The Joy (and PAIN) of Shielding Your Electric Guitar

Greetings, folks... Here's my first post on electric guitar repairs and/or modifications. There will most likely be more in the future, because ALL of my guitars need some kind of work done on them!

I'm a big fan of Fender electric guitars. The Fender company pioneered a sound for their instruments that has been imitated by countless guitar manufacturers for over 60 years. The major ingredient to this original sound is in their single-coil pickups. For those not familiar with how electric guitars work, a pickup basically serves as a microphone for the strings, to amplify the sound. The single-coil pickup itself has been around long before Fender (since the 1920's!), but Fender's own patented design definitely has a sound unlike any other.

But as any Fender guitar player knows, the major drawback in that pickup's design is that it can be noisy, especially with your amp set at higher volumes. The most common technical term for this noise is "60-cycle hum". It can be best described verbally as a constant buzzing sound. Without going into more technical details (because I can't, haha), basically the pickup acts as an antenna, picking up interference from other electrical appliances or equipment in the general area of where the guitar is located. This interference is passed though the guitar's wiring, out to the amplifier's speaker as noise, or "hum". A combination of those contributing factors can increase the amount of hum, to the point that the guitar may be considered unusable, especially when performing live on stage. And since so many things around us are "electrified", it makes this problem all the harder to avoid!

Because this hum is inherent in the design of the pickup, it unfortunately can't be eliminated completely. Many have worked for years on methods to reduce the offending noise. In fact, elimination of the hum is the main function the design of the double-coiled "humbucker" pickup serves, and it does a very good job for that purpose. You typically don't get any of the described hum from a well-built humbucker pickup, as the two coils work together to cancel out, or "buck", the hum. However, the humbucker pickup sounds somewhat different than a single-coil, which is why many players who love and prefer the "Fender sound" suffer through that drawback of extra hum and noise, doing what they can to work around it.

Through much online research, I've found many articles reporting that electrical shielding can significantly reduce unwanted noise, including the single-coil pickup's forever-present hum. Many sites have documented instructions on how to do this. It's a fairly involved process. You may wonder, "if it helps reduce the hum, why don't the manufacturers do the shielding at the factory during the building process"? Actually many factories do, to a degree, but the shielding I've seen inside my own guitars seems to be minimal at best. If they did better, more thorough jobs in their shielding, I'm sure due to the amount of labor involved, it would drive up the prices of the guitars considerably.

I'd been wanting to give the shielding jobs a go on my own guitars for a while now, and last weekend I finally got down to business. I have a few electric guitars, but my current "main" guitar is a Fender Telecaster. I've had it since 2007, and I decided that it would be the one to start with. After removing the pickguard and control panel, I could see that it would probably benefit from a shielding job since I'm always struggling with the hum problem, especially when recording with it.

It's "business time"

I purchased what I needed for the job from an online store I recently discovered called Stewart-MacDonald, or "StewMac", a supply store for luthiers (makers of stringed instruments). They seem to have *literally* everything a do-it-yourselfer would want in tools and supplies. Some of the stuff they sell can be difficult or impossible to find at a Guitar Center, or similar music store. I was on the site for hours, finding things I could use, stuff I don't necessarily need, but want anyway... I had to get off that site quick, before I gave them ALL my money... They also had a great article with included pictures on how to perform the shielding job.

Shielding Kit from Stew-Mac

The main supply needed for this job consisted of copper shielding tape. Copper is reputed to be best for electrical shielding. The tape is applied to the cavities that are routed into the guitar's body. It is also applied to the underside of the pickguard (that also holds the front pickup), which is screwed into the body. Basically, if all the shielded parts are connected (touching) physically, it creates a ground connection when your guitar is plugged into your amp, thus creating your shield. The article also explained that if you put a small amount of the tape on the outer edge of the cavities, it will come in contact with the tape on the pickguard. Sounds easy enough to do, right? Well I suppose so, if you've done it before... But since this was my first attempt, it took pretty much ALL day! Mainly, because I didn't want to screw anything up - this guitar was NOT cheap...

Opening up the Tele

Copper tape applied to the cavities

Copper tape applied to pickguard

Anyway, the "pain" part of this job came during the application of the copper tape to the pickguard. In my reading, I was warned that the edges of copper tape can be VERY sharp, and to be careful. And I *was* pretty careful, until I ran my thumb along the edge of the pickguard which, itself, is fairly dull plastic. But I forgot that the edge of the tape was also running along that very same edge of the pickguard, when I proceeded to slice a nice clean cut into the meat of my thumb... OUCH!!! And nearly a week to the day after putting a nice slice into my other thumb, in the kitchen... Not a good week for thumbs, I suppose. OK, lesson learned...  I cleaned myself up, and continued with the job.

Flesh vs. Copper Tape - Guess who wins? (photo taken 1 week later)

Well, after putting the guitar all back together, plugging it in and testing it out, I wish I could now describe to you the "joy" part of the process. However, it's really hard for me to tell if there's much of an improvement. I think there may be *some* reduction in hum, but not nearly as much as I'd hoped. If I turn around to a certain position while holding the guitar, it eliminates almost ALL the hum, but that was pretty much always my method of dealing with the hum problem, before the shielding job. To my ears, it does seem a bit quieter in that certain position than before, but that may be wishful thinking, after all that work... Perhaps the copper tape is not connecting somewhere, who knows? All I know is that I'm now burned out on it, so I'm not gonna be taking that guitar apart again any time in the near future, haha...

I will say though, that it was definitely a learning experience for me. As I mentioned, I have other guitars, all of which could probably benefit from these shielding jobs, so perhaps I'll have better success with them, now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing. Until next time...