Cavity shielding

[Guest MoJo]

Who's done it and does it make a lot of difference. I'm thinking of one venue in particular where my bass always picks up interference from the dimmers.

[KiOgon]

If your bass is not shielded a decent job of shielding will definitely cure it.

[Geek99]

Line the cavities with copper foil (with conductive adhesive ) then link them to earth

A big sheet costs £4 on ebay

Edited June 30, 2013 by Geek99

[Billy Apple]

[quote name='KiOgon' timestamp='1372536318' post='2127034']
If your bass is not shielded a decent job of shielding will definitely cure it.
[/quote]

+1. I have one shielded bass (which kiOgon built the circuit for) and is noiseless under 2 halogens on dimmers.. All the rest.. Hmmmmmm

[stingrayPete1977]

I had to do my electric upright, few quid on ebay and it is silent now, never had much trouble being a Stingray guy but the little church we have started using for practice has got strip lights that my classic ray did not like.

[Green Alsatian]

I've shielded many a cheap bass and it's a great help in eliminating noise. To save extra soldering (when linking cavities/strips of copper), buy copper tape/sheet with conductive adhesive.

Make sure that you connect each cavity that you've shielded (eg. 2 pickup cavities and the control cavity) with wire or it won't work. If you're not too confident with soldering, an easy way to do this is to get your piece of wire linking the cavities, bare 1cm of it at each end and then use another piece of copper tape to fix it to the shielding, making sure that it's fitted as snugly to the bare wire and the shielding beneath. (a stylus is good for getting a snug fit around the bare wire).

If you have a multimeter, you can check your shielding by setting it to 'Continuity Test' and then placing the probes in each cavity. If it reads '0', then you're sorted. If it reads '1', then you have a break in the shielding. Leave no gaps!

[essexbasscat]

Graphite paint is also available from e -bay - easier to apply than copper shielding

[paul_5]

I bought some aluminium tape from Aldi a few months back - cheap as chips and works a treat!

[Stacker]

[quote name='essexbasscat' timestamp='1372586735' post='2127376']
Graphite paint is also available from e -bay - easier to apply than copper shielding
[/quote]
Indeed. The Vintage range of guitars use this. Foil works, yeh, but too much faff!

[ead]

I think copper (or similar) foil works the best, but it does take a bit more effort. If all the gubbins are out anyway then it's really pretty easy.

[Guest MoJo]

Just spent an hour doing my P bass only to discover that the foil I bought has non conductive adhesive DOH

[Woodinblack]

I have done it with copper foil on a very noisy guitar and it cured it completely. Also didn't find it that hard to do

[Count Bassy]

[quote name='MoJo' timestamp='1372606272' post='2127610']
Just spent an hour doing my P bass only to discover that the foil I bought has non conductive adhesive DOH
[/quote]
Run some solder over the joints. Since the foil is so thin it heats up quickly, so the soldering is quick and easy.

Also just to emphasise the thing about not leaving gaps. It wasn't too critical when you only had to worry about 50Hz hum, but with so many high frequency noise sources these days it's much more critical.

Edited June 30, 2013 by Count Bassy

[Guest MoJo]

Took the pickguard off to look at the job in hand and just thought I'd check it with the multimeter first and to my surprise, it's all fine, continuity throughout. Result

[Geek99]

You need to check resistance also - less ohms is better. Check from bridge to earth pin, from pickup shielding to pin

[geoffbyrne]

When Howard (Bass Doc) was working on my BB415, he put on (Unsolicited - Thanks Howard) a couple of coats of conductive paint (mid grey), conected up the earth etc and it's perfectly quiet.

G.

Edited June 30, 2013 by geoffbyrne

[KingBollock]

For linking the control cavity with the pickup cavities I used the braid shielding from Gibson wire. Just removed it from its original wire and fed the wires going from cavity to cavity through it, splayed the ends and stuck them down with the aluminium tape I used to shield the cavities.


This stuff.