Strat shielding mod

[minimoog]

Bought some brilliant new pickups for my 1983 SQ-series Squier strat. These ones: http://store.guitarfetish.com/19reovalhots.html
These sound tremendous and are a mahoosive improvement over the stock pups. Highly recommended

While fitting them I carried out the shielding mod described at www.guitarnuts.com. This is brilliant and the guitar doesn't hum or buzz at all now despite the overwound pickups. Took a long afternoon to carry out the work but is well worth it.



£45 delivered from USA for the pickups and tone capacitor, a fiver for the copper foil off ebay. Like having a new guitar for 50 quid. Result!



ETA: reading that back I think I need one of these here too

Edited by minimoog on Saturday 23 February 17:04

[gbbird]

Looks and sounds good

I am thinking of fitting new pickups to my Charvel Superstrat. Is is a difficult or fiddly job?

g

[minimoog]

gbbird said:

Looks and sounds good

I am thinking of fitting new pickups to my Charvel Superstrat. Is is a difficult or fiddly job?

g

Very easy if you are passable at soldering. Just unscrew the scratchplate and desolder two or three wires per pickup (depending on whether they are single coils or humbuckers), then remove them, fit the new ones and solder them back.

[dern]

How much copper tape did you order?

The pups look good value - did you just take a chance on them sounding better or were you pretty confident? I have a peavey predator and don't really know if they would be better or not but I like mucking about with stuff so might just take a chance.

[minimoog]

dern said:

How much copper tape did you order?

The pups look good value - did you just take a chance on them sounding better or were you pretty confident? I have a peavey predator and don't really know if they would be better or not but I like mucking about with stuff so might just take a chance.

I bought a 4m roll of tape and have a bit left over. I got it from seller stevent1358 - have a look at item number 270213102284. Having had a bit more of a play it hasn't completely quashed the noise - if I play with high gain near my pc monitor it still picks up the hum. It's deffo better than it was though.

As to the pickups I mentioned on an amp forum that mine were too low gain for my taste and this chap pm-ed me to say he'd just installed these from GFS and was very impressed with them. I decided to give them a try on the back of that, and am glad I did. They aren't expensive and sound much better than the stock Squier pups. The guy at GFS ships them as parts with a nominal value so there was no customs or VAT to pay They arrived within a week. For the money the're well worth a punt.

ETA: I also had a read of the Harmony Central reviews before buying. Mine are the I18 Premium Overwound set.

Edited by minimoog on Sunday 24th February 19:29

[dern]

Thanks for that