If you have been playing electric guitar for any considerable amount of time, I'm willing to guarantee that you have come across a guitar with questionable electronics. Excessive noise that responds in various manners to your touch on the strings or bridge, cutting in and out at the jack, scratching noises in your knobs, so on and so on. There are many reasons that will cause these concerns. Sometimes, it requires replacement of a part or two. Often times, it requires a solder joint repaired somewhere, or a better ground to be established from somewhere. In alternative not-so-uncommon occasions, you'll come across a guitar that has its wiring tampered with before, by someone who didn't quite know what was going on in there. At any rate, we've seen it all before.
This is where the full rewire and shielding comes into play. The name essentially says it all - it involves completely gutting the guitar of the electronics (except for the pickups, unless they are being replaced), applying a shielding to the walls of the control cavity, and reinstalling and rewiring the components with all new wire, and fresh solder joints. Of course, the shielding is optional, but I have gotten exceptional results out of the shielding, in addition to the full rewiring operation. If you have questionable wiring among the components of your guitar, that needs to be addressed with the rewiring. The shielding isn't absolutely necessary in the instrument's functionality, but it will strongly improve the signal from it.
The wiring and shielding work I've done in my red DK2M - the same guitar from the previous post.
For the sake of this post, it is essential to know that your guitar's body serves as a grounding point for your electronics. Without complete grounds, the circuits would be open, and you will get bad or no noise, period. Some cheaper model guitars simply rely on the contact between your components - like the potentiometers (also known as "pots", aka the thingies you turn to alter volume and tone), switches, and the like. Some other guitars with a step up in build quality will sometimes come with a dedicated screw with a small grounding point attached to it, screwed into one of the walls inside the cavity. In other cases, typically found in custom-shop guitars, it will all be shielded already. This shielding material serves as a much more solid ground for everything inside your guitar, and here's why:
The shielding material is copper tape, with a conductive adhesive on the back. This conductive adhesive essentially provides continuity from the tape itself to the body, making the surface of the tape your new grounding source. So with this new grounding source, I create a solid ground bus out of the tape. It serves as a central point for all grounds to be soldered, with the ground bus carefully soldered to the shielded wall. Each component inside the cavity also gets ground wire across one another, and then grounded to the central bus from there.
What this does is provides the absolute best grounding possible inside your guitar - you can't get any more grounded than this. This cleans up the guitar's signal going into the amp considerably. Largely reduced humming, and a more clear, purified signal. This works exceptionally well for players who utilize a lot of gain. I primarily play metal guitar, so I tend to run a pretty good amount of gain. The shielding and ground bus has helped quite a bit with signal clarity through the rig, while using those high gain tones.
Ground wires from several components are attached to a central ground bus like this. These are the grounds coming from the series of pots, pickups, switch, and jack. Then I carefully apply small bits of solder to the ground bus itself, and the shielded wall. In most cases, the bridge ground is routed to this as well, but the bridge ground was routed to a pot on this particular guitar. Results will be the same either way, with the entire improved ground circuitry.
The magic stuff. It can sometimes get a bit pricey to stock up, but it's well worth it.
The other distinct advantage to copper shielding - and essentially the very reason for its existence - is that it provides a shield against electromagnetic interference from outside sources. The copper shielding reflects a lot of those outside signals, keeping the signal more pure and uninterrupted. Mostly, you would see interference from computer monitors, lights, and any portable devices that could possibly put off a signal. Keep in mind that this does NOT stop the pickups from picking up crazy noises you get from your phone, or a TV remote, or a power drill (if you're Paul Gilbert). Typically, those instances are intentional anyway. But the shielding simply provides a block from unwanted interference from the outside of the instrument.
On those two pictures above, notice the copper shielding applied to the cavity covers as well (with my fancy professional handwriting, notating the time of service). With the cover installed, this completely encases your cavity inside a fully shielded chamber.
Some guitars will come with metal-braided wire. The metal braiding is a form of shielding, and also serves as a ground. I find these wires to not be the most reliable, with sub-par shielding capabilities and grounds. With a fully shielded cavity, and proper grounding, these pesky shielded wires become obsolete.
Personally, I feel like the extra solid grounding is equally as important as the purposes of the shielding, if not MORE important. Grounding issues are extremely common, and plague many guitars who haven't seen any real time under a tech's care.
My Jackson JS32 King V on the bench, getting ready for a shielding and rewiring. I told you I'm a Jackson fanatic!
The V, after a full shielding and rewiring.
For my wiring, I use 22ga tinned copper wires, in various colors. I had a large stockpile of this wiring when I started pursing this line of work, and I've gotten fantastic results with it.
Now to take it a step further,
For those of you who may have some keen eyes, perhaps you've noticed the pots in my two guitars, posted above. If you caught it, you will see that the two pots have switched places. This is a result of modifying the original circuit in these guitars. This is merely based on my personal preferences, and here's why:
As I said before, I play a lot of metal. I'm not much of a jazz player (although I love listening to it), and in my entire guitar-playing life, I have rarely ever used the tone knob for anything. Ever. So, what I do is I simply eliminate the tone pot out of the circuit. Removing the tone pot out of the equation actually "frees up" a very noticeable amount of high ends in your guitar's tone. With that tone pot no longer inhibiting the rest of the circuit, this brightens up your signal a bit. For metal players who are seeking a bit more of a cutting aggression from your guitar, this can make a night and day difference. On top of that, it's a very simple mod, and easily reversible if you choose to resell your instrument, or simply prefer otherwise.
The con is obviously you lose control of that pot - it simply becomes an inert knob that turns for no reason. On my guitars, I switch places between these two pots. I have a bad habit - thanks to my questionable playing techniques - where I tend to unintentionally turn myself down with the volume knob while I'm playing. With the tone pot bypassed, and the volume relocated to the bottom, this solves that problem. I leave the tone pot intact in the guitar, however, because otherwise there would just be a hole in the body. This is a common mod that I do to most of my personal instruments. I have done this simple mod for other players as well, but it all boils down to personal preference for your guitar's tones. There is nothing wrong with keeping your tone pot(s), of course! It's simply a component that I never use personally, so why not free the guitar's circuit from its burden?
To address a question I get a lot about this pot mod - volume swells? No big deal, I use a pedal for that anyway. If you're a player who does volume swells with the knob, then relocating the knob will obviously make this more difficult. Again, that's all up to you. If you are able to rock out without slowly rolling on that volume on accident (like me), then you're good!
My ideology behind this is simply "less is more". Less components within a circuit; more pure, uninhibited signal. If you're a tone tweaker with all the knobs as part of your equation, that's ok too!
My ideology behind this is simply "less is more". Less components within a circuit; more pure, uninhibited signal. If you're a tone tweaker with all the knobs as part of your equation, that's ok too!
A shot of a rewired guitar, without shielding applied. Note the reversed pots, as I was discussing before. Tone pot is up top, and bypassed, making it an inert knob. Volume on the bottom. Also note the factory, flimsy ground screw on the left side with several ground wires going to it. The ground bus that comes as part of the shielding service replaces that, and provides a much more solid ground contact.
The cavity of a client's Jackson Dinky X series, shielded, and rewired with a simple single humbucker and single volume pot circuit. No neck pickup, no switch, and tone pot removed completely. This takes the concept of a simplified circuit even further. Don't worry - the owner didn't care about the hole from the missing pot. You will see more of this guitar soon!
This pretty much covers the concepts and ideas that I execute for full rewiring and shielding jobs. It's a lengthy process that requires a fair amount of careful, dexterous labor, but the end results are well worth it. I'm certain I will touch more on these concepts in future posts, as I do more of these services.
If you have any questions about anything I've discussed here, feel free to get in touch!
And now, here is a bit more eye candy of the guitars featured in this article. Enjoy!
The Prince-purple Gibson Explorer mentioned before. DiMarzio Super Distortion in the bridge, and a Gibson 498t in the neck. Full rewire, shielding, and a replaced pickup selector. The selector is a common problem in Explorers, and that was remedied with a smaller, replacement 3-way switch. Ready to rock!
This is my JS32 King V, featured earlier in this post. Full rewire, shielding, and pot mod. This guitar originally came with the stock zebra Jackson-branded Belcat pickups. They were replaced by a Bareknuckle Painkiller in the bridge, and an all-black Belcat pickup out of another JS series Jackson. It was Jackson-branded, but I removed the logo to black it out completely, and match the Painkiller's look. Sleek and deadly.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Check back for more upcoming posts.
- Kyle
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