with one hand while tearing the surplus off with your other hand.
Fig. 4
Before you start painting, you can put a strip of adhesive copper foil into the cavity and onto an area of the front of the body that will be under the scratch plate. This will give you a point of contact between the shielding on the plate and the body but to be doubly certain, I like to solder an extra earth wire to one of the posts and screw it into the wall of the cavity. You’ll need to pick somewhere that won’t hit any of the pots or the switch though. Now you can start painting the cavity and the jack socket recess with the conductive paint. You don’t have to be hyper-careful about this but it is important that you cover all of the cavity walls. I’d also recommend putting on a second coat once the first one is dry.
While your guitar is drying, you can shield the scratch plate with foil. The easiest way seems to be to cover the back of the plates with contact adhesive, being careful not to get any on the front where it will spoil the finish. If you can manage to stay a couple of millimetres from the edges, so much the better; it’s not needed for the shield but also you don’t want any foil visible when you put the guitar back together – and you don’t really want glue going down the screw holes. Once you’ve glued up the plate, all you need to do is flip it over onto the foil, assuming you put the plate upside down on the foil for the gluing process. (Fig. 4) I don’t know if it makes any difference which side of the foil you use but it makes sense to me to put the rougher side to the adhesive and use the shiny side as the electrical contact. So that’s what I do.
Close to the edge
Strictly speaking, contact adhesive should coat both surfaces, wait 15 minutes then push the two surfaces together for an almost instant bond. As it’s almost impossible to coat aluminium foil without ripping it, only coating one surface but it’s still probably best to leave it to dry overnight after you’ve brought the two surfaces together. Once the glue is definitely dry, it’s time to get rid of the excess foil. You can get most of it off by holding the plate, foil down, against a work surface
Fig. 5
After that, you’ll need to trim any foil close to the edge of the scratch plate, pickup routings etc. I usually scrape it off with an emery board – the kind used for filing nails. It leaves a horrible looking, messy edge to the foil but that won’t be seen once the plate is back on and it makes no difference to the effectiveness of the shield. What can make a difference is when any flakes of aluminium foil get into the control cavity or on the electrics of your guitar. That’s because the foil is highly conductive and can cause a short. In fact, the entire of the inside of your guitar is now highly conductive, so here’s a few tips for avoiding short circuit: 1.
Put a little bit of electrical or gaffer tape on
the end of the jack socket before you put it back in.
2. If you’ve made a ‘Partsocaster’ and the 3.
body is shallower than a standard Fender, there’s a chance the selector switch will short against the body. Again, you can fix this with a bit of insulating tape. If the treble pickup only is dead, the back
of the pickup is probably too close to the back of the cavity and it’s shorting there. Yep, tape time again.
The short stick Even if none of these problems crops up – or looks as if it will – I’d highly recommend putting only say,
YOUR ON-LINE LIBRARY
This is only month one and we’ve already put a reference library on-line for you. Go to www.
playmusicpickup.co.uk and you can download these illustrated mini-books for free today: • THE HOT-MOD PICKUP PRIMER Learn how the magnetic pickups on guitars and basses work, the key pioneers in the history of the pickup and the factors that make one pickup sound different to another. • THE HOT-MOD SETUP PRIMER What to look for when ‘sighting’ a guitar neck and what you need to do to make any guitar play faster and sound more in tune than it did before.
• THE HOT-MOD GUITAR TOOL GUIDE We never want you to start a mod without knowing exactly how to finish it, so this is our comprehensive guide to tools and materials, with pictures.
to indicate whether or not they are working. Then put in the remaining screws in and retest. Sod’s Law says that if there’s going to be a short at this point, it’ll be just as the last screw goes in! (Fig. 6) Now, you can put the neck back on – if you had to take it off – restring and enjoy your quiet
All unshielded circuits can introduce interference from lighting rigs, computers and other electrical equipment…
three screws into the plate before you solder on the jack socket. (Fig. 5) That way, you won’t have to take every screw back out again if things don’t work out. Before you do that, you might like to sort yourself out with an earth wire from the pots to the inside of the cavity, if you haven’t already done so. I normally do a couple of things to help me
re-solder the jack. First, I cut a slit and a hole in a piece of card and slip it under the socket plate to protect the body. Then I put one of the screws into the upside-down metal socket plate, to hold the socket while I solder. Once I’ve done, I can take the screw out and simply slip the card out. (Fig. 3) Once you’ve finished soldering, this is a good point to test the electrics by plugging into an amp and tapping each pickup with a small screwdriver
new guitar. Hopefully, you’ll agree it was worth every penny and every minute you spent doing the job.
Next Month: The Liberator! Seymour Duncan’s Liberator is an integrated volume pot and screw-clamp connector system that allows you to connect a pickup without soldering. Using the Liberator pickup change system and a guitar body with an extra-large route, I’m putting together a guitar than can have any pickups fitted in seconds! See and hear how that works out next month. PM
Meanwhile: be sure to go on line and check out my three Hot-Mod Strat tone shootout.
Fig. 6 pickup441
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