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Jazz Shielding Pictorial (Big Images Warning)

#944
Has anyone tried the water based version of the MG Super Shield? It's 843WB. I'd sure like to avoid as many toxic chemicals as possible (and avoid the flammable vapors as well).

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Reading the Safety Data Sheet, it seems like the water based stuff uses copper and a little silver instead of nickel. As of now, there's one and only one Amazon review (from a lab user) that says it's not as uniformly conductive. I don't know if that's accurate, as the conductivity values that MG lists are in the same ballpark (if I'm reading it right).
 
#945
I dont understand the need for all the soldering, I fabricate Conductive copper (w/Conductive acrylic adhesive backing) the adhesive is conductive so the only need to solder would be for ground wires, what kind widths and put ups do most people purchase? Plus when I change my pickup next week , I guess I will do this due to I have the materials in house.
 
#946
So I finally found (smalltown Canada) some Invalid Link Removed and bought it. I don't have a soldering iron etc and decided paint was the way I wanted to go.

Other than taking safety precautions as per the safety data sheet (outside or highly ventilated area, use gloves, glasses, respirator if inside) is there anything else I should be aware of?

Was planning on pulling the control plate and pickups on my passive Fender jazz (not completely, likely will leave wired) and putting painters tape around the edges. Was also thinking of using a little pipe cleaner to do the routing between control cavity and pickups, bridge.

Anywhere inside I should NOT paint?
Any other considerations?

Cheers
 
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#948
BassBeginer64 said:
I dont understand the need for all the soldering, I fabricate Conductive copper (w/Conductive acrylic adhesive backing) the adhesive is conductive so the only need to solder would be for ground wires, what kind widths and put ups do most people purchase? Plus when I change my pickup next week , I guess I will do this due to I have the materials in house.
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I haven't read through the entire thread, so I'm gonna ASSume this is about depending on the edges of the copper foil to be in contact with each other.

My reason for soldering the edges of copper foil together is because copper surfaces can corrode over time, which will interfere with a simple physical connection. Now, that may be crap, but after watching friends' beautiful copper roofs turn black over time, I'm concerned about that.
 
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#949
BassBeginer64 said:
I dont understand the need for all the soldering, I fabricate Conductive copper (w/Conductive acrylic adhesive backing) the adhesive is conductive so the only need to solder would be for ground wires, what kind widths and put ups do most people purchase? Plus when I change my pickup next week , I guess I will do this due to I have the materials in house.
Click to expand...

Where do you get conductive acrylic adhesive backing? This sounds like a great idea.
 
#950
I have a question about the "copper foil 'tunnel' through to pickup cavity shielding, tack-soldered to both cavity shields" noted in the first photograph of the OP:

Has anyone tried re-purposing the braided shield from a typical microphone or balanced line cable (shielded twisted pair) to achieve this same end?

iow, take a short chunk of mic cable, strip off all the insulation/jacket, then (carefully) remove all the filler and the two conductor wires, leaving you with a hollow cylindrical tube of braided shield...a pre-made "tunnel" if you will.

Would that work? Or is the n% effectiveness of a braided shield (whatever it is) lower than that of copper foil, and hence less desirable in this application?

Thanks.
 
#951
Bob_Ross said:
I have a question about the "copper foil 'tunnel' through to pickup cavity shielding, tack-soldered to both cavity shields" noted in the first photograph of the OP:

Has anyone tried re-purposing the braided shield from a typical microphone or balanced line cable (shielded twisted pair) to achieve this same end?

iow, take a short chunk of mic cable, strip off all the insulation/jacket, then (carefully) remove all the filler and the two conductor wires, leaving you with a hollow cylindrical tube of braided shield...a pre-made "tunnel" if you will.

Would that work? Or is the n% effectiveness of a braided shield (whatever it is) lower than that of copper foil, and hence less desirable in this application?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Is doing all that really going to be easier than making a copper foil tunnel? I didn't think it was that hard.
 
#952
Five String said:
Is doing all that really going to be easier than making a copper foil tunnel?
Click to expand...

Well, I personally have way more experience salvaging & re-purposing braided shields than I do installing copper foil -- I've done the former at least a half dozen times in my life, whereas I've never done the latter -- so the presumption is yes.

But if it turns out that installing copper foil is a walk in the park, then no, I'm not going to bother with the braided tube.
 
#953
Bob_Ross said:
Would that work? Or is the n% effectiveness of a braided shield (whatever it is) lower than that of copper foil, and hence less desirable in this application?
Click to expand...
No reason why it wouldn't work. I seriously doubt there would be a significant drop-off in effectiveness. Whether it's easier than doing a copper foil tunnel or not depends IMO on whether or not the copper foil has adhesive on it -- if it does, then it would be a major pain in the butt trying to get it to cooperate with you while you stuff it into the hole. If not, then the copper foil would be quite easy, and just require soldering at the ends.

If you're used to working with the braided stuff and have some lying around, no reason not to use it. I used some 1/4" copper tubing for that very reason, I had some lying around.
 
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#954
Bob_Ross said:
Well, I personally have way more experience salvaging & re-purposing braided shields than I do installing copper foil -- I've done the former at least a half dozen times in my life, whereas I've never done the latter -- so the presumption is yes.

But if it turns out that installing copper foil is a walk in the park, then no, I'm not going to bother with the braided tube.
Click to expand...

By all means! Now that you mention it, I will have to remember it next time I have to shield so I can give it a try!
 
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#955
This thread might be old, but it's a good one. After reading it I decided to improve the wiring on a Jazz bass that I made. The bass was noisy, but then again the bass player in my band has a Fender Jazz, and his was just as noisy. The noise was minimised when volume pots were in the same position (i.e. humbucking), and worst when I took my fingers off the strings, as you would expect. The wiring was standard Jazz bass style.

I did not want to do a complete overhaul as some of the pics here show, so I did a quick job -

First I shielded the control cavity with aluminium tape. There are some small gaps in the shielding, so not a perfect job. The control plate is metal, so the shield is earthed simply by overlapping a little on the rim of the cavity where it's in contact with the control plate.

Next I de-soldered the earth wires on the cases of the volume pots and ran new wires from the lugs on the pots straight to the earth on the jack (like the OP). The pots are in a metal plate, so I figured that soldering to the back of the pots would be an earth loop (The tone pot has a wire soldered on the back of it where the capacitor is earthed though).

I soldered all the earth wires from the pickups and bridge together and soldered them to a wire from the earth jack.

I did NOT shield the pickup cavities.

Result - the noise has dropped radically. There is still a little bit of noise when I take my fingers off the strings, but it is far less than before - if I was not actually listening for it I would not have noticed it. The bass is much, much quieter.

Unfortunately I don't know if it was the wiring change or the extra shielding (or both together) that did the trick since I did the job in one hit.

So the point from this is - with an hour's work you can make your jazz bass a lot quieter. Even an imperfect job, such as what I did, can yield pretty good results.
 
#956
Saxophone Phil said:
The pots are in a metal plate, so I figured that soldering to the back of the pots would be an earth loop (The tone pot has a wire soldered on the back of it where the capacitor is earthed though).
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It's all the same ground. There's not enough circuit there for there to be a ground loop. The advantage to having a ground lead soldered to the backs of the pots is that if the connection between the pots and the metal plate is ever compromised by corrosion or loosening nuts, you still have a solid ground. At this point though, if I were you, I wouldn't go back to change it until it needed it. Just be aware that if you have an increase in noise in the future, that will be one of the places to look.

Saxophone Phil said:
Result - the noise has dropped radically. There is still a little bit of noise when I take my fingers off the strings, but it is far less than before - if I was not actually listening for it I would not have noticed it. The bass is much, much quieter.

Unfortunately I don't know if it was the wiring change or the extra shielding (or both together) that did the trick since I did the job in one hit.

So the point from this is - with an hour's work you can make your jazz bass a lot quieter. Even an imperfect job, such as what I did, can yield pretty good results.
Click to expand...
Good job! The result is what's important.
 
#957
I had been experiencing some buzzing on my P-bass, especially after switching to rotosound coated strings. Took the plunge and shielded the whole inside and back of pick guard with copper foil, checked the existing grounds, and grounded the pickup pole pieces too.

There's an improvement, but still getting a buzz. The buzz totally goes away if I touch one of the knobs. What am I missing here?

Thanks!
 
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#959
Hi guys, great post so why to start new. I have Ibby SR with cavity at the back. Of course, when tone is open (0.1 uF, might change it to 0.2 uF later) it hums like a nest of bees when not touching strings or metal parts, especially in serial mode. It annoys me a lot. If I touch strings, all is nice and silent. I use also ser/par switch, not sure if it change something for me. And kinda using Ground star at tone pot, i think. Check the wiring in the pic. Done it by that. Pups themselves should be noiseless, two wire, seems sealed, i like their sound, but they are no name.

I wanna do copper mode, tape at home, but wanna ask about few things. Do I need to cover pickups place too and lead the grounding wire (can it be in rubber coating, right - i like to see colours) from both place to main solder point in cavity copper wall. Can I have a ground solder blob at cavity and connect cavity grounding wires to ground star on the opposite side, or would it be better if I would connect whole wire directly to ground star, or should I get rid of ground star on pot and solder it on cavity blob. I hope I am not confusing you lot now... Or there is same result (seems to me). Thx
 

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#960
Lyle Caldwell said:
There have been a lot of questions about shielding and star grounding, so maybe this will help someone.

Here's the schematic I came up with to do this with:

View attachment 2309237

First, I took everything out of the cavities and cleaned them to get rid of dust and manufacturing residue. Then I applied copper foil with adhesive backing to the control and pickup cavities. I tack soldered the seams and made sure each piece of foil read 0 ohms potential with every other piece. Then I made copper tubes (wrapped the foil around a screwdriver shaft of the right diameter) that run from cavity to cavity, tack soldered on each end. I also screwed a ground lug to the wall of the control cavity through the copper shielding. See photo:

View attachment 2309238

Here's the shielding inside the pickup cavities:

View attachment 2309239

Here's a closeup of the ground lug:

View attachment 2309240

Here's the actual wiring on the pots (reference the schematic above):

View attachment 2309241

And here is the other side of the wiring:

View attachment 2309242

Here's the top side of the control plate:

View attachment 2309243

Now, while there is still single coil hum (reduced, but still there), there is no noise at all when the blend knob is centered, and the bass is quiet even when I'm not touching any grounded metal components (strings, bridge, controls, etc). Soon I will put Sadowsky hum cancelling pickups in and the bass will be dead quiet. I also will be installing a S-1 switch in place of the current volume pot to allow series/parallel switching. I'll post that stuff when I'm done.

But for now, I'm pleased. The bass is much quieter, and the control layout (blend, master volume, master tone) is much easier to work with than the stock 62 RI stacked volumes and tones.

The pickups have much more clarity now without being bright (which I can't explain, really, unless it's the cumulative effects of a lot of little changes, like how the pickups are loaded together in the stock configuration and how the absence of RFI and other environmental noise leads to clarity- who knows?).

The tone control is now also much more musically useful (I changed from the stock cheap ceramic caps to a Sprague 715P .047uf cap- the same value that was on the stock neck tone pot, but this cap, or maybe this schematic, allows for more of the tone to be rolled off if needed, and the "sweep" of the tone pot has a lot more "sweet spots").

Please note that I didn't do the actual soldering with the bass exposed like that. I had towels and scraps of old T shirt to protect the bass surfaces when the soldering gun was out.
Click to expand...
 

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