Shielding an archtop?

[pneil]

Hey guys,

A buddy of mine just put a new hand wound Kent Armstrong
single coil (P-90ish) on his archtop. It sounds great, but he's
noticing some EM sensitivity at various angles.

How do you "shield" an archtop? A guitar with an enclosed
control cavity is pretty simple because you can just build a
farraday cage around the components. Any thoughts on
how this works for a hollowbody? He's got a volume (and
maybe a tone) roller on the edge of the pickguard. The
guitar just has a neck single coil.

Thanks,

Pneil

[tom]

There's not that much you can do, and having a single coil makes it impossible to ever solve in all situations.
You can wrap the control section components with an insulating tape, then wrap that in copper tape. Make sure you ground the copper.
Is there a string ground?

[pneil]

I don't think so. It's a archtop with an ebony tailpiece and bridge.
I told him we could probably fix it with an H3 and a Floyd :-).

[pneil]

Whoops, wrong guitar. This one does have a metal trapeze tailpiece that he thinks is grounded.

[tom]

The single coil will be your biggest obstacle.

[pneil]

Ok, We'll take a look at what he has and proceed from there. He
tends to come to me with electrical questions, but I have zero
experience with archtops.

Thanks for the info Tom.