copper shielding a thinline jaguar

[jaskah]

hello

i was thinking of ordering one of the saylor thinline jaguar bodies.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Saylor-Guitars ... SwhY1dsLEl

my question: these bodies are hollowed-out with a solid block down the middle. the upper and lower control panel cavities are therefore not enclosed like a standard jaguar. on my current jaguar, i was able to shield the control panel cavities. the guitar is very quiet. no ground hum, etc.

i'm worried that the saylor body won't allow for proper shielding.

has anyone built a jaguar with one of saylor's thinline bodies? did you try to shield these? or have any other problems associated with these bodies?

thanks for any help!

[adamrobertt]

IMO, shielding in cavities doesn't really do a whole lot. Negligible difference at best. Also, you're talking about 60-cycle hum, not ground hum. Hum caused by a ground loop is solved by properly grounding the circuit and components.

I usually just shield the back of the pickguard and make sure there's a grounding wire running to the bridge as well, and of course make sure that the circuit itself is properly grounded.

[jvin248]

.

50% of idle guitar noise (outside of 60cycle hum) is fixed with shielded cable from the volume pot to the output jack. You use shielded cable from the jack to the amp, why not that first half a foot.

The remainder is fixed with using a Faraday cage on the cavities and back of the pickguard. Aluminum works better than copper, there's research but I'll let you search it out if you need validation, so get a roll of Nashua aluminum flashing tape and an ohm meter to verify continuity as you put strips down to cover the inside of the guitar. Players saying shielding doesn't work must have done a poor job making or grounding their faraday cage.

Covered pickups can help too. Like Tele neck pickups, lipsticks, or LP chrome covered pickups when used in front of say a computer when recording.

.

[timtam]

Just use shielded conductors throughout (like you would a 335-style). It's likely better than most cavity shielding (although AFAIK there is no research on the relative merits of shielding materials in actual guitars for actual noise rejection of common EMI frequency sources in home/recording/stage environments). The rarity of shielded conductors inside many Fender MIA guitars has had people scratching their heads for a long time. If you have that, other shielding may well be redundant. Thus it's curious to see some people pulling shielded wiring out of MIJ Fenders (where it is common) and replacing it with 'vintage-correct' cloth wire.

So wire it like the Squier VM jag for example ...
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Orig ... iagram.pdf
Twist the wires from the pickups, or you could even replace those with shielded conductors too. The rhythm and lead within-circuit cavity wiring is short and thus likely less important to shield, but you could use shielded links, or there are ways that you could probably devise shielding 'cans' for that switching (modified jag vintage-style brass cavity shields ?), like some Gibsons used to have. But that's probably OTT.

[jaskah]

thanks everyone for their answers.

i was indeed concerned about emi frequency sources and not ground hum. trying to have a faraday cage as i use on my current standard jaguar body.

seems like the thinline would be ok, then.