pickguards&plates essential for shielding?

[wckdplsh]

hey all...i'm psyched on this tinkering, diving into this for the first time. i've got a guitar called a polaris, someone told me carvin made them, and its very simple: no pickguard, no plates, just two pickup cavities, a tremelo cavity(well, maybe not SO simple) and a control cavity. gonna do the t-riffic wiring mod with a bridge gibson p90 and neck handwound single jobbie, experiment with different pots and caps. thought i'd shield it too...is it effective to line the pickup cavities with foil/tape when the guitar has no burly plates or pickguards surrounding the pickups?

[michaelcbell]

wckdplsh,

Welcome to guitarnuts, as I see you've posted for the first time. Sounds like you'll be at home here.

Generally, any shielding you do will have positive noise-cancellation effects, but the question is how much are you going to get? I'd say that if you pull the pup and line the cavity, you'll probably hear a difference. There's been some talk around here of shielding the pups themselves, though that may cause some tone loss. Use the search feature and see what comes up (make sure you set the # of days to something more like 200 days). Good luck on the rest; let us know how it goes.

-m

[wckdplsh]

thanks! i'll give both a try...