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Quiet please! I’m playing my guitar! Simon Croft shows you how to make your electric guitar virtually noise-free for less than a tenner…
B
ack in the days when some of today’s most famous electric guitars were designed, a small combo was something for the whole band to share. At that time, radios,
jukeboxes and even records had a fair amount of hum on them, so no one was too bothered if the guitarist added a bit more. A little bit of electrical interference just wasn’t an issue. But that was before the days of high-gain distortion and noise-free digital recording. With that combination, you’ve only got to breathe on your strings and we’ll all know about it. And if you’re multi-tracking guitar parts, what started out as an irritating background buzz can soon be heard through every bar of your recording. You can hear exactly what I’m talking about in
the intro to the shielding video in the Video Vault section of the Playmusic website, where I also take you through the shielding process step-by-step. Single-coil pickups are more prone to noise than humbuckers, as you would imagine. But it’s still worth shielding any guitar that hasn’t already been treated because all unshielded circuits can introduce some interference from lighting rigs, computers and other electrical equipment. There are no specialist tools required for this
month’s Hot-Mod but you’ll need a pair of scissors and a small brush, along with some wallpaper (no really), plus some contact adhesive. You’ll also need a medium-sized Phillips
screwdriver (plus a large one if a fingerboard overhang means you’ll need to take the neck off); wire cutters; correct size spanner for the pot nuts; a lever to get the knobs off and a soldering iron. Please see the web site for more details.
Materials There are three types of shielding material that I generally use in combination:
~CONDUCTIVE PAINT (FIG. 1) This is easy to apply and enough for two coats
covering the average Strat control cavities shouldn’t cost you more than about a fiver. (The jars I’ve found are enough for two guitars.) I wouldn’t recommend using paint on scratch plates though because it will probably end up going through the screw holes and you’re unlikely to get as good a contact with the metal control parts as you will with metal sheet.
This is available with an adhesive backing, and although it’s thicker than the aluminium foil you’ll find in the kitchen drawer, you can still cut it with scissors. So it should be as easy to work with as the ‘sticky backed plastic’ that used to feature in projects on kids’ TV.
~COPPER FOIL (FIG. 2)
What no one seems to tell you though is that it’s razor sharp. So just as you’re sliding your thumb along the edge to work the foil into the control cavity, you realise that blood has become one of the materials you’re working with.
That said, some people swear by copper foil and use it for the whole shielding job – back of scratch plate, cavities, the lot.
~KITCHEN FOIL This is a cheap and effective shielding material but
Fig. 1
awkward to use in cavities, because it’s thin and rips easily – which then means it can short out your circuit. (This won’t do any damage but it usually means one or more pickups won’t work until you take the plate off and solve the problem – more on this later.) Also, you have to pre-glue either the foil or the cavity because there is no application for sticky backing when you’re trying to cook a turkey! If anyone tries to tell to tell you aluminium kitchen foil doesn’t work as a shield though, show them the back of a Strat scratch plate. Nine times out of ten, the shielding material is aluminium foil. Fender thinks it works and I can prove it does – providing you shield the whole cavity and plate to form a complete cage.
It is possible to use kitchen foil throughout to shield a guitar but when you work out how little
40 3pickup Fig. 2
money it’s saved you, it’s not really worth it. Equally, a solid aluminium sheet is arguably a better solution than foil but a pre-cut one is not easy to come by.
Wallpaper
Now I’ll tell you what the wallpaper can do for you. If you put your scratch plate on top and draw round it, then cut it out with scissors, you can cover the areas of the guitar body you don’t want to get paint on. You could do something similar with newspaper but wallpaper is a bit easier to use. If you’re working on a Strat, don’t make the mistake I made and forget about the jack cavity. Otherwise you’ll end up ripping a hole in the mask you’ve made, just like I did! You can fix the mask to the guitar body using masking tape. This is better than using parcel tape or gaffer because it will come off cleanly without marking the guitar. (Don’t worry too much if you get a little paint on the guitar – just let it dry then buff it out with T-Cut.)
Fig. 3
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