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Originally Posted by slapstick13  Im new to doing any kind of work on my bass so this may be a 'dumb' question. I just went to replace my pickguard with a new one and noticed the previous pickguard has shielding on the back of it. Is this totally necessary? If so, can I remove the shielding and glue it onto the new pickguard? Or buy some shielding? Thanks in advance |
If the guard has thick enough copper foil on it you could TRY to remove it. Don't be surprised if you can't. If it's aluminum forget it.
Best is to just buy some of that copper shielding tape from Stewart-Macdonald. Its a little over ten bucks for a 2" wide roll with conductive adhesive. Just put it on the back of the pickguard to cover all the cavities [The old pickguard coverage probably is a good model] and then go around the guard with a sharp knife or single edged razor blade to trim the copper to match the guard. Trim the pickup hole too.
Be sure that the copper on the pickguard is grounded! Usually you need to have the copper on the guard around one of the screw holes so it presses on some copper foil coming from the cavity shielding that surrounds the same screw. The idea is that when you screw the guard down the copper on the guard mashes into the copper from the cavity from the pressure of the mounting screw and makes a good contact.
You really don't need copper foil all over the pickguard although sometimes it's easier to do that. You really just need a "lid" over the shielded cavity of the bass. It doesn't need to extend much beyond that, though it wouldn't hurt anything if it does.
