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Post by morbe on Feb 16, 2012 12:40:33 GMT -5
As most of you know i was havimg some issues with one of my strats. I got a huge amount of buzz with it through my amp. Which i thought may have been an amp or a tube issue, but the horrible hum seems to follow the guitar. When i was testing this thing out we were having thunderstorms. So when playing the guitar barefoot on ceramic tile. And simply sitting down and lifting my feet up effected the hum. So Im chaulking that up to mothr nature as i was reading that electrical interference including electricity in he air can be picked up by single coil strat guitars. So even after reading a few web sites on the subject. I have two questions.
1. How thick does the copper foil need to be? Hobby lobby sells sheets at 40 gauge and 36 gauge.
2. Some tech go so far as to wrap the cables with copper tape. Is this nessary? If he entire cavity is sheilded arnt the wires inside the cavity now considered shielded?
Thanks
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Post by reTrEaD on Feb 16, 2012 13:41:42 GMT -5
As most of you know i was havimg some issues with one of my strats. I got a huge amount of buzz with it through my amp. Which i thought may have been an amp or a tube issue, but the horrible hum seems to follow the guitar. When i was testing this thing out we were having thunderstorms. So when playing the guitar barefoot on ceramic tile. And simply sitting down and lifting my feet up effected the hum. So Im chaulking that up to mothr nature as i was reading that electrical interference including electricity in he air can be picked up by single coil strat guitars. Moral of the story: Don't play your strat in a thunderstorm? Are we done here? So even after reading a few web sites on the subject. I have two questions. 1. How thick does the copper foil need to be? Hobby lobby sells sheets at 40 gauge and 36 gauge. Shielding isn't binary. It's a gradient. Even a micron of foil would be better than nothing. Thicker is better. How thick it needs to be is a matter of how strong the EM fields are and your degree of tolerance for hum. 2. Some tech go so far as to wrap the cables with copper tape. Is this nessary? If he entire cavity is sheilded arnt the wires inside the cavity now considered shielded? Shielding isn't binary. It's a gradient. Single layer is of foil is better than nothing. More layers are better. How many layers you need is a matter of how strong the EM fields are and your degree of tolerance for hum. |
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Post by newey on Feb 16, 2012 20:23:12 GMT -5
morbe-
reTrEaD is right, thicker is better, but too thick will make the stuff hard to work with. You need to be able to bend it around corners in the cavity.
I'm a big fan of the copper tape with conductive adhesive on the back. It's considerably more expensive than regular copper foil or tape, but well worth it in terms of ease of use and quality of the resulting job. Stew-Mac sells the stuff, one roll of the widest stuff is enough to do about 4-5 guitars.
Wrapping wires which are already encased in a shielded cavity seems a bit over the top. Remember that your pickups, with several thousand feet of wire to act as an antenna, will be the biggest potential source of noise; short wire runs to/from the controls are much less likely to generate noise.
Ideally, you'd wrap the pickup coils in copper, but that will adversely affect the string sensing function. We've had decidedly mixed reports about a loose wrap around the backside of the coil (for example, in a hollow-body where there's no possibility of shielding the "cavity"), with some saying it worked OK and others saying it sucked the life out of the pickups' tone.
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Post by morbe on Feb 17, 2012 11:34:48 GMT -5
I was reading on other forums that i should check all the ground connections i was reading it might be a good idea to unsolder the guitar and replace the solder with silver solder. Thats a thought but it may be too much. But then again while i have the guitar apart.......yeah i think im going to order that roll from stewmac. But i just got a new amp yesterday and tried it out the noise deffinatley follows the guitar.
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Post by sumgai on Feb 18, 2012 5:23:57 GMT -5
I was reading it might be a good idea to unsolder the guitar and replace the solder with silver solder. Remember, when reading anything on the interwebs, always double-check someone's claims for veracity. I guess that's what you're doing here, but you disguised it well! Silver soldering requires about 50% higher temperature to melt the stuff (depending on the actual alloy used). No standard electronics/electrical soldering iron or gun will ever get hot enough to melt that kind of solder. In fact, most often some sort of open flame is used. For confirmation of that one, just do a search on YouTube videos tagged with 'Silver Solder', and you'll quickly get what I'm saying here. Fortunately for us Nutz, silver solder just plain delivers no benefit whatsoever over regular solder. Just because silver has a lower resistance to electron flow than any other material doesn't mean that we should use it - that's not what solder is for. Consider: If the parts/wires/chassis/whatever were not in good physical contact in the first place, then no amount of solder is ever going to make that joint work, at least not reliably. IOW, the solder is there to secure the connection, not to make it work in the first place. All we want to do is keep the connection from breaking apart, over time. (As all things will tend to come loose, given the normal course of events.) Long story short - given the above, don't bother.  And if the yahoo's on other forums/groups/websites spouting this kind of stuff have any cajones, they'd admit that they haven't ever tried it themselves, they're only repeating "what they read on the Internet".  HTH sumgai |
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Post by cynical1 on Feb 18, 2012 9:51:55 GMT -5
And if the yahoo's on other forums/groups/websites spouting this kind of stuff have any cajones, they'd admit that they haven't ever tried it themselves, they're only repeating "what they read on the Internet". Can I get an Amen, Brother SG... It's very easy to over think and over complicate just about anything with the bevy of information out there these days. Here's my take. The most important part of the shielding to me is that the adhesive is conductive. It will state that in the product description on most guitar parts\electronics websites. The gauge specified at such sites has been determined effective and efficient for shielding and installation. Your work has been done for you on that score, so just click and pay and go. Enough said. As far as desoldering and resoldering all of your connections... if it ain't broke don't fix it. To paraphrase CK, all the feldergarb about using unobtanium solder to achieve perfect tone is either marketing speak, or someone parroting something they read and half understood on the Web. Case in point: Over the summer I fixed up a trade-in late 70's Peavey T-60 the local guitar shop had taken in. The previous owner complained of excessive noise and had brush painted the body with some craft paints...it looked like something Katherine Hepburn might have painted in her later years... Unsellable is the word that comes to mind. I tested it and all the controls functioned normally and weren't scratchy of weak anywhere. The T-60 had a unique feature in that if the tones are dimed the blade humbuckers became single coils. They didn't become humbuckers again until the tone was dropped to around 7. I really didn't want to rewire this guitar... All I did was strip the hippy crap off, buffed the original clear and reconnected the bridge ground the last guy never resoldered. Now the guitar was perfectly functional and quiet again. The original solder connections on this guitar were 30+ years old at the time. They were still solid. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.I have a 1 pound roll of Kester .031 dia., Core Size-58 (CAT# 24-6337-8801) I bought a few years ago, and will probably be buried with, that does everything I want it to do, and I don't need a TIG welder to use it... Remember, you're wiring a guitar, not a defense satellite... So, unless you wash your hands 15 times a day, leave all the hype and hyperbole for someone else and just shield your guitar and play. Happy Trails Cynical One |
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Post by JohnH on Feb 18, 2012 17:32:27 GMT -5
The T-60 had a unique feature in that if the tones are dimed the blade humbuckers became single coils. They didn't become humbuckers again until the tone was dropped to around 7. That sounds like what I have on my LP, which I think Chris described as originally a Peavey system. I could believe it takes from 10 to 7 to get to Hb mode if it is a linear pot. I'm using 500k log pots so it happens by about 9 - but it a feature I really like. On the shielding, I don't think the thickness matters at all, even the thinnest metal foil is plenty conductive. If conductive paint is used instead, then the number of coats may be important. But I think that to be fully effective, shielding needs to be three things: (a) grounded, (b) all pieces connected (c - and this is the speculative bit) there should be full continuity at multiple paths passing around the back, up the sides, across the top etc, to allow induced currents to flow freely (and so disipate themselves) in all directions as loops enclosing the protected wiring inside. ie, I suspect that if you did (a) and (b), but the shielding was a series of strips only connected at their ends, it would not be as effective, even if all areas were covered. This, I think, is Faraday cage theory. But I think small holes in the continuous shielding would not matter. John |
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Post by reTrEaD on Feb 22, 2012 19:24:12 GMT -5
I was reading it might be a good idea to unsolder the guitar and replace the solder with silver solder. Remember, when reading anything on the interwebs, always double-check someone's claims for veracity. I guess that's what you're doing here, but you disguised it well! Silver soldering requires about 50% higher temperature to melt the stuff (depending on the actual alloy used). No standard electronics/electrical soldering iron or gun will ever get hot enough to melt that kind of solder. In fact, most often some sort of open flame is used. You two may be talking about different shiz. The new RoHS compliant replacements for Tin-Lead solder contain a small amount of Silver. Hence, it is often (incorrectly) referred to as "silver solder". As far as desoldering and resoldering all of your connections... if it ain't broke don't fix it. This. |
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Post by Teleblooz on Feb 27, 2012 14:49:08 GMT -5
The new RoHS compliant replacements for Tin-Lead solder contain a small amount of Silver. Hence, it is often (incorrectly) referred to as "silver solder". That would be Tin/Silver/Copper, usually containing 3-4% Silver and 0.5% Copper, referred to as SAC(for Sn/Ag/Cu)305 or SAC405. It has a melting temperature around 217 oC, vs. ~180 oC for 60/40 Tin/Tead. |
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Post by reTrEaD on Feb 28, 2012 10:04:23 GMT -5
Those temperatures are pretty close to what I've read, Teleblooz. SAC305 melts at 218 and solidifies at 217. 60/40 melts at 190 and solidifies at 183. I use a 45w heater (480C) so a few degrees don't mean squat anyway.  |
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