bjsa06
Rookie Solder Flinger
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Post by bjsa06 on Jul 29, 2011 19:39:03 GMT -5
Just about finished my first build from scratch. Some questions on shielding a rear routed tele. Pics should help. Pickups are tonerider hot for tele. 1. Do I need to shield the neck pickup cavity. If so should I run the cooper up onto the edge to make contact with the pickup mounting ring screw? (The mounting ring is metal). 2. Do I need to shield the control cavity in the rear? (The cover plate is plastic). 3. Should I use a ground wire to connect all copper shielded cavities (neck, bridge + control)? 4. Is it necessary to use the shielded 2 wire black cable (see pic 3) anywhere? Eg, through the holes between cavities? (I have some left over from shielding my strat - I followed taming the beast instructions) As you can tell, I don't have much knowledge on electrical stuff, I'm an instruction reader! Thanks.
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Post by newey on Jul 29, 2011 20:12:12 GMT -5
bjsa: As a starting point, read the Quieting the Beast's Cousin- Shielding a Tele™ article from the original GuitarNuts site. This covers the basics, and answers most of your questions re: the neck pickup and the shielded cable. You'll need to adapt this to the rear rout, of course, but the same principles apply. It should actually be easier to do your control cavity as the clearances aren't so tight. Shield the backside of the rear cavity cover just like you would do for a pickguard- not needed on a regular Tele with the metal control plate. Note that only 1 wire is needed, from the neck pup cavity shielding to the control cavity shield. This wire doesn't need to be a shielded cable since it is not carrying signal, it is a part of the shielding itself. John Atchley doesn't discuss using shielded cable for the pickup wiring run to the control cavity, since this would require cutting and splicing the cable onto the pickup's wires- not desirable for reliability's sake, and also not good if you ever want to sell or reuse the pickup elsewhere. The short wire run from the neck pickup to the control cavity is unlikely to generate any significant noise. If you really feel the need to shield it, the best way is to wrap it with a layer of copper shielding tape, if the hole between the cavities is big enough to accept that (test it first with some scrap wire of the same gauge as your pickup wires). Each end of the copper wrapper would then be soldered to the cavities at either end, and the wire connection in Atchley's instructions would be omitted. Boring that hole bigger is a PITA without some specialized tools, so if the bundle won't go through it when you test, I'd say forget the whole thing. Again, it probably won't be a noise factor anyway.
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bjsa06
Rookie Solder Flinger
Posts: 14
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Post by bjsa06 on Jul 30, 2011 0:40:25 GMT -5
Thanks, I've used the beast cousin notes before. They are good.
Re..the metal pickup ring, do I run the shielding up and onto the surface of the wood to make contact with the ring?
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Post by newey on Jul 30, 2011 9:07:02 GMT -5
Atchley says not to have the neck cavity shield contact the shelding on the pickguard; because the metal cover on the neck pickup is grounded, he's concerned that this creates a "ground loop", since the neck cavity shielding is then connected to ground via both the neck pickup's metal cover as well as via the wire connecting the neck cavity shielding to the control cavity.
Ordinarily, we here don't worry about ground loops as much as Atchley did, as they are unlikely to generate noise. They can't possibly generate noise if they're not part of the signal chain.
However, in this case, it might matter if the neck pup cover shares its ground wire with the signal wire. I emphasize "might", probably not a big deal either way.
If your neck pickup has a separate bare shield wire, then don't worry about it, no signal is going through the "loop". If your neck pup just has 2 wires, a hot and a ground, then the cover is sharing its ground; in that case, you should do as Atchley suggests to avoid the slight possibility of a problem.
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