Ever apply shielding to your pickup coils?

Rocinante_x1 · #1 10-07-2007, 06:59 PM

Well Dont. It's a bad idea. Unless, of course, you want to totally mess up your pickups. I shielded my jazz, and wrapped shielding around my pickup coils, as suggested by my luthier. After the shielding was complete, i put everything back together, plugged it in, NO sound. So i took my pickguard back off, checked my solder joints, and they were all fine. Then, I removed the pickup covers. Everything looked to be fine. Then I thought, "Maybe something's wrong with the coils..." Sure enough, as i was taking the shielding tape off, strands of copper string were coming off with it. The entire spool was loose. This makes me angry, because now, i have to drop some cash on new pickups, and i wasn't planning on changing my pickups any time soon. Sure, I was thinking '' Maybe in the future, sometime, I'll get new pickups.'', but not too soon. This is a lesson learned to me. ... On the bright side, At least I get a new sound from my bass when i get new pickups....

luknfur · #2 10-08-2007, 06:10 PM

Applying tape (or adhesive backed foil) directly to bare coils is like someone wrapping your head with duct tape. It's not something you'd want to pull off once in place. The adhesive on the foil I've got is some black stuff and pretty thick so I would think that stuff could be applied directly to winding's without shorting the coil as long as it wasn't pressed into the windings with anything.

I haven't done it but if I were to the approach I'd take would be something like wrapping the coils with a non-adhesive teflon tape (like used in plumbing) so that it overlaps, tape it with a piece of scotch tape to hold it in place, then wrap the shielding over that. That way windings are protected from both shorts to the foil and the foil adhesive and the shielding could be removed without destroying the pup.

Alan U · #3 10-10-2007, 05:10 PM

Hello and excuse me, I'm not being critical of you, but why did you feel the need to do this?

Surely shielding the cavities is sufficient?

A9X · #4 10-10-2007, 05:29 PM

If you'd wrapped the pickups with some electrical tape or teflon plumbers tape, before wrapping them with the shielding tape you'd have had no issue.

luknfur · #5 10-10-2007, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan U

Hello and excuse me, I'm not being critical of you, but why did you feel the need to do this?

Surely shielding the cavities is sufficient?

It's basically a shortcut for shielding the pup housing, which I've only done once to a J, not a fun time, and nothing I would do again - I'd shield the pup.

The tech aspect I don't know about but the Audere site has a good pic tute on it so I'm guessing at least (brain fart - can't remember his name) thinks it's of some value in addition to shielding the cavity - or perhaps in lieu of it. I'm guessing there will be feedback on that forthcoming.

Dave Meadows.

GlennW · #6 10-10-2007, 07:41 PM

This was wrapped around the coil of a 60's Hagstrom bass pickup and grounded to the baseplate. I can't remember if there was tape around the coil for insulation, but there probably was.

luknfur · #7 10-11-2007, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlennW

This was wrapped around the coil of a 60's Hagstrom bass pickup and grounded to the baseplate. I can't remember if there was tape around the coil for insulation, but there probably was.

That doesn't look like adhesive-backed shielding. Is it? Also doesn't look very old - hasn't darkened up at all from the pic.

GlennW · #8 10-17-2007, 04:00 PM

Just saw your question:

No, no adhesive. It's just a metal strip, brass or copper I'd guess.

It's another ebay jewel, so I don't really know anything about its history. The black covers on those pickups can't be removed without breaking them AFAIK. This one wasn't unmolested, but I don't know if anything was done on the inside.

I bought it dead and was able to fix it. It needed some of the outside of the coil removed because there was a break in the wire, not very far inside. It still reads 12.82K, pretty stout for a single coil. It's the second version which has the squared off corners...that change was made around '65, the earlier ones being the same with rounded (like a Strat) ends. I think they used that pickup until the early or mid '70s.