Nashville Pinecaster Build - with a question

[gabasa]

The pink Strat is wired up. I’ve never done this before, but I didn’t solder anything to the back of any of the pots. All of them are shielded through the copper foil shielding anyways, which connects to ground it at the output jack. It’s got a master volume, so I tried making it look neat by using the third, unused pot as a ground bus. Looks nice, I think.

 

[gb Custom Shop]

Hey, I thought I'd post some update pics! I shielded the guitars, but I was having a heck of a time getting copper foil into the through holes from the neck and middle pickups on the Tele. I routed some channels out and that made it easy to install the foil.

Here are a couple of pics. I've got the bridge, pickguard and strap buttons in. The ferrules are in my freezer; I'm hoping that they'll shrink enough when cold to just drop in. To be continued!

View attachment 986402 View attachment 986403

For the copper shielding in between the pickup cavities, you could have ran a wire connecting the copper foil in the neck & bridge cavity, without having to place copper foil in that drilled hole. Same goes for the bridge pickup cavity to the control cavity. But I like how you've taken routed the long road home

Also for installing your ferrules, use paste wax before pressing them in. That will help substantially, and more so than just freezing the ferrules.

Lastly, I can't see that you've drilled for your bridge ground, yet. Just a friendly reminder I suppose

 

[gabasa]

For the copper shielding in between the pickup cavities, you could have ran a wire connecting the copper foil in the neck & bridge cavity, without having to place copper foil in that drilled hole. Same goes for the bridge pickup cavity to the control cavity. But I like how you've taken routed the long road home

Also for installing your ferrules, use paste wax before pressing them in. That will help substantially, and more so than just freezing the ferrules.

Lastly, I can't see that you've drilled for your bridge ground, yet. Just a friendly reminder I suppose

If I used a wire through the holes instead of shielding them, the guitar would only be partially shielded with exposed sections of pickup wire. It was more work, but it's a sealed cage, which is what I was aiming for.

Just for my own learning, how does the wax help? As a lubricant? Fwiw, I froze the ferrules, popped them in with thumb pressure, and now they're in solidly.

I do have the hole for the bridge ground through the Strat, but I left it off the Tele because the bridge automatically grounds via the copper plate on the bottom of the bridge pickup. I checked for continuity before assembling the guitar and it was there. Would it be better to still have the wire?

 

[gabasa]

Fwiw, I'm going to try an experiment in this build. I'm going to solder the ground wire, coming from the bridge of the Strat, directly to the copper shielding, to keep the wire length to a minimum.

 

[gabasa]

The Strat is wired up and the body is completely put together, so the Tele will get wired today. Testing out the Strat into my Champ with the volume turned up pretty loud, it was remarkably quiet for a single coil guitar. When I touch the bridge and let go of it, there's no difference in noise levels, so the shielding is working well.



The necks aren't bolted on yet, but I couldn't resist taking photos of them with their respective straps. The most important part of the electric guitar is obviously the strap.

 

[Frisco 57]

Your Strat assembly looks great! I've never seen that wire wrap to keep the pickup leads in order before, I like it!

I'm not sure if no grounds on the back of the pots will work but hey, it's worth a try.

 

[gabasa]

I'm not sure if no grounds on the back of the pots will work but hey, it's worth a try.

I learned a lot about amp grounding lately, especially from @2L man, and one big thing was to think of chassis/earth ground and circuit ground separately, and keep them isolated from one another. I learned to only let the two connect at the amp input jacks. I did this, and my recent amp builds were so exceptionally quiet, that I ended up doing this to all of the amps in my house.

I felt excited to apply my new learning to these guitar builds. There is the shielding throughout, which includes the copper foil, pots and switch, and that shielding only connects to the circuit at the input jack. Also, my only ground point for the circuit is at the input jack. It worked out really well in the Strat so I’ll be doing the same to the Tele when I wire it up tonight.

 

[gabasa]

Done!

 

[Southboundsuarez]

something like this.. in the Drill press... at a high speed .. makes a nice clean hole..

Yes a proper sized reamer or step reamer not a tapered reamer.