help with partsocaster

[madsr]

this is my first try at a "parts-o-caster". The body is from a squier '51, the neck is usacg, installed a fender hardtail bridge and drilled thru the body for the ferrules. bridge pickup is a fralin p-92, neck is a van zandt vintage strat. cavities shielded as well as the back of the guard. I am getting static noise from the neck pickup when my fingers touch the pickguard(which I tend to do a lot when I am picking).. wondering what causes this and how to fix it.. maybe the soldering needs to be redone? Any insight would be appreciated.. Thanks

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q213/madsr/DSCF0001.jpg
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q213/madsr/DSCF0002.jpg

[Pete Galati]

Good looking guitar.

The pickguard material, must be vinyl, is probably generating static. You could cover the back of the pickguard with shielding tape. I think I've heard of a lot of people doing that to solve the problem. I've also heard of people rubbing the pickguard with drier sheets to get rid of static.

[madsr]

Thanks for the compliment..
I shielded the guard with heavy duty aluminum foil.. maybe I should try another type of shielding material?

[Pete Galati]

Thanks for the compliment..
I shielded the guard with heavy duty aluminum foil.. maybe I should try another type of shielding material?

I would think that'd do the trick. I can't see any advantage foil would have.

[woof*]

use copper sheet on the back of the pickguard..then solder a wire(use cloth stranded pickup wire stripped of its cloth, and flatten out the ends) to the copper sheet near that control plate and solder the other end of the wire to the back of one of your pots. this has always solved the pickguard static problem for me. without the ground, the shielding alone usually doesnt help with that kind of static.
best
rand

[madsr]

the dryer sheet worked great.. I'm going to try the copper sheet/groundwire thing also as a permanent solution..
thanks for the help!

[Eric Pykala]

If you shield it, you must also ground it for it to have any effect.-Eric

[HarryJ]

If your pickguard shield touches the pots and switch as it should, wouldn't that ground it? It should. Use a meter to check it out.
Definitely run a wire from the ground to the control cavity shield. Some also just have a piece of overlap. I prefer the wire with a terminal screwed in.
I have used copper as well as aluminum in the old days, both work. A major benefit to copper is that you can solder to it, and 3M makes a great foil tape.

HJ

[Timbre Wolf]

I know this won't help with the original poster, but for those still in the build stage... Bakelite pickguards do not have the static electricity issue that vinyl ones do. When I changed my Warmoth Strat guard to a Callaham Bakelite one, the crackle went away, much to my delight.

- Thom

[Tinman]

I have a guitar that used to have this same problem in a big way. In my case, I discovered that the adhesive on some shielding tape is not conductive, so what I ended up doing is applying the shielding tape to the surface of the guitar and running a strip down into a shielded pickup cavity. I used a dot of solder to make that connection. Then, of course, the shielded cavities are grounded. The pickguard sits right on top of the copper surface. I tried this method after I tried applying the shielding to the underside of the pickguard without any improvement. Now, I don't get the static effect even on the coldest, driest midwestern winter days.

[madsr]

the copper w/ground worked perfectly.. thanks all!