#146139  by NQL
 
Greetings: Any of the builders care to weight in on the pros and cons?
Much appreciated.
 #146142  by flyingheelhook
 
I'm no builder but recently in doing some upgrades to my Ibanez AR305 I reached out to my local guitar tech who highly recommended the paint over the foil. I wound up painting the pickup cavities and 'tunneling' since I was replacing the pickups. I wasn't replacing any of the existing pots/circuitry and since that cavity was mostly already shielded with foil, I enhanced/refurbished parts of it with the foil. Worked great for me, YMMV.
 #146161  by TI4-1009
 
I have both the copper tape and the shielding paint. I wanted to like the copper (it looks cool...), but I find it really difficult to shape and put into place neatly. Some say you then have to solder the joints to make sure all the pieces are connected electrically. Cut, shape, place, fit, etc. The paint is alot easier- just paint it on. Three coats is usually enough. Pipe cleaners allow you to get the inside of the wire holes.

I've used it on three or four guitars and they are dead quiet. Now they might be quiet without the shielding too, but I'm not going to try that experiment.

Note that on a hollowbody or a semi-hollowbody there is usually no shielding of any kind and they don't seem to have any more noise than our solidbodies. How would you shield inside a hollowbody? I just got an Epi Casino with P90s and there's no noise unless I hold it within 2 feet of my amp.
 #146180  by mgbills
 
Leo also recommended some really fancy shielding paint recently. Check posts under Scarletfire.

Paint is way easier. My early builds I did both…because I'm OCD.
 #146193  by zambiland
 
TI4-1009 wrote:I have both the copper tape and the shielding paint. I wanted to like the copper (it looks cool...), but I find it really difficult to shape and put into place neatly. Some say you then have to solder the joints to make sure all the pieces are connected electrically. Cut, shape, place, fit, etc. The paint is alot easier- just paint it on. Three coats is usually enough. Pipe cleaners allow you to get the inside of the wire holes.

I've used it on three or four guitars and they are dead quiet. Now they might be quiet without the shielding too, but I'm not going to try that experiment.

Note that on a hollowbody or a semi-hollowbody there is usually no shielding of any kind and they don't seem to have any more noise than our solidbodies. How would you shield inside a hollowbody? I just got an Epi Casino with P90s and there's no noise unless I hold it within 2 feet of my amp.
Most hollow bodies use shielded wire, so they don't need the shielding paint. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to shield my Starfire now that it has Series II electronics, which are susceptible to noise. One technique Alembic used back in the day was to build a copper box to go inside the instrument.