Cavity Shielding

Chinese knockoffs aren't shielded. Wait, that is pretty expected. In fact, they aren't even painted with carbon shielding paint. I had a big roll of aluminium tape sitting around in my room and decided to do a full make over for the guitar my friend gave me as a souvenir. I took out the pickups and shielded the cavity with the aluminium tapes.

What does shielding the cavity do? Well it prevents microphonic sounds coming from the pickups and reduces feedback noises. However, a well wired electronic circuit is actually pretty quiet. However, since I have a big roll of the tape lying around, why not just shield it anyway. Who knows I might face the problem of microphonic sound leakage one day?

Not too shabby for a DIY job if I must say so myself.

Noisy Cables?

Today, I plug in Benihanahime for a short practice and I noticed that there is this irritating hissing noise coming out of my amplifier after turning the gain knob to full (I usually play with full gain). Knowing for a fact that my amp is grounded with all my electronic parts in my guitar well wired, there is no way that it can be noisy. After going through a series of checks, I narrowed down the problem to the cable.

We often try to get the minimum best in our quest for our tone but due to my laziness, I just plugged in the nearest cable to me, which was the planet waves classic series cable. After changing the cables (to Canares cables with Neutrick plugs), the hissing immediately disappears.

Sometimes, the smallest things might be the weakest link to the destruction of your tone.