Strat Shielding Questions.

[mrcarrot]

Hey all, I was going to embark on shielding my MIM Strat - along with other mods (high pass filter, neck on switch, killswitch, the additional bridge tone mod, metal baseplate on bridge pup, and repotting it) and was wondering on what was actually going on in the Shielding tutorial, as I couldn't get my head around it. WOuld I be correct in thinking that what is happening is that:

You're removing the ground connection to the tremolo and making the shielding foil the ground connection?

And if so, would I be all right in just crimping a lead to a large lug, putting all grounds to it then 'master' grounding it on a brass plate riveted in but still connected to the shielding instead of doing it on the new pots? Or will I need anything extra? (I'm not using the cap as I haven't bought one and I can't be bothered.)

[ashcatlt]

mrcarrot said:

You're removing the ground connection to the tremolo and making the shielding foil the ground connection?

no.

But yes.

The capacitor blocks very low frequency voltages (and it's the 0Hz = DC voltages it really wants to keep out) from reaching the metal parts of your guitar. It is meant to pass the audible frequencies in the noise signal captured by the foil from the air to ground.

If you read the article again, I think you'll find that the trem claw is yet connected to the signal ground by way of the foil through the cap connected to the pot shaft.

If you're not using the cap, I think you can do the thing with brass plate like you said, but you'll want to connect the trem ground there too.

Of course, I've had a couple different guitars where the bridge ground made no difference whatsoever. Not sure what's up with that...