I am going to shield my Strat to see how much hum I can alleviate. I am not sure if I want to try paint, or the self-adhesive foil. Has anyone tried either of these methods?? What were your results? Did it help? Was it worth the effort. I like the sound of my stock units, but the hum can be a bit much under some circumstances(gigs and recording sessions). I like the single coil sound of the stock units, and don't want to replace the pups on this particular guitar as I have on others. Thanks y'all!!

I have used both and I like the Copper Tape. You can buy a 3 pack of 3 different sizes from Stew Mac for 20.00

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

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Get down the garden center and get yourself some 'slug tape'. It performs as well as any other copper tape and you dont have to wait for it to be delivered.

I have used aluminum foil with adhesive spray.. and yeah It helped I could hear the difference

I tried the DiMarzio copper tape and honestly could not tell the difference. Quiet guitars are overrated anyhow- do you think Hendrix gave a damn about his Strats buzzing?

The '62 RI pickguard shield definitely does help though so you might want to check that out.

Good point!

It's all about signal to noise ratio. In a band situation, if the signal is loud enough, the noise gets lost in the drummer's cymbols.

Recording may be a different situation, of course, but a good studio would have to have it's electrical noise under control.

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My other guitar is a Strat.

I use shielding paint. I got mine form StewMac. One can has lasted me over 5 years and many guitars.

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Chet Feathers

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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

I did that with one of my Teles, only I just laid it out on the PG and screwed it back on.
Worked great.

The only solution that really works for high gain are noiseless pickups.

In particular, the Dimarzio Hs-3 are DEAD quiet.

This whole, "I must have my guitar totally shielded" thing is overrated. As I've said in an earlier post, this phenomenon is more a product of a mass hysteria initiated by pickup manufacturers when their stacked humbuckers starting coming on the scene. If you think about it, if absolute shielding was/is such a big deal, you'd never see any artist using a guitar with single coils. And guaranteed, those who have the real vintage instruments and/or the artists from back in the day, never considered 60 cycle hum as a problem nor would shield their guitars.

Ironically, shielding in most cases is an unnecessary overcompensation as the component that would truly benefit the most from shielding doesn't get any at all. I'm talking about the outright pickup coils themselves. They are in fact, the chief "antenna" for reeling in and passing along the unwanted hum, noise or whatever you want to call it.

Granted, total shielding will suppress hum in some cases but that is because the shielding has increased the resistance in the circuit as a whole which in turn, will decrease the overall output and a tad of high end as well. So, if you reduce the volume and treble of a guitar's circuit, by necessity the hum/noise in the circuit will be reduced as well.

Some people do take the Stratocaster's pickup covers off and meticulously foil the inside of the covers. The drawback with this is that it changes the magnetic field of the pickup and creates eddy currents; to put it plainly, it reduces the frequency response and the output of the pickup.

Either way, the results are similar to lowering the volume and treble a notch in an unaltered guitar or as simple as when you touch your hand to the strings and ground the guitar through your body.

I have no problem with single coil pickups and for all the obvious reasons, do indeed like the benefits of stacked humbuckers as well. My whole point of this diatribe is to simply keep things in perspective.

OK, let me have it.

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You dig?

OK, I will.

Nice post, thanks. Always good to see these kinds of things discussed in a nuts & boltsy kinda way.

Cheers - C

Thank you, and it's great to see you're up and around!

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You dig?

I copper taped the cavities in the guitar (make sure you overlap the edges a bit) and the back of the pickguard. The hum is much reduced. It's an easy improvement and it's easily "undone" if you decide you don't like it.

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"Life is like eating jalapenos. What you do today may burn your arse tomorrow"

Holy S%$T Martian!! I posted the thread because I wanted opinions of people WHO HAVE DONE THE WORK!! I didn't ask whether I should do it. Leave that kind of choice to me. I have gone the noiseless pickup route with EMGs. Love 'em! Love 'em so much, I put them on 2 of my favorite guitars. I have guitars with humbuckers. Love 'em too.
Why would Fender add sheilding to their most recent Strats if the guitar buying public(you and me and him and her)didn't complain about it? We all know that stacked humbucker single coils dont sound like true singles. I have them on my Charvel. They sound great, but not the same.
We tend to on this forum go off into left field on occasion(okay, all the time) and deviate from the initial question, which was about what works best. Period. You know if you have ever tinkered on a guitar, it is never truly "Finished". There is always something you can do to tweak it, or make it more of our own. If you ever owned a muscle car, you know what I mean. I know I am obsessed!! No doubt about that. But heck, it is way better than some other obsessions I could list that Brad would have a problem with.HaHahahah!!!

If your using noiseless pickups why do you need shielding? Re-wiring with quality cable could be a better option.