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Conductive copper foil from the place that shall not be named...
- Thread starter Guiseppe
- Start date
LoveThatBass
Supporting Member
LoveThatBass
Supporting Member
Good info to know! Copper shielding has worked well for me except in the instance where I use Aguilar Noiseless Jazz pickups where it robs the tone making it sound dull. So far that is the only pickup affected but graphite shielding paint has no affect on tone using them. I believe it might be because the minimum resistance is 100-300 ohms (only a guess). I found this out in 2017 with my Fender American Professional Jazz. It has graphite shielding paint and I thought it would be best to reduce the shielding resistance to near zero but when I did it dulled the tone so I took the copper shielding off and wa la tone returned. Where it doesn’t affect tone I like copper shielding tape with electrically conductive adhesive. The one time I used graphite shielding paint I used the recommended 3 coats for maximum effectiveness. That dropped it to about 100 ohms resistance from one end of the control cavity to the end of the pickup cavity/s.
Maybe you could tell me how easy Nickel paint goes on and how many coats and how resistant to removal it is.
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I use SuperShield Nickel shielding paint from MG Labs. I switched over to using it on all the basses I build in 2007. From the mid-90's to 2006 I was using copper tape. The SuperShield is so much less labor to apply, completely reliable and provides shielding equal to or better than copper.
I normally spray on 2 coats 10 minutes apart, and it's fully cured in an hour. This results in a metal coating thickness of about 6 mils. In comparison, copper tape is only 1 mil thick. Resistance is less than 1 ohm between any two points. About the same as copper.
Up to 2021, I was buying the SuperShield in the spray cans. It was simple and worked well, but I had some trouble with the nozzles clogging and wasting expensive paint. In 2021, I started buying SuperShield in liquid form in a can, and I worked out how to spray it using a cheap HVLP spray gun. Works great, more efficient use of the paint.
Difficulty in removal? Why would you ever want to? But okay. SuperShield Nickel is basically a clear acrylic paint with fine nickel particles floating in it. Very low solvent content, hardly any fumes. You should wear a dust mask when spraying it, just to keep the nickel out of your nostrils. If you really must remove it from a cavity, it would be about like two coats of acrylic spray paint. Scrape it and sand it.
Here's an older thread all about mixing your own shielding paint. I've linked to a post where I show my whole process of spraying SuperShield Nickel in the control cavity of one of my basses.
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/diy-conductive-shielding-paint-recipe.1228461/page-3#post-24864262
Turnaround
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I buy my MG SuperShield in a can and brush it on. Goes on easily and no overspray. Brush work is not as pretty as a spray job, but who's looking inside the cavity anyway?
US $50.18 for tiny bottle from Amazon. Ouch!
Hope it'll at least do one bass.
Last week it was $37 something. Thought *that* was expensive. Glad I ordered then.
Def easier to use than copper tape...
Hope it'll at least do one bass.
Last week it was $37 something. Thought *that* was expensive. Glad I ordered then.
Def easier to use than copper tape...
Nothing more embarrassing than ugly paint when they do that random cavity search.
LoveThatBass
Supporting Member
I wouldn’t. I found the graphite paint easy to scrape off. I had thought about coating it with poly or laquer when finished but never did.
Thank you for the information. I would probably prefer to brush the Nickel Shielding paint on. I do or lets say haven’t had much luck with spray guns plus would have to do a lot of masking off before spraying.
Yeah, the old graphite shielding paint that some places still sell is awful. I gave up on that stuff 25 years ago. It's what gives shielding paint such a bad rap. If you brush it on thick, the graphite powder rises up to the surface as it dries. Then it easily brushes or falls off. And you have conductive dust tumbling around in the control cavity, waiting to short something out. Graphite shielding paint has its uses in the electronics industry, but it should never be used in a bass.
The Nickel shielding paint doesn't do that. After the paint is dry, the nickel particles are all bonded and contained. You won't get any on your finger if you wipe it.
I have done this a couple times, too.
Also did one instrument's cavities with the restaurant quality, thick aluminum foil and spray adhesive. Worked great.
One other tech note:
Whether you are shielding with copper tape or conductive paint, either one will bond down better to a painted, sanded surface than they will to bare wood. You should paint and lightly sand the insides of your control and pickup cavities before applying the shielding. This is also a good idea to seal up the wood inside there against absorbing moisture. There's a lot of open end grain on the walls of those cavities.
I apply the shielding paint about 2/3 of the way through the painting process. I spray all the base coats, including inside the control and pickup cavities. When I'm sanding the base coats, to smooth them all out, I also lightly sand the floor and side walls of the cavities. 220 paper on a soft rubber block. Make them fairly smooth and flat, not perfect. Blow out the dust and spray the color coats, including the cavities. Then, I spray in the shielding paint (or apply the copper tape). After it's dry, I screw an aluminum masking plate down over the cavities to cover the nickel shielding paint, then spray the top coats and do the final buffing.
I did a similar process back when I was using copper tape. Painting and sanding the cavities first to make a better surface for the tape to bond to.
I also used to put a layer of clear mylar packing tape over top of the copper shielding tape. The packing tape is non-conductive, and it was an extra layer of protection in case the copper tape lifted up or a wire came in contact with the cavity.
Whether you are shielding with copper tape or conductive paint, either one will bond down better to a painted, sanded surface than they will to bare wood. You should paint and lightly sand the insides of your control and pickup cavities before applying the shielding. This is also a good idea to seal up the wood inside there against absorbing moisture. There's a lot of open end grain on the walls of those cavities.
I apply the shielding paint about 2/3 of the way through the painting process. I spray all the base coats, including inside the control and pickup cavities. When I'm sanding the base coats, to smooth them all out, I also lightly sand the floor and side walls of the cavities. 220 paper on a soft rubber block. Make them fairly smooth and flat, not perfect. Blow out the dust and spray the color coats, including the cavities. Then, I spray in the shielding paint (or apply the copper tape). After it's dry, I screw an aluminum masking plate down over the cavities to cover the nickel shielding paint, then spray the top coats and do the final buffing.
I did a similar process back when I was using copper tape. Painting and sanding the cavities first to make a better surface for the tape to bond to.
I also used to put a layer of clear mylar packing tape over top of the copper shielding tape. The packing tape is non-conductive, and it was an extra layer of protection in case the copper tape lifted up or a wire came in contact with the cavity.
Aluminum foil or tape can work, but you need to make a good mechanical/electrical connection to it. The best way I know of is to use a small screw with a washer. A single eye of solid copper wire around the screw, driving the screw into the side wall of the cavity, clamping the wire between the washer and the aluminum. Before driving the screw in, lightly scratch the aluminum with a piece of sandpaper. Aluminum foil and tape often has a very thin protective coating on it. You need to scratch through that to get conductivity.
That confirms what I found on the foil I was using: one side of it had better conductivity than the other. I flipped every other piece to have the conductive sides overlapping. Did the cavity screw/wire going to the bridge ground.
LoveThatBass
Supporting Member
Never had to do this with good quality copper shielding with electrically conductive adhesive and rubbing it when applying it, but guess it doesn’t hurt.
Where it really helps is when putting copper tape across the underside of pickup poles to ground them. 3 pokes per pole.
LoveThatBass
Supporting Member
Yes, I definitely had to do that on back of a single coil pickup on a Jazz bassWhere it really helps is when putting copper tape across the underside of pickup poles to ground them. 3 pokes per pole.