Electric guitar electronics upgrades and modifications can greatly enhance the sound quality of a guitar with inexpensive pickups and components...
Electric guitar shielding is a modification that not only reduces hum and noise but increases tonal clarity and harmonics....
Looking at electric guitars today, imports have really taken a lead in sales. Imports make guitars affordable for practically everyone. The cool thing about imports is they seem to play pretty well and can be setup nicely. So why so inexpensive? Mass production, lesser quality woods, cheap labor and the lack of quality electronics. With the right combination of pickup and component upgrades, you can make that inexpensive guitar sound really nice...
FLEXIBLE STRATOCASTER
SUPERSWITCH
TONE BLEED KIT
LOADED PICKGUARD
In the photo above, this Stratocaster was setup with three push pull potentiometers to allow tone and volume variations on each pickup. Instead of a five way switch it has individual selector switches...
In this photo you will see a five way, four poll superswitch. Using this switch on guitars with 2 to 3 pickups, especially where one or more humbuckers are involved, allows almost endless possibilies of coil tapping combinations and/or phasing (if phasing is desired).
Lets say you're playing a lead solo on your guitar, and you roll off the volume control a bit. Suddenly you notice that great tone now sounds dark, like you turned down the tone control. The tone bleed kit eliminates that "dark tone" and keeps the highs in the entire travel of the volume pot...
Some guitars are built so that a pre-loaded pickguard can be bought and dropped right in. This is the case with Fender Stratocasters and Ibanez guitars as well as a few others...
A vintage guitar, Frank Zappa did an ad for this Hagstrom F-12S Back in the 60's when their guitars were popular. The switches had succumbed to oxydation over the years to the point of falling apart. Using Fender switches and salvaging the old components (make sure to use a good heat sink), and wire, they fit perfectly.
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Electric guitar shielding is a modification that not only reduces hum and noise of single coil pickups, but increases tonal clarity and harmonics. The benefits of shielding a noisy guitar are one of the most noticeable improvements in sound no matter what the cost of the guitar...
'68 TELE SHIELDING
'68 TELE ASSEMBLY
JAZZ BASS SHIELDING
JAZZ BASS ASSEMBLY
This '68 Fender Telecaster was one of the noisiest guitars I have ever done. There was so much hum and noise the owners band told him to use another guitar. It came from the factory with no ground between the bridge pickup plate and ground...
The bridge pickup mounting plate serves as the top shielding while contacting the overlapping copper cavity shielding. The neck pickup cavity overlap makes contact with the copper foil on the back of the pickguard. This creates a complete encasing of both pickup cavities...
Because there is no pickguard that surounds the bridge pickup, the shielding is trimmed to the edge of the cavity. This allows the pickup to be encased by shielding as much as possible without being visible...
Remeber that shielding is exactly what it says it is, and seams in the copper foil have to be soldered together to make the "shield" complete. Think of it like your best shielded guitar cord. If there were broken or missing places in the cords shield, it would be noisy and worthless...
CHEAP WIRE AND POTS
REWIRED WITH QUALITY PARTS
Semi-hollowbody electric guitars have inherently been noise monsters, even with humbucking pickups. Virtually every wire and components have been replaced with shielded wire and Switchcraft calibrated components respectively...
With new 1, 2 and 3 conductor shielded wire, and quality potentiometers, switch and jack, this guitar went from a noisy beast, to "quiet as a church mouse" silence (which is golden). The squalks, squeels and hums are now a thing of the past...
From complete setup to major repair, Accu-Tech Guitar Repair LLC is your one stop shop for quality stringed instrument repair and maintenance...
