as much as any other single coil pickup.
.
Also, I don't want to keep barking up the tree, but a dummy coil is seriously your easy ticket and is as simple as buying a cheap used pickup on eBay/Reverb (like a tele neck pickup roughly at the same DC resistance as your current pickups) and soldering it between your pickup toggle switch and your volume knob. The black wire of the pickup goes to output of the toggle switch, and the white wire goes to the left/hot lug of your volume pot). Wrap the dummy pickup in something like bubble wrap and face it upward inside your guitar cavity. That's going on the assumption that your pickups are not RWRP as you mentioned before.

Apologies if you feel like I'm being too pushy about this (please say so, and I will stop). I just hate to see you wait on Ilitch and spend all that money when you'll get the same result. Ilitch is really just a dummy coil with adjustable resistance (albeit with some interesting form factors).

[Larry Mal]

Do you have a Tele lying around Larry? If the neck pickup still buzzes/hums, I think you can probably determine how much/little effect this will have. From what I gather from the article, you're just emulating a metal pickup cover. I can tell you that my Tele single coil pickups still buzz about as much as any other single coil pickup.

I have two Teles, but they both have the Ilitch stuff on there now. When they didn't, they buzzed tremendously.

I did not plan on putting the Ilitch in the American Standard, either, and I tried a bunch of other stuff- I shielded the shit out of that guitar. I even bought one of these things , and that helped but didn't get it where I needed it to be. I'm telling you, I have hellacious noise and interference here.

No problem with the dummy coil advice, and it's noted, and one day I might assemble a guitar from scratch or something and give that a try. At the moment, though, I'm leaving that off the table.

One reason is that I don't have a table, anyway. Maybe at work I would. But I have a three and five year old with me at all times in a smallish apartment, and when they see dad take something apart they get at it also. I don't know if you've ever tried to do a lot of wiring of a guitar on a small table in the dining room while kids yell and grab at screws and soldering irons and walk off with parts you need, but I can tell you it's frustrating as shit and I've decided to put even the most minor things on hold until I have a house in spring.

The Ilitch guard I can just drop off with my tech, and when I get it back in a couple of days, it'll be dead silent and I'm recording my music. That's worth money to me- it's just a known factor to me that I would pay for.

But I do take your point about the shielding, I do it on all my guitars and it helps but only gets me so far. I can't predict what the house I buy will be like, maybe it'll have less interference than this place does (I can't see it having much more), but for the most part I have come to think that I'll need some kind of dedicated noise cancelling something or other with my single coil guitars, although since I like the middle position on guitars more than anything else simply RW/RP is usually good enough for me.

The only reason I'm exerting myself at all to consider noice cancelling stuff is because RW/RP doesn't let me be happy with the 1,3 and 5 positions that I have on my Legacy Strat type guitar nor my three P-90 Firebird. And some day, I'll need to address my ES-330 with something, you can imagine that guitar is loud as hell.

Oh, I guess my Fender Lead 2... for some reason, I love the sound of that neck pickup by itself more than anything else. That might be a candidate for a dummy coil someday, it's got a ton of room under the pickguard.

[alexpigment]

Completely fair - and yes, I had to give up my table/workroom to my little daughter this year, so I can totally relate. My workbench is a towel on top of a dresser at the moment My only soldering time is really after her bedtime.

Anyway, if you have a tech that can install an Ilitch system, seems like they could easily install a dummy coil, and you'd be saving $200 or more. It's really just a matter of getting the right pickup to use as the dummy. On a Strat, for example, it's dead simple. You just buy the same neck pickup that's already in the guitar and have it installed in the middle position (now everything is the same polarity and winding). The original middle pickup is used as the dummy, and it's usually just glued (facing up) between the 5-way and the volume pot under the guard. This the optimal solution since you already have a perfect hum cancelling match.

[epizootics]

One reason is that I don't have a table, anyway. Maybe at work I would. But I have a three and five year old with me at all times in a smallish apartment, and when they see dad take something apart they get at it also. I don't know if you've ever tried to do a lot of wiring of a guitar on a small table in the dining room while kids yell and grab at screws and soldering irons and walk off with parts you need, but I can tell you it's frustrating as shit and I've decided to put even the most minor things on hold until I have a house in spring.

Damn! Sounds like kids are just like cats, but worse!

[Shadoweclipse13]

Really cool article! Thanks for posting Larry!

[Larry Mal]

Damn! Sounds like kids are just like cats, but worse!

It's really something, but the fact is, it's my own self that I have to take into account. I had been working on various projects, including guitar upgrades, same as I always was as if nothing was any different, and I would get angry when I was not able to do things as I had. And rather than have negative emotion, I realized that I don't have to be all DIY about stuff and I can just pay other people to do things that if I did them it would cause frustration for myself and my family.

So now I have a Fender Bullet, as simple as a guitar can be, and I am reassembling that. I paid for a pre-wired harness since that'll cut down my soldering time and I still don't know when I'll want to break out the gun and do the simple four wires that I have left to do. I will probably take the whole rig to work and do it here.

My hope is to have a little corner of a basement sometime soon where I can set up a little workstation. But as long as I live in an apartment, I've just decided to not bother with any of it.

[epizootics]

Well, more seriously, it sounds like the wiser thing to do here. There are a number of things in life that make free time a rarity, and having kids is definitely in the top 3. I totally agree with the idea that sometimes your time is worth more than what you pay for a more plug-and-play solution in a DIY project.