Looking for advice on understanding the Shielding process. I am up to speed on the Shielding tape which I know you can purchase. But it's the steps of understanding, where I saw one video of a guy using a soldering tool. And I assumed he was contacting each strip that was applied. Not sure.
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Some tape has conductive adhesive and you don't have to solder it. Jury is out on how long the adhesive will conduct before it breaks down. Some tape has regular adhesive and you must put a patch of solder across the joins.
He may well have been. The 'best practice' is to tack solder them together so that in the event the conductive adhesive quits conducting/comes loose you still have continuity.
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LoveThatBass
Supporting Member
I find while pressing reasonably hard and rubbing the seams a few times makes them adhere better. I do not solder except to connect the shield to ground but it doesn't hurt and probably adds longevity. Time will tell.
Also, I can tell you from very recent experience that shielding doesn't seem to effect the tone of a standard single coil pickup, however it does dramatically dull the tone of my Aguilar Dual Coil noiseless pickups. I tried this on two basses swapping the Aero Single coil with the Aquilar dual coil and in each case I got identical results. How much is the pickup fault or is this typical of all Jazz dual coil noiseless I do not know. I removed the copper shielding on the bass I decided to leave the dual coils in and just have the Stock single coat spray on shielding paint which varies between 1K-3.5K ohms depending on the distance between the probes touching the shielding paint. I have no problem with the high resistance shielding only the less than zero ohms copper.
I like the copper tape because you can solder to it, never tried the conductive paint. I use the longest/ widest strips I can manage to minimize seams, but the conductive adhesive seems to work fine at keeping continuity. It definitely helps on hum, but doesn't kill all of it. I'm a little confused by the debate about "star grounding", where all the grounds go to one common lug, vs ground wire "chains" soldered to the pots. It seems like star grounding at least eliminates the risk of damaging the pots. Pros and Cons?
LoveThatBass
Supporting Member
I have used both. copper is the easiest at least for me. The paint must be applied,let dry 24 hours, apply 2 coat, let dry for 24 hours, then put the final 3rd coat on. This will give you about 100 ohms resistance at the farthist distance between the ohmeter probes. To me it is a pain.
Whether using star grounding, chain grounding, or some other form, the pots should still be grounded, therefore, there is no reduced risk of damaging the pots. Generally speaking the fewer mechanical connections you have in a circuit, the better off you are. If your lug comes loose in a star, you lose all your grounding. With chain grounding generally ALL your ground wires are soldered, this provides a better connection.
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DiabolusInMusic
Functionless Art is Merely Tolerated Vandalism
Lots of good advice in here. Pretty much everything I know on the subject can be read in the link my signature (or in @Matthew_84 's post, thanks for the nod btw). There is a good guide in the pickups sub-forum as well. I recommend buying copper tape with conductive adhesive off ebay/amazon. It will be called "two-sided conductive" in most cases. I prefer paint but I do always have copper on hand, I use it for some parts of my jobs. You will need to solder to the tape to ground it all but that can be accomplished other ways as well. Some folks connect all their tape pieces with solder but I have never bothered with this step and my basses have always been silent. If you have conductive adhesive copper tape then overlapping them will accomplish the same thing.
Nothing wrong with preferring tape but don't go based on the paint you used, that doesn't sound like very good paint. I let my paint dry for about 10 minutes between coats, I use 3 coats, and I get a resistance down to 0.1~ ohms.
MG Chemicals Super Shield™ Nickel Conductive Coating
This is a fairly simple job OP and can be accomplished easily at home. I highly encourage you to shield your basses. TB is a fantastic resource to help you do so, don't tolerate unwanted noise.
LoveThatBass
Supporting Member
Yeah the paint was more of a black carbon based paint. Nickel conductive coating does sound good, thanks for the link
That's the stuff I use, its easier and looks better than tape IMO.
Star grounding does absolutely nothing but fill your cavity with unneeded wire. As long as your ground circuit is complete there is absolutely no advantage for every ground to be located in the same place.