Jazzmaster shielding:tubs or tape?

[SWFC68]

I want to shield my JM project but I'm not sure whats the best way to go. Copper tape for the cavities or vintage style tubs. Is there a performance difference? I have shielding for the guard, just not sure which way to go with the cavities.

[timtam]

I know of no good evidence of any noise-rejection difference. It's usually more of a question of whether you want your wiring to be vintage-style (as below) or not ... tubs are associated with more cost and soldering inconvenience (although you could wire tubs more simply, like foil). Foil shielding can be more complete FWIW (ie cover more area of the cavities). OTOH there are reports of foil's conductive adhesive degrading over time and thus losing electrical continuity for its grounding - meaning that it likely ceases to shield properly.

[Sweetfinger]

I use shielding paint, the good nickel based stuff in a spray can.

[JackFawkes]

I feel like I've probably spent several hundred hours over the past 3-4 years reading about and testing hum and buzz reduction in guitars, because I absolutely loath extraneous noise through my pedals and amps... it drives me crazy!

That said, I've come to the conclusion that shielding is only worth the effort if you use coated strings.
Shielding only reduces buzz, not hum; but buzz mostly disappears when you touch your (uncoated) strings (as long as they're grounded the way they should be). I've only tested a handful of examples, but in those few before and after comparisons, my experience has been that:
On an unshielded guitar, touching uncoated strings that are properly grounded, buzz is reduced by about 95%
Shielding that same guitar brings buzz down to about 80% when you're not touching the strings... touching them takes it down to the same 95% as the unshielded guitar.
So yeah, if you're using coated strings, definitely shield to get that 80% buzz reduction; but if you use uncoated strings, just playing the guitar (touching the strings) quiets the buzz down more than shielding does anyways... at least in my experiments.

Also, I absolutely agree with Sweetfinger; if you are going to shield, MG Chemicals super shield sprays are excellent. I've experimented with both the Carbon (838AR) and the Nickel (841AR), and they both worked equally amazingly well. I haven't experimented with their Silver (842AR) or Silver Coated Copper (843AR), but honestly I don't think they'd work any better than the Carbon or Nickel for our buzz shielding purposes.
However! The paints are fairly permanent. If you'd ever want to remove the shielding and restore the guitar to its previous state, use tubs or foil... it'd probably take a lot of sanding to remove the MG Chemicals spray.

If you're using single coils (and you're touching uncoated, properly grounded strings) the rest of the noise you're hearing is hum, which shielding does literally nothing for... buzz and hum sound similarly awful, but are two different phenomena which can only be dealt with by two different approaches.

Anyway, those are just some anecdotal data points from just one person who intolerably hates both buzz and hum.

Jack

[alexpigment]

This is my experience as well. A well shielded guitar doesn’t do anything for the random noise that comes in from the pickups. If you move your guitar and the sound changes based on your direction, shielding isn’t going to help.

With that being said, my current stable of guitars all happen to have shielding paint in the cavities, so there’s really no noise change when touching the strings.

In my adventures of reducing noise with guitars, I found that the easiest solution is using a telecaster neck pickup as a dummy coil. I think it’s because the metal cover rolls off the very high end, so it doesn’t get cancelled out on your main pickup.