Shielding a strat

[ogeva]

Hi all,
I am new to this forum, and to modifying guitars. I have replaced pickups in the past though.
I have just bought the caps, copper foil, and wires to perform the "quieting the beast" shielding mod described in guitarnuts2.proboards.com/page/gn1-pages. I am going to start working on my MIJ HRR 50's strat later tonight.
I read thoroughly the guide and also looked at the photos of the squier shilding project and I have a question.
In the photos I see that the shielding covers the whole pickguard. Wouldn't this create a ground loop since the pickup screws will touch the shielding and the pickups themselves have another wire connected to ground? Or no conductive parts of the pickups touch the shielding anyway...
Thanks,
Oren

[sumgai]

Oren,

Hi, and welcome to the NutzHouse! ;D

The second part of your question is correct, no parts of the pup are conductive between the mounting screws and the wire leads. Hence, no ground loops can come into existance.

BTW, nice call, good attention to detail. In the case of a metal-encased Humbucker, it certainly is possible to introduce a sneaky ground loop. The chances of it being troublesome are tiny indeed, but nonetheless......... In such cases, a portion of the shielding would be cut away from the pickguard, just enough to avoid contact.

Which now calls into question the matter of metallic-shelled Telecaster pups (the neck), and certain lipstick jobbies. In such cases, if you are not certain, then cut away a small portion of the shielding, just to make sure you haven't create the loop. However, also be aware that these loops are only possible entry points for noise, hum, buzzing, etc. Small, or short, loops are not necessarily gauranteed to give you problems, they're only one of many things to consider when trying to reduce/eliminate noise issues.

Me personally? I ignore the bejabbers out of them. If I've got 2, 3 or even more of them, I don't care - I can't hear 'em! And at that point, all is well with my musical world. ;D

WeaselLawyer words: Your mileage may vary.


HTH



sumgai

[ogeva]

Thanks!
I am done shilding the cavity and pickguard by now.
Anyway - here's a picture of the wiring (before shieding). What is this mess?! I haven't see anything like it before.
I guess it's similar to the one described here:
www.diyguitarist.com/Guitars/MIJ-Strat.htm

Here's mine:


Anyway - the sealed switch is bad - position 3 is gone, and on positions 2 and 4 I only hear the bridge OR neck pickup. So I will be installing a new CRL switch.
I don't fully understand this circuit, but I am thinking - the red/yellow/white lines from the switch go to the pickup terminals on the new switch. The white lines from the pots go to the pots terminals on the new switch. I cut the black wire between the pots, and all the ground wires from the back of the volume pot go to the ring screwd in the body. So there is no difference from what is described on the website... Or at least i don't see anything that will go wrong with that...

[ogeva]

Ok,
I just went on with it, not waiting for an answer on the previous post. I just hope I am not ruining the guitar
Anyway, I cut the ground wires between the pots, and tested with multimeter to see that their grounds are still connected (through the foil).
It turns out that the ring terminals I bought were too small for the bushings on my pots, so I will wait and get them tomorrow (it's 01:25 here).
All that's left to do is desolder the rest of the gorunded wires (blacks plus green and bare from the dimarzio) from the volume pot and put them in the ring terminal, and add the .33uF/400V cap on the new terminal I will buy tomorrow and close the thing.
Please let me know if I did anything wrong!!!
Here is what it looks like now.

[ogeva]

And one last question -
I see that the 400V capacitor is actually connected on both it's terminals to the grounded shield. What difference does it make if I connect it the way it's described on the site (to the two ring terminals - on on a pot shaft, the other screwed to the cavity) or just stick both it's legs in solder points in the cavity?
Does it only absorb voltage in the ground when the faulty amp strikes?

[ashcatlt]

The ring terminal which is not around the pot shaft does not, in fact, get screwed to the shielding. It should be insulated (electrical tape will do) so that it does not conduct to the shielding. Otherwise the capacitor does nothing.

I think your confusion comes in that there is, in fact, a third ring terminal mentioned in article, but I don't think you're using that. Anyway, neither end of the capacitor would be connected directly to that.

[ogeva]

Thanks, I got it now.
Don't know why I missed that step...

[ogeva]

Ok, last question, I hope.
All is done, the guitar is assembeled back, I can hear a differnce in the noise level it picksup (at least of the single coiled pickups).
However, I messed something up because the tbx tone control only works past the detent. If I lower it below 5 the output is gone. Can anyway make an educated guess as to what I've disconnected? I can't add a picture because the strings are back on, I will fix it next time I change my strings.

Edit - Ah, I think I'll just remove it and put a regular pot when I open her again.