I believe somewhere back in the mists of time, or the early days of this blog, I wrote about this particular Telecaster I have. It's pretty much a partscaster. The body is a candy apple red MIM, and the neck is from a MIJ '62 reissue. Nothing else on it is stock - the pearl pickguard is from Warmoth, the bridge and saddles are from Glendale, the pickups are Don Mares, and the control knobs are from Callaham.
Lately I've noticed a popping noise when I touch the pickguard (when it's plugged in, that is). I figured it's static electricity, so I wanted to shield the electronics, and while I was at it I figured I'd add a phase switch.
Took the pickguard off and put aluminum foil on the back of it. I used a light coat of 3M spray adhesive. Easy to do and effective.
Then I used copper shielding tape to line the neck pickup cavity and the neck pickup wiring rout.
You can see where I have some excess so it all gets grounded together. That overlap also ensures the pickguard shield will touch the cavity shielding as well.
Doing this backward today for some reason. I should have put this picture first.
Here's the unshieded cavities, and most importantly, the Don Mare S-Telly neck pickup. Don winds this like a Strat pickup - 43 gauge wire I believe. It sounds a LOT like a Strat. And darned if it doesn't look like a Strat pickup from underneath.
All the shielding done - see the control cavity and the bridge pickup. Again I left a 'tab' of tape to contact the bridge itself.
You can see the neck pickup back in place. I went crazy and decided to wrap some tape over the pickup leads. I figured the run though the wiring holes wasn't shielded, so I'd put the shielding right on the wiring.
The red arrow shows where I soldered the wires' shield to the control cavity shield. I did this on the pickup end as well.
Part of the idea with the shielding is to make the shield on the guitar like a chassis in an amp - it's all one piece electronically and all connected together and will serve as a ground. I'll have just one ground point, but the whole 'chassis' is at the same ground potential.
Or something like that.
The bridge pickup is a Don Mare 2-speed Stingray. It's a hotter Tele pickup with a coil tap. I have it wired through a push-pull switch on the tone control. The tap is about 6.8K and the full pickup is about 7.8K. Not super hot, but you get a hotter midrange yet still have that Tele twang and clarity.
Don makes a 3 tap version of this pickup also. I'm planning an Esquire build using the pickup selector switch to choose each of the taps.
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