Shielding my tele

[ijustwannastrat]

Well, after a couple months of playing my tele completely clean (absolutely no twang with that neck puppy), I got some od, distortion, and fuzz running. I found a reason to shield my first guitar (not the first I've ever owned, but the first I'm going to shield). I thought there was a thread dedicated for shielding, but I couldn't seem to find it in my couple minutes of lurking. mayhaps I didn't lurk hard enough.

So, a little question on one thing: when I shield under the bridge, how should I go about it? I don't want ground loops, and the bridge is already grounded. Being a single coil, there shouldn't be any unshielded grounding wires around their, correct? The contact between the bridge and the tape used to shield should be all I need?


Also, since I'm talking about my tele, should I remove the S-1 switch? I know it's the absolute opposite of what a good nut should do, but I haven't found much use of the POOP or SOOP sounds out of the guitar. Mayhaps once I shield it I will think differently?

[ashcatlt]

Is this the "thread" you thought you were looking for?

I don't worry about "ground loops" inside a guitar. The original QTB article makes a pretty big deal about them, but I'm not even convinced that the term is truly applicable in this context. Anyway, we've proven in the not too distant past that the extent of any such loops in the guitar would be far too small to add noticeable noise. In fact we've had reports of noise issues which could not be solved until the wire between the backs of the pots (the supposed cause of the loop) was replaced.

Teles have a couple different ways of connecting the bridge to the jack sleeve. Some have a seperate wire, and some just use the "bottom" wire from the pickup. You can safely send the shield with the bridge in either case by just leaving some of the could overlapped out of the pickup cavity. The separate wire is preferred though in the following three cases:

1) if you're installing the "safety cap".
B) if the bridge pickup is to be flipped OoP
Or) if the bridge pickup is to be on the "top" of a series structure.