Pickup Shielding

While I'm waiting for fret markers and stainless steel fret wire, I decided to bust out the scissors and copper shielding foil to shield the inside of my pickup covers. The Nordstrand Fat Stacks I got have a tapped, true-single-coil mode which is susceptible to hum so it seemed like a good idea. I play-tested some of these a few weeks ago at a Guitar Center in an Ibanez 6-string, and they sounded fantastic, but do have a bit of hum when tapped.

It is a bit of a pain in the ass to get the adhesive-backed, curl-prone copper in there, which is no surprise. Turned out serviceable, not bad for a first attempt, but why I thought it was crucial to get it in in a single, complicated piece I'm not sure. It would have been much easier to do one big rectangle across the main width of the pickup, then two smaller pieces for the ends. But I've decided to be scientific and I'll try one shielded and one unshielded to start with so I can see just how much difference it makes. Before it goes into the bass, the cover shield will be connected with a soldered wire to the grounded copper strip on the back of the pickup which connects the pole pieces to "chassis" ground in the bass.