A Word on Shielding

As you can see, the Stagemaster's electronics weren't shielded very well. In fact, other than the wimpy piece of aluminum foil stuck to the back of the pickguard (second photo), there is no shielding at all! Note the unshielded body cavities in the first photo.

It's no wonder that this guitar made the most horrible feedback, screeching and hum you've ever heard when it was cranked up. With the crappy pickups and the lack of shielding, I'm surprised it didn't sound a lot worse than it did. Be that as it may, the next step is to get everything properly shielded before the new electronics go in.

There are all sorts of opinions on how to best shield the electronics; however, I have decided that I will use adhesive backed copper foil for the job. I used this technique successfully on my old Strat and my Les Paul, so I'll do the same here.

Why is shielding the electronics so important? To quote from another web site:

"Electrostatic hum and buzz entering a system from your instrument can be totally eliminated by 100% shielding of the pickups and control cavities. Usually, somewhat less than 100% will do an adequate job in guitars, which are inherently hard to shield; but the more complete the job, the better the results. The whole idea behind shielding is to completely surround all circuit "hot" leads with a low resistance conductive cage which intercepts electrostatic fields and grounds them out."

I am no electronics expert, for sure, and I don't know anything about "electrostatics," but I can tell you that after I shielded my old Les Paul, the noise was completely eliminated.

The job now is to line all of the body cavities with copper foil. Some people also say that the output jack cavity should also be shielded, but I think that might be overkill. I'll skip that step for now. If it becomes an issue, I'll fix it later. After I get the copper foil in, I'll post some photos.

Crispy