Shielding is Believing!

[stephen]

I'd posted earlier regarding my latest guitar 'assembly' project and how pleased I was as to how it finally came together. However, I discovered a very pleasant & unexpected surprise when I finally got around to having a proper play on it the other week. Was it the silky smoothness of that flame maple neck, the musicality of those Tonerider Vintage pickups..................no. The most striking feature was the total absence of single-coil noise!
For some reason, on the previous guitars I'd put together, I hadn't given much thought to shielding, so just accepted having to turn this way & that in front of my amp. in order to lessen the extraneous noise. With this Tele. though, I thought that I'd attempt a full body shielding job just to see what difference it made. As I was really serious about doing this correctly (!) I invested £1 in a roll of self-adhesive, copper slug deterrent tape and set to work.
It's devilishly thin & sticky stuff and applying it neatly to all the cavities including the circular jack socket one, isn't a particularly easy or enjoyable task and took me a good hour. As the cavities on the Tele. are 'linked' by internal wiring channels, it was a bit tricky joining up the circuit to ensure continuity, but I persevered and with a modicum of cunning, completed it. Thankfully, checking from one cavity to another with a multimeter confirmed that continuity had been achieved. Finally, I put a small screw into the side of the screened control cavity and attached a wire from that to the common ground connections on the back of the volume pot. Earlier, I'd already fixed a ground wire from a bridgeplate screw to the volume pot, so all that remained was to stick some kitchen foil onto the underside of the scratchplate. I'm not an expert in the area of guitar electrics and did question whether this final step was necessary, considering the cavity shielding, but completed it anyway.
Without exaggeration, I was really amazed at the results of doing this! I just play at home, sitting down about a foot away from my (overkill!) Vox AD120 Valvetronix. Neck position......quiet, bridge position...likewise. Just what was happening here? Then I turned up the guitar's volume to max. and still had no unwanted noise. Finally, I cranked up the amp's volume and the only additional noise was its self-generated gain.
This Tele, is the most 'silent' single-coil guitar I own and I can't really believe the difference £1 and an hour's fiddly work has made. I'm now considering working my way through the six other single-coil equipped guitars I have (including oddly, a Strat. with a metal scratchplate) and repeating this shielding exercise.
Stephen.

[Ryan]

Hi Stephen,
Congrats on you new guitar build
Putting my own guitar together is something i've always wanted to do. A company called 'Chord' do a self assemble strat type kit for round about £100 (i think it was). Wondered if you know whether these kits are any good? I think all the pick-ups come already soldered and attached to the scrathplate. If i did get 1 of these, and the pick-ups
were terrible, 1 are they easy to change if i wanted to?
2 would i have to change the vol and tone pots to get a decent sound, aswell as the pick-ups?
Cheers
Ryan

[noelford]

Ryan, I would have thought the main thing about building your own guitar would be selecting all the different components yourself to create something unique and all your own. If you just bought a kit and put it together it would be like buying a guitar from MFI or IKEA!

[ecca]

Come to the Hankies Ryan, I've got 3 self build strats, Roger Bayliss has got one, Roger Busby is always swapping bits.... even Marmaliser has made one.......

[Ryan]

Ryan, I would have thought the main thing about building your own guitar would be selecting all the different components yourself to create something unique and all your own. If you just bought a kit and put it together it would be like buying a guitar from MFI or IKEA!

Hi Noel,
I get you and your probably right
This is something i have never done, wouldn't know if i brought a strat neck from 1 place and a strat body from another, and vibrato system from another...if they would all fit nicely together, ie are they all in the same sizes and are the specs universal? If anything needed altering to fit, i have not the tools or the knowledge.
As for the electrics....it's completely alien to me, the only electrics i have ever changed is a jack plug socket. So i thought 1 of these kits would be a good place to start me off, to get a feel for where things go and how they go together, a cheap way to start, (but can still make it my own) and a little bit like an airfix model
Cheers
Ryan

[Ryan]

Come to the Hankies Ryan, I've got 3 self build strats, Roger Bayliss has got one, Roger Busby is always swapping bits.... even Marmaliser has made one.......

Hi ecca,
I should be coming next week, looking forward to it.
There was another company that used to do rickenbacker copy type self-build kits, i forget the name of it. There was a bloke on you tube who made 1 from start to finish, including paintwork. It looked and sounded good, from what you can tell on a computer, don't know if it's been taken off as i can't seem to find it now. I would have liked to have got 1 of these and painted it some obscure surfy guitar type colour

[GuitarPhil]

Ryan, I would have thought the main thing about building your own guitar would be selecting all the different components yourself to create something unique and all your own. If you just bought a kit and put it together it would be like buying a guitar from MFI or IKEA!

Hi Noel,
I get you and your probably right
This is something i have never done, wouldn't know if i brought a strat neck from 1 place and a strat body from another, and vibrato system from another...if they would all fit nicely together, ie are they all in the same sizes and are the specs universal? If anything needed altering to fit, i have not the tools or the knowledge.
As for the electrics....it's completely alien to me, the only electrics i have ever changed is a jack plug socket. So i thought 1 of these kits would be a good place to start me off, to get a feel for where things go and how they go together, a cheap way to start, (but can still make it my own) and a little bit like an airfix model
Cheers
Ryan

Ryan, I think a kit isn't a bad way to start you off. You can 'dip your toes' and learn a lot without it costing too much. You can always upgrade various bits later: better pickups and tuners, pots and tone caps maybe change the neck etc.

[Ryan]

Cheers for that Phil, that was the way i was looking at it
Ryan

[mojolomjl]

Hi Ryan,

My first attempt at guitar building was to buy a cheap strat copy and take it completely to bits and rebuilding it.
I think my first one was a Encore strat copy which I paid about £30.00 for then when I was finished playing with
I sold all the bits separately and actually made a small profit. I think this is a good way to start without costing
the earth.

Regards,

Maurice.

[stephen]

Hi Stephen,
Congrats on you new guitar build
Putting my own guitar together is something i've always wanted to do. A company called 'Chord' do a self assemble strat type kit for round about £100 (i think it was). Wondered if you know whether these kits are any good? I think all the pick-ups come already soldered and attached to the scrathplate. If i did get 1 of these, and the pick-ups
were terrible, 1 are they easy to change if i wanted to?
2 would i have to change the vol and tone pots to get a decent sound, aswell as the pick-ups?
Cheers
Ryan

Glad you like the guitar Ryan. Although Noel is right in a way about the main point of putting your own guitar together is for it to be about it being to YOUR specs. and not someone else's, in order to gain some experience and not be frightened off at the first attempt, putting together a guitar from a complete kit is a good starting point. My first bit of tinkering was the replica Hendrix Flying V for my middle son. Mind you, that mainly involved reproducing the psychedelic artwork and replacing the pickups on a ready made guitar. In point of fact, my first assembly job was a kit guitar. I think it cost £89 from Axes'rus about 5 years ago. Hope you agree after viewing the attached photos., that it doesn't look like an £89 home assembled job. There was room for a bit of personalisation as the supplied neck had just a 'paddle' shaped headstock. I very creatively (not!) gave mine Stratocaster contours. Just after I finished it, my eldest boy called around, tried it out and that's the last I've seen of it! He hasn't swapped the pickups out or anything............
I'd certainly recommend the complete kit way as the best place to start. It's relatively inexpensive (£100-£150 approx.) and if at the end of it, you come to the conclusion that guitar 'building' is not for you, you will not have wasted that much cash and whatever the outcome, you'll definitely have learned something along the way. The good thing about these kits for a beginner is that you're not going to have to perform any major surgery to get the parts to fit. With my latest guitar, I bought the body and neck from different sources, they were both pre-lacquered and required some very careful & time-consuming work to enable a satisfactory fit. I successfully achieved it in the end, but I've learnt lessons from it.
You're fortunate in having access to the Hankies club. Although I've never met him, Ecca seems to be a most helpful & knowledgeable chap, who I'm sure would help you get started as I've noted in the past that he's a fan and exponent of self-build/assembly guitars. He's something of a whizz with the old electronics as well, so definitely someone to go to for advice in that area if you get stuck. I envy you there as I'm rubbish at soldering and am just grateful that my efforts are hidden away from criticism beneath a scratchplate!
I hope that I've persuaded you to have a go at putting a guitar together yourself. Quite frankly, I now get as much (or more) pleasure from that aspect as actually playing.
Stephen.