They tend to pick up the 60hz mains electricity hum, plus no end of other interference from TV's and computers too.
This being the case I decided after getting a new Seymour Duncan Hot rails pickup I would do a proper job of Sheilding the guitar so that I can cut down on as much unessisary hum and noise as I could.
First thing I did was go to my 1 stop guitar parts shop, the brilliant Axesrus.com and ordered some self adhesive aluminium sheilding for under £5.
Then I stripped as much of the guitar down as I could without removing any electronics (bar the pickup as I was changing that anyway). It ended up looking all naked. like this!
As you can see it overlaps slighty onto the face of the guitar. I trimmed this back once the bridge and controls were back on. I had a large 2 foot by 1 foot sheet so I cut them into peices and let it overlap with each other untill all wood colour was gone.
I then put some on the reverse of the pickguard as well. I soldered the earth to the sheilding itself rather than on the back of the bridge, as I found that it would come loose from the bridge very easily. Make sure as always, but especially with earths, that the solder joints are nice and shiny. This ensures that its a good clean joint.
After soldering up the pickup I re-assembled it and bang it looked like this.
I plugged it into an old marshall 12 practise amp, as I know there are no fancy noise gates and was sounding great. Nice and punchy but with good lows too. Great pickup the Hot Rails. And I know its a humbucking pickup but, but I plugged in my guitar with EMG81/85 combo, which are active pickups well known for being quiet and you can barely tell any difference.
So all in all very impressed!!
No comments:
Post a Comment