Post
by alexpigment » Wed May 22, 2024 8:31 am
It is time-consuming (~30 minutes or more) and meticulous, but "difficult" isn't the word I would use. In fact, there's a certain zen aspect to the work, especially when you don't cut corners. GilmourD's technique above is pretty much perfect, as you see places where there is a piece of tape going to a screw or sitting on top where the pickguard can touch in several spots. The only gotcha to shielding is that you may find that something doesn't work anymore because a shouldn't-be-grounded part is touching the tape (and therefore being grounded). The most common areas are the pickup selector switch, input jack, the pot lugs, etc. I find that if you put in some masking tape on top of the shielding tape in those places (as necessary), you can fix any of those issues pretty easily.
P.S. I think the Am Pro II has the aluminum shield, right? I haven't been able to confirm with side-by-side tests, but I feel like copper tape does better than the aluminum (I own one of those aluminum shields, as well as some copper ones from Monty Allums). I wouldn't mess with it for now, but if you find that shielding the cavity it's not fully addressing the problem, it might be worth getting rid of the aluminum shield and putting the copper tape on the back of the guard.