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Post by jimijunior on Nov 25, 2006 6:55:50 GMT -5
This is a sound example after doing the QTB mod. users.pandora.be/snowy/Guitarnuts/Bridge%20vs%20Middle_Bridge.WAVI hope I have done something wrong cause I dont get much difference. I thaught the 1-3-5 could go as quite as the 2-4 after the mod? The sound sample is with a 50W Fender amp (no reverb, this adds hiss btw) EQ at 5 and vol at 2. First no input, then input with Bridge selected and then Middle/bridge and grounding fingers on metal in between settings. There's a world of difference between those 2 settings. If you guys get the same I really dont know what all the fuzz is about. I'm still not giving up though, respect to Woody for all the help! Laters
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Post by echobase2002 on Nov 28, 2006 21:32:05 GMT -5
Is there any improvement compared to before the mod?
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Post by jimijunior on Nov 29, 2006 14:46:17 GMT -5
To my ears, hardly. Maybe the radio stations got out of the signal but the hum is still as much. It's too good to be true anyway. Still need to find me some shielding paint to do work on the pickups and if that doesnt work its gonna be new pickups or that BPSCC system.
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Post by echobase2002 on Dec 3, 2006 22:08:44 GMT -5
I've done the mod myself a few times. Once, hum got worse, and I had to find the place where my shielding was touching something it shouldn't. For me, the foil was getting moved when the pickguard was reinstalled and bumping into the connections on the volume pot.
The mod does work. I still have some hum, but much less than before. I can borrow a friend's stock strat and compare to mine if you want an audio file.
If your pickups stick out far from the pickguard, you'll get more hum. I've read that shielding the pickup will fix it, but I've never looked into doing that.
Are you using a ton of gain? More gain=more hum.
Did you remember to insulate your star ground when you were done? I forgot to do that the first time I did this, and once it was insulated the problem went away. I use heat shrink tubes because I've learned that tape will eventually unstick itself.
Remove the pickguard and plug the guitar in. Do you still have the same hum? If not, it means that some of your shielding is touching something it shouldn't when the pickguard is installed. That's a pain in the butt to track down, but will fix it.
Good luck!
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Post by jimijunior on Dec 4, 2006 8:11:00 GMT -5
If its possible yes, I would love to hear an audio example from someone. After all, the sound is what this is all about. Im amazed that none provided this if it is such a great mod. I've set my pickups lower to about 3,2mm and 2,4 mm (last fret). Action at 1,6mm and tremolo fixed to body so theres not alot of pickup in the open. I do have the tex mex overwounds so that could be adding more noise. I'm still going to try the pickup shielding mod on my copy strat to see if it will have any effect. People always tell me to watch out with high gain but I rarely use gain, let alone high gain. I'm a very clean player, hence the frustration with the hum. All is good with the shielding cause if I remove the pickguard the noise is alot more. When I place it back or ground with my fingers all is better again. I just read another article about a guy who had 2-4 silence on his 1-3-5 positions and that is just hard to believe to me. He didnt even shield the pickups and had Texas Specials! Anyway thx for reading and maybe providing proof
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Post by jimijunior on Dec 4, 2006 10:17:56 GMT -5
And another example Guitar Shielded with copper and star grounded (not used new shielded wires) users.pandora.be/snowy/Guitarnuts/Hum.WAVThats my copy strat without neck attached and only bridge and middle pickups installed. I just took the body and moved it around a bit in the room, when you hear switching the middle/bridge is set otherwise its the bridge only. I thaught the shielding and star grounding would eliminate the interference that is being picked up? Dont tell me you still need to move in other directions when playing with the shielding cause that makes the shielding/rewiring completely useless to me. I could do that before In 2 and 4 its almost dead silent. Damn these single coils!
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Post by echobase2002 on Dec 4, 2006 19:35:04 GMT -5
ok, how do I post an audio file? I have one here, but don't know how to get it to you. I couldn't get my buddy's strat today, but I got the next best thing. The first part is my shielded strat. Next is an unshielded strat that has humbuckers in the bridge and neck and an unused middle pickup. I never use it, and have changed the selector switch so the middle position chooses neck. That way, I never even pass through the middle pickup on the way between bridge and neck. I'm putting in a middle humbucker after the holidays end and I can afford a new pup. Anyway, both guitars are using the middle pickup. The pickup on the shielded guitar sticks out about twice as much as the unshielded one. In between you hear a loud hum which is me missing the plug on the second guitar and hitting the plate around the jack. That's not part of the demo My amp is set to full out metal (something I never use), and cranked to 10. You can hear the second (unshielded) guitar start to feed back right away. I cover the strings to demo the hum, and then let it feed back again to show how much gain I'm using. Normally, the shielded guitar hums a little at moderate gain, but not enough to be a problem. I'm no professional, so others might have better results. One question. When you say the neck pickup is removed and not connected, does that mean you have a hole in the middle of your pickguard? If so, that elminates the purpose of the shield. Think of the shield like plastic wrap. If you don't cover the entire dish, you get freezer burn. Finally, if you're tired of trying to shield your guitar and still want zero hum and a single coil sound, check out something like a duck-bucker, classic stack plus, or vintage rails from seymour duncan. I have vintage rails in one guitar and think it's pretty close to a standard single coil. I don't recommend quitting, but playing is supposed to be fun.
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Post by jimijunior on Dec 5, 2006 4:39:40 GMT -5
Hi m8 I covered the hole from my neck pickup with copper tape so the shield still can do its job Thx alot for taking your time and trying to help out. The easiest and fastest way would be to upload your soundfile to rapidshare. rapidshare.com/Just browse to the file and then click upload and let it do its work. Before I go, what exactly have you done to your shiellded guitar. Shielded pickup cavities and pickguard then star grounded with new wires or? and did you shield the pickups? I saw this electrical silver glue today but its very expensive and I dont even know if its gonna make a difference only need to use it to cover the plate where the pole pieces are. I have plenty of copper tape left but its too hard to make it fit over the pole pieces and make contact. On my copy strat I have copper taped the winding and magnet and connected it to shield, but again its still picking up alot of interference when the middle pickup isnt combined. Anyway thx in advance m8
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Post by echobase2002 on Dec 6, 2006 18:39:18 GMT -5
I used the poor man's approach: I used rubber cement and aluminum foil to shield everything. The pickups aren't shielded. I put cement on the back of the pickguard and layed it flat on a sheet of foil. Then I used a hobby knife to cut out the holes to pots, selector switch, and pickups. I coated the inside of my guitar with cement, and pressed foil into the cavity. One problem I had was when the pickguard went in, the selector switch and pots would pull the foil away from the cavity, causing it to bump the leads on my volume pot. Hard to trace down because the problem only happened some of the time and only when the pickguard was installed. I followed the first schematic found here: Finally, notice where the pushed position of SW2 connects to ground. Remember that that position really connects to your star ground. If you took the schematic as a layout it would look like you soldered it to the wire coming from the negative side of the jack. Since the wire from the jack connects to ground, connecting the switch to the wire is the same as connecting it directly to ground. That's something I always have problems remembering with schematics. They show the flow of electricity, they aren't layouts. I'll post the file later tonight as dinner is ready.
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Post by echobase2002 on Dec 6, 2006 18:46:34 GMT -5
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Post by jimijunior on Dec 7, 2006 10:26:29 GMT -5
Thx for the file m8, defenetly a big difference there. My amp (50watt fender) is set at VOL 2 and without any gain though (clean channel) so could you record again with the AMP at a quarter VOL, EQ at mid and no Gain (clean)?
Thx
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Post by echobase2002 on Dec 7, 2006 20:08:32 GMT -5
now we're getting into some logistics problems. 1) My amp is a 30 watt and not fender. It also has a line out that I plug straight into my computer (I have a nice little patchbay that connects XLR and 1/4" direct to my sound card). I have a 50watt amp, but it doesn't have a line out and it's volume 2 is too loud for my apartment. I could mic the 50watt, but then you'd have to include room noise and such in the equation. If we're going to experiment here, we need to make constant as many variables as possible. 2) My 30watt doesn't have a clean channel. It has a gain, volume, master volume, and built in attenuator that makes the amp range from 30watt to 0.1watt. 3) If I turn the gain to 0, I get no signal because the preamp essentially sends nothing down the line. If I were to turn the gain to 2, I would have to turn the volume to 10 to make some kind of signal. It wouldn't sound that clean because the preamp would do very little work while the the power amp would do all the work. What I did was do my best to approximate a clean channel on a fender amp. My buddy (same one with the strat mentioned earlier) used to have a 50watt fender amp. It was a blue deville or hot rod, neither of us remember. Together we came up with a decent copy of a clean fender amp. My settings are: Gain 3.5-4, volume 8, Master volume 10, no attenuation. All three EQ's are set to 5. It was very hard to type that paragraph without making a "mine goes to 11" joke. Anyway, here's the file. I don't think it'll do you much good because neither guitar has much hum at these settings. I played a little riff on both guitars so you could hear the sound settings and compare to your amp and compare hum. First is the unshielded strat, middle pickup. Next, you have some pick noises to tell you that I'm switching guitars, I pause the recording so you don't have to hear the changeover noises. Finally, you have the shielded strat, middle pickup. We're also getting into some guitar wiring differences because the pickups are different on the unshielded strat (fender standard made in mexico 1996) and the shielded strat (american standard 1970). Finally, the unshielded strat uses 500k pots for the humbuckers (remember, I never use the single coil on the unshielded guitar) while the shielded one uses 250k pots. I guess I could open the unshielded guitar and adjust the pots with a multi-meter until they were close to 250k, but that's a little too much work. Let me know if this file helps at all. rapidshare.com/files/6541230/demo1.wav.htmlmore later but the Browns and Steelers are playing, and I'm one of those sad Browns fans. Gotta run. GO BROWNS!!!
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Post by jimijunior on Dec 8, 2006 6:30:33 GMT -5
I recorded my samples with the voice recorder (witch is a very cheap one) on my MP3 player Tied the mp3 player neck cord to my amp. 1 more question for ya m8, if you move the guitar in the room or face it upwards (pickups to ceiling) does it make any difference? it makes all the difference here, it can go from silent to heli imitation. They tell you to move away from pc when playing but how on earth can you make a decent recording like this, specialy when using a software amp sim like Guitar Rig. Oh well, hearing your samples I guess this is the best we can get with the shielding. A shame I didnt record before without the shielding cause then I could show you that the difference is very small in my case. But the maybe the guitars were already quite (my copy also???) Anyway thx for the help and the lil performance m8
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Post by echobase2002 on Dec 11, 2006 18:56:32 GMT -5
Mine don't seem to make a difference when I move the guitar around the room. If I get it almost up against my monitor, I notice an increase in hum. Sorry you're having difficulty. Best of luck to you, and enjoy playing.
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