Tips for proper grounding and shielding a telecaster

Jonathanthomas83

I've watched a few videos and have a vague idea of how to go about it. I'm new to all this so am looking for some good tips from you guys who have a bit more experience. What are the best practices and some handy things to know?

Funkfingers

For a start, it would be handy to know what pickups you will be using.

Jonathanthomas83

Apologies @Funkfingers ;, they're single coils. A Bare Knuckle Flat 50 in the neck and a Bare Knuckle Cobra T in the bridge...quite high output.

Funkfingers

The usual method is to line each pickup cavity with either screening foil or graphite paint. The cavity shielding needs to be connected to ground via an insulated wire to the chassis of one or other of the pots.

Soldering to foil can be a royal pain. It is far easier to use a short wood screw through a soldering lug into the bottom of the routed cavity. (As seen on post 1987 Fender guitars.)

Roland

Here’s my view. I know that @WezV has an alternative view.

First, line the pickup and control cavities using copper slug tape. The tape often comes with one straight edge, and one which is cut toothed. You don’t need to line the full depth of the pickup cavities, so position the tape along the cavity sides so that the teeth fold onto the bottom. It does need to cover the whole of the control cavity, and connect with the metal control plate. So you might need two overlapping pieces of tape here. Then put a layer of tape across the bottom of each cavity, over the top of the teeth.

Next, connect the cavities. I strip a piece of mains cable to extract a couple of sections of copper wire, Run these between the cavities, and solder to the tape. It solders quite readily.

Then connect everything (copper tape, pickups earths, and jack socket earth, back to one of the case of one of the control pots, either volume or tone. Most people use tone. This needs to be “star wiring” ie all to one point, to avoid Earth loops.

ICBM

Roland said:

Then connect everything (copper tape, pickups earths, and jack socket earth, back to one of the case of one of the control pots, either volume or tone. Most people use tone. This needs to be “star wiring” ie all to one point, to avoid Earth loops.

You should always use the volume. This is because the volume pot is the ‘source’ that the amp sees, so using that as the common ground minimises noise.

Fender traditionally used a bad scheme where the pickups were grounded to the volume pot and the jack to the tone - don’t do that. It not only causes more noise, it relies on the contact between the pots and the plate to complete the ground path.

I prefer to use shielded cable from the jack to the volume pot - this is easier and more effective than using unshielded wire and trying to shield the jack tunnel.

You can also replace the neck pickup wires with a shielded cable for the same reason.