Shielding Question

B

BloodRose

Professional Scapegoat
I know that the common forms of shielding are either with shielding paint, or copper foil.. Is there any benefit to shielding with aluminum foil? Or would that actually be a negative?? The reason I ask, is my Charvel bass came upgraded with Dimarzio pickups, and the cavity has been nicely redone with Dimarzio pots and all. But, it was shielded with aluminum foil.. It was nicely done, but I just question the material used..

Thanks
 
Re: Shielding Question

BloodRose said:
I know that the common forms of shielding are either with shielding paint, or copper foil.. Is there any benefit to shielding with aluminum foil? Or would that actually be a negative?? The reason I ask, is my Charvel bass came upgraded with Dimarzio pickups, and the cavity has been nicely redone with Dimarzio pots and all. But, it was shielded with aluminum foil.. It was nicely done, but I just question the material used..

Thanks
Click to expand...

I would think it would not matter as long as it is conductive
 
Re: Shielding Question

BloodRose said:
I know that the common forms of shielding are either with shielding paint, or copper foil.. Is there any benefit to shielding with aluminum foil? Or would that actually be a negative?? The reason I ask, is my Charvel bass came upgraded with Dimarzio pickups, and the cavity has been nicely redone with Dimarzio pots and all. But, it was shielded with aluminum foil.. It was nicely done, but I just question the material used..

Thanks
Click to expand...

Shielding can only protect against high (radio) frequency EMI when using single coils. It can't protect against low frequency EMI (like the 60hz of your mains). Humbuckers do not need any of this if the coils are balanced enough.
 
Re: Shielding Question

I used to shield my strats with the copper tape, and once changed to the paint, the guitars were less "muffled".

Not to mention the paint is way easier than the tape. Supposed to be some great copper based paints out there, but I am still using my left over StewMac can.
 
Re: Shielding Question

As long as both sides are conductive, it should work fine. I never noticed a difference between copper vs paint, though. If you have many guitars, paint is the way to go, although it is initially expensive.
 
Re: Shielding Question

Thanks all! Yeah, I will go with paint and shield my guits one of these days.. But I was questioning the fact that the bass I bought has regular aluminum foil in it for shielding.. Ive used copper foil before, but I was concerned if the regular aluminum foil was helpful or harmful..
 
Re: Shielding Question

BloodRose said:
Thanks all! Yeah, I will go with paint and shield my guits one of these days.. But I was questioning the fact that the bass I bought has regular aluminum foil in it for shielding.. Ive used copper foil before, but I was concerned if the regular aluminum foil was helpful or harmful..
Click to expand...

Aluminum is just a tad less conductive than copper, which is very good (if you think that a simple faraday cage would do much against low freq EMI)
 
Re: Shielding Question

I use aluminum duct tape (from home depot, etc <$10 a roll). Easy to shape to cavities and sticks to ANYTHING
 
Re: Shielding Question

well, the advantages and disadvantages of aluminum vs copper is that aluminum can catch some freqs easier (it has to do with aluminum magnetic permeability), meaning that a high RFI that copper would need a couple mms to catch aluminum will with just the thickness of heavy duty foil, also aluminum is more reactive to magnetic fields, you can have a half inch thick piece of copper right under a magnet and i won't generate even half the amount of eddy currents a foil thickness piece of aluminum will generate, the difference on specific resistance is also very small, so an aluminum shielding and a copper shielding will measure really close on an ohm meter
 
Re: Shielding Question

Good info EDX! So, if Im understanding correctly, it Looks like the bottom line is that having the foil in there is not a problem.. I was worried it would be counter productive. As I said, the guitar came that way. Frets are in great shape, but the prev owner did the cavity shield and a full upgrade on pots and pups, so perhaps he gigged it or something.

Ill leave the foil in it unless I find myself with enough free time to gut it and put shielding paint in it. (All my others axes get first attention tho, as they have no shielding.

I assume that for proper shielding, its best to gut the cavity and paint the entire cavity, correct?
 
Re: Shielding Question

well currently my v is shielded with aluminum foil and it's dead quiet, but only the control cavity is shielded, the pickup cavity is shielding free to prevent tone issues from eddy currents (you can read about eddy currents on bill lawrence's page, aluminum is one of the metals that causes the strongest eddy currents, good if you wanna beef a single coil or built a radio but they totally suck tone on humbuckers and on the worst can even make them as noisy as singles) as i wasn't able to get ahold of copper tape or foil, nor conductive paint is easy to get here, and i'm not buying the amazon shielding kit that has a mini paint jar that is barely enough to shield a strat, so i'm not shielding the pickup cavity anytime soon
 
Re: Shielding Question

You need Charvel's 7.1 firmware version to be compatible with aluminium foil.
 
Re: Shielding Question

i put my faith in copper tape.. I did some research when i wanted to shield the cavities of my strat a few years back

conclusion:
conductive paint is easier to apply and takes less time than tape but the tape has better conductivity and more consistant results than the paint
 
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