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Post subject: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 9:41 pm
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I have an Antigua Jazz Bass 2012 that I would like to shield to reduce the hum a bit that this bass has.

Would doing such a modification affect the value of a FSR Limited production instrument?

To Modify or not to modify?

Granted the bass is new I am not concerned about the value change in a year.

20 years from now, would I have any regrets?


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 2:47 am
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IMO no value won't change it is not a collectible , it is a mass production bass. Better to enjoy playing this bass like you want.

I put shield on many guitasr , black conductive paint and copper . IMO black paint do the job as well as copper and look better . Use conductive black paint.


First , are you sure your bass wiring are ok , not defective ?


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 2:56 pm
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In twenty years, no. In fifty years, it could. Considering that many instruments get disposed of by surviving relatives in estate sales or when the owner dies, I wouldn't worry about that either, unless you are a major recording artist.

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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 7:51 pm
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Self adhesive copper foil is removable. It could be safely removed later with no trace. The ground wire connection could be made on the SIDE of the pot with one light bead so you can remove that too if you want to without effecting the original wiring at all. Shielding paint is more permanent.

While not collectible now, the post about 50 years from now is right. In reality, who knows what is and what is not going to be collectible in 50 years? But the Antigua basses aren't that limited. Fender will keep doing special runs as long as retailers keep ordering them. It turns out they were not a single special run and they'll do as many special runs as they can sell.

Some CBS instruments I never expected to be collectible are now becoming collectible so I'm out of the prediction business. I guess when anything gets old enough it becomes collectible, but that doesn't necessarily make it good.


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 2:58 pm
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My Jazz does not always hum when I set the volumes differently. Would shielding actually stop the hum when it does hum? And why does it hum sometimes and not others? I've always thought the hum would be from the wiring in the building, neon lights, amp grounding and such other things that are external. Sounds like a question to Brother Dave. Sorry if I interupted but evidently Mr. Westfield may have the same overall question. Yes? No? I get curiouser and curiouser all the time.


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 3:54 pm
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stroker vance,
Shielding will stop most of the time all noise comming from outside the guitar wich is captured by guitar wiring.
Shielding do not stop hum from single coil pickups. . You can shied them with copper foil , but not sure if tone remain the same.

Many Fender Strat have conductive black paint for shieding , Bass I don't know


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 9:15 pm
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My most often referenced external links on the subject are:
http://archive.basssessions.com/oct04/shield.html
http://www.artandtechnology.com.au/guitar/shielding-strat.html
And the section titled SHIELD YOUR BASS at:
http://brotherdave.com/add_maint.htm

RFI (radio frequency interference) causes hum and other noises. Single coils hum more because they are good all around RF antennas and will amplify any sort of RF in a wide bandwidth range. I once had a single coil Fender Telecaster Bass that would pickup the two-way radio transmissions from nearby police cars. You could actually hear the officer talking on his car radio.

Electromagnetic radiation from all sorts of electronic devices such as neon lights, mixers, drills, sunspots, light dimmers, fluorescent lights, the Aurora Borealis, vacuum cleaners, CRT monitors, TV sets, your bass amp itself and other devices is subject to being translated into funny noises, buzzes and clicks through your instrument pickups. With single coil pickups you can't eliminate all of it but you can minimize it to a remarkable degree.

I once lived near a cow pasture that had an electric fence and each time the fence cycled on and off (about once per second) I heard a click or pop through my instrument. It didn't take long to figure out what it was. It got much worse after it rained and was especially bad in the summer after a shower. Turns out that in summer grass grows taller and touches or gets nearer the fence and then it rains and the high voltage from the fence arcs more readily to tall wet grass of summer than to the short dry grass of winter. This fence was like 5000 volts or something that. In fact you can stand around the fence and hear it arcing to the tall wet grass of summer. Just don't stand too close. Stock unshielded basses were basically drum machines within a half mile of this fence.

Single coils pickups do have an apparent hum when soloed. A Jazz is wired so that the two pickups work in a humbucking/opposing phase type circuit when both are turned on to reduce RFI. Shielding won't eliminate that hum completely but will minimize it. Sometimes just partly engaging one pickup while the other is up full will eliminate it too.

So environment has a lot to do with why the hum seems to be changeable or variable depending upon environment. Shielding or the absence thereof has a lot to say about how much RFI actually gets into your signal and the type of pickup has a lot to do with it also. Faulty electrics, bad grounds, bad solder connections, all make this worse. There are many variables. A weak ground wire to bridge connection can make it worse too and that is one of the first things I check on a noisy passive instrument.

By encasing the entire electronics in grounded copper shielding you limit the amount of RFI that can get to the electronics. Not just the pickups but also the other electronic components should be shielded too because even the wiring itself can pick up RF noise.

I've heard of some people misunderstanding this concept and actually wrapping copper tape AROUND the pickups and calling that a shield job. That only made things worse turning the pickups into an even better antenna! A proper shielding job can significantly reduce hum and RFI noise. Improper shielding (like the aforementioned pickup wrapping with copper tape) can actually make things worse than a well done full shielding job.

Compressors can make the hum situation worse by pulling up the noise when you aren't playing.

I love the bright airy open sound of single coil pickups and prefer them over the so-called noiseless versions which to me sound darker like a humbucker, because that is what they actually are. About the only way I can use a passive or active single coil bass is to thoroughly copper shield it to ground.


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 10:22 pm
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Thanks BDave. I knew basically what you wrote was where I was thinking only not so deeply as you covered it. Now my next question would be (and I've thought about this too) : does the copper shielding weaken the pickup out put or change the tone of the pickups? I think it does one of the two to some degree-- or at least I think it does have some interaction with the electronics as far as sound goes be it very minimal to maybe even more than minimal. Can you expound on that a bit also? I need to clear this up. I've thought about it too long.


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2012 2:33 am
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stroker vance wrote:
Thanks BDave. I knew basically what you wrote was where I was thinking only not so deeply as you covered it. Now my next question would be (and I've thought about this too) : does the copper shielding weaken the pickup out put or change the tone of the pickups? I think it does one of the two to some degree-- or at least I think it does have some interaction with the electronics as far as sound goes be it very minimal to maybe even more than minimal. Can you expound on that a bit also? I need to clear this up. I've thought about it too long.



Weaken the pickup output : no

Change tone? I don't know but I don't ear it on the 2 jobs I do.

In both case , no problem with electronic


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2012 6:42 pm
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Copper shielding to ground if properly done does not change the basic tone of the instrument nor the output level of the pickups, other than you almost always can crank the tone knob to full treble with a single coil soloed and find less buzz and noise than before, if it hasn't in fact been eliminated entirely, opening up a far broader tonal palate.

Since the shielding only connects to ground there is no loading of the signal or effect upon it. The primary contact points of string to instrument vibrations are still the nut and bridge so the body and neck tonal components including resonance are not impacted.

Regarding how the copper impacts upon or reacts to the magnetic forces from the pickup the following is offered to explain why copper has no effect on the pickup whatsoever. Copper is a diamagnetic element (actually classed as a "weakly" diamagnetic material.) Diamagnetic substances are not attracted to a magnetic field but rather slightly repelled by it since it has no unpaired electrons to be attracted by the magnetic field. The copper does not become magnetized either (again due no unpaired electrons) and as soon as removed from the magnetic field this diamagnetic repulsion force (as slight as it is) ceases. The repulsion of copper when placed adjacent to even a moderate magnetic field is so slight as to be almost immeasurable without very sensitive instrumentation which is why it is classed as "weakly" diamagnetic. It takes a very strong magnetic field to levitate even a small copper sliver, but it can be done.

Copper shielding has no impact upon the pickup magnet whatsoever, but the small magnetic force of the pickup does have a miniscule but temporary impact upon the copper. The repulsion effect is only present so long as the copper remains in the magnetic field. Once removed from the magnetic field the copper is unchanged in any regard! Better tone through physics!


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 1:02 pm
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Glad you cleared that up Brother Dave. A person I know put the shielding in his Strat and then stripped it back out afterwards saying it made the guitar sound like %#@^....... No, it wasn't Eric Johnson -- so we have to assume the person only imagined the difference OR he forgot to plug the guitar into the amp. Your choice. After that incident I often wondered if the copper effected the sound.


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:45 pm
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stroker vance wrote:
so we have to assume the person only imagined the difference ... After that incident I often wondered if the copper effected the sound.


How can you say he imagine that ? Like I write before , I do copper shielding few times and not sure the sound still the same / as good.

I don't know how qualified Brotherave is, sure he is honest and I respect him , but sometimes electical theory and musical result are not same.

I hope you'll come back after you do the job. I could be wrong too.


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 3:56 pm
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stroker vance wrote:
Glad you cleared that up Brother Dave. A person I know put the shielding in his Strat and then stripped it back out afterwards saying it made the guitar sound like %#@^....... No, it wasn't Eric Johnson -- so we have to assume the person only imagined the difference OR he forgot to plug the guitar into the amp. Your choice. After that incident I often wondered if the copper effected the sound.


You have to ask, why did Leo Fender develop and use the grounded brass pickup baseplates on single coil and split coil basses? I think because they were at least an improvement over no shielding. He was notoriously frugal and spending money on parts that didn't make much difference would be way out of character. Why did CBS stop using the shielding plates? Because they cost more money.

Like I said earlier in this and other posts where shielding has come up, if you do it improperly then it certainly has more than just a slight potential to become a liability. For example the person who wrapped the copper tape around the pickups themselves or others who just slap some copper tape in there without actually grounding it much less bothering to solder seams. Or those who do not shield the back of the pickguard and others who do not overlap the copper from the pickup cavity so it contacts the copper sheeting on the back of the pickguard. If it is of little benefit and can become a liability if done improperly and is nothing but a waste of time and money if done incompletely.


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 4:16 pm
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stratele52 wrote:
stroker vance wrote:
so we have to assume the person only imagined the difference ... After that incident I often wondered if the copper effected the sound.


How can you say he imagine that ? Like I write before , I do copper shielding few times and not sure the sound still the same / as good.

I don't know how qualified Brotherave is, sure he is honest and I respect him , but sometimes electical theory and musical result are not same.

I hope you'll come back after you do the job. I could be wrong too.


My qualifications are that I'm a completely self taught idiot. It has taken 45 years of bass playing to get me to this point too.

Some guitar players actually miss single coil buzz when you take it away. They don't know what clean tone sounds like or how to deal with it after years of getting used to it, working with it, disguising it or even using it as an effect. They come to consider single coil buzz as familiar a tonal component as amp feedback or a Fuzzface. When you take the buzz away it does in fact sound different but only because the buzz is reduced or eliminated.

Some people who live in large cities miss the sound of the city as the background noise of their lives when they visit the country. They hope for a siren or car horn or something, anything to make some familiar city noise.

I'm more into clean bass tones and what makes a clean noise free bass tone that I like versus what a 6 string single coil player seeks are frequently two different things. (Distortion, overdrive, sustaining feedback, wah-wah, etc for example.)

But the physics of copper in proximity to a magnetic field does not effect the magnetic field properties at all, only the copper.


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Post subject: Re: ANTIGUA JAZZ BASS SHIELDING AFFECTING VALUE
Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 4:50 pm
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The purpose of the base blate is a matter of tone not for shielding. But it help If grounded.

Read;
_________________________________________________________________________________
Lindy Fralin Pickup; A Bass Plate is an option for the bridge position on ALNICO poled pickups which will give you 10% more bass without affecting the mids or highs.
http://www.fralinpickups.com/stratstyle.asp
____________________________________________________________________________________
Beefing Up Single Coils ( From Premier Guitar Magazine )

.......In a nutshell, a baseplate is a piece of steel that attaches to the bottom of a Strat's bridge pickup, and is then treated to eliminate any microphonic feedback. It’s purpose is to fatten up the tone and attenuates the highs of the bridge pickup somewhat, much like the plate on vintage Telecasters. If you find your stock bridge pickup too bright, this may be the solution. In addition to boosting the lows, the mid-range frequencies also get a leg up, resulting in a fatter sound with more depth. In addition, a steel plate focus’ the pickup’s magnetic field toward the strings, adding more bite and presence..........

.......In addition to tonal enhancements, metal baseplates can provide extra shielding when connected to ground.

Read more:
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/I ... Coils.aspx


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