Hi Guys, Here's the situation- I recently shielded my Mexican Jazz Bass Deluxe circa 2009. The shielding job went great thanks to MikeCD's advice at this link http://www.talkbass.com/threads/american-deluxe-jazz-pbass-ground-hum-noise-problem-solved.802153/ BUT... there's always a but... I want to ground the pole pieces just to finish the job. I know how to do this, but there are large bar magnets on the bottom of the pickup so I cant get to the pole pieces to lay copper tape and connect to the ground. The magnets seem to be glued on pretty well. Does anyone out there in TB land have any ideas on how to remove the magnets without damaging the pickup or the magnet? At the moment I'm failing with acetone but the room smells good. Thanks.
The usual fix is to just coat the tops of the poles with clear nailpolish, as an insulator. Have you tried doing that first?
Brilliant! I really likes the idea of grounding those pole pieces properly- but that has proved harder than I thought. I'm off to raid my daughter's nail polish collection. Thanks for the simple solution. I have a really big gig for me in a fortnight and I really didn't want to play dum dum dum buuuzzzzzzzzzzz! Thanks Line6man
+1 Certain Precision pickups are notorious for this as well. I take the covers off, apply a couple coats of clear nail polish and it always does the trick. Oddly enough, the Fralin single coils in my jazz don't have this issue. Tip: make sure you shake the nail polish vigorously before application. It will make it thinner and easier to apply. My wife taught me that
Not all pole pieces are conductive. The key property is magnetic permeability. It just so happens that AlNiCo pole pieces are almost always electrically conductive, but ceramic magnet-based pickups don't need to have conductive pole pieces. I would test that first before bothering with insulating them.
The OP states: "I want to ground the pole pieces just to finish the job." That doesn't necessarily imply that there was a noise issue from the pole pieces; it could just mean that this was on the list for "thoroughness" of the shielding job. I realize what I'm pointing out is obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.