I have some pickups in my strat that are sweet, but have some noise/hum. The tone is real nice, though. My pickguard is copper shielded and everything is grounded properly. Should I invest in Shielding paint and cover the inside cavity underneath the pickguard? Does this really work, or will this be a waste of time and money? Does this alter tone? Anyone ever done this? Any comments, tips and experiences are appreciated. Thanks, Ken
A friend of mine just did this to his Tele and, yes, it helped. Just be sure the bridge, pickguard and both pickup cavities are all star-grounded to the same point or you'll creat a feedback loop that will make it worse, not better. If the tone changed, I can't say I noticed, but it was a guitar he'd just finished building, and we'd only played it for a day or two before he decided he needed to go back in and reduce the hum. He used a can of Stew-Mac.
you can also try copper tape but it's a bit more of a pain to apply it inside the guitar's cavities (pickups, controls, jack). But after you do it along with the star grounding, you'll have a new guitar. I managed to quiet a Texas special equipped strat like this... You can also shield your pickups with the copper tape, but chances are you lose some highs. (not 100% sure) In my case with the TS's, i had quite a lot of highs to get rid of, so it worked fine... You can find all the shielding stuff info in the link given above by another poster. (guitarnuts.com) It really works. What i didn't like about the guitarnuts shielding was the addition of a cap to the grounding route. I believe this made my TexasSpecials sound thin and weak. When i removed it, i got back the lost "body" in my sound. I don't know if it was just "placebo" or it really made a difference. Don't forget to check your cables. Cheapo's have a tendancy to collect RF noise. Good luck.
