The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm waiting on a new Steeltronics Pickup for my PSG and reading the installation info raised the issue of shielding, which I have never done or personally seen done on a PSG. 6 sting guys are quite familiar with copped shielding or paint but not, at least in my experience, pedal steel people.
Is anyone doing this? Did you actually shield the coil as well or just the "cavity"?
If so would you care to share your thoughts or experience?
Thanks in advance...

I use the combo platter of copper shielding tape and the yucky graphite paint in all cavities of my rescue lap steels. But in my pedal steels, which are all old Emmonses with their original single-coil pickups, I just keep one of these things handy.

Just the cavity here.

On paper it looks like a good idea. If you have shielded your PSG pickup do you feel that it made any improvement? Has anyone actually experienced reduced noise as a result of shielding?

Gary Cosden wrote:On paper it looks like a good idea. If you have shielded your PSG pickup do you feel that it made any improvement? Has anyone actually experienced reduced noise as a result of shielding?

It definitely makes a noticeable difference.

Thanks Marc.

You're welcome!

I'm with Jack. In using single coil pickups for over 50 years. I can count on one hand the number of times that hum has been enough of a problem to worry about. I also carry a Hum De-bugger. It does not affect the tone and the amp is as quiet as a mouse peeing on a cotton ball. You can't even hear normal circuit noise. These things are magic.

I own a Hum Debugger, but hate using it. There IS a subtle artifact and once I heard it, couldn’t live with it. Shielding the pickup cavity took me about the same amount of time as changing strings, and had noticeable improvements.

So I decided to go ahead and shield my new Steeltronics pickup and I am including a photo for anyone who thinks they might be interested in doing the same. I chose a copper tape that actually is more of an aluminum color so that if any tape was visible around the perimeter of the pickup after installation it would blend in. The tape is conductive on both sides so all you really need to do is overlap some on the aluminum neck, which is grounded, and you have what is purported to be an effective shield.
The new Steeltronics pickup is, IMHO, a real winner and I am loving it so far. It has not been out of the house yet but at home it is dead quiet with no hum at all even with the pedal down. I don't know how much of that is the pickup design and how much could be from shielding or whatever other variables there may be but so far life is good.
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Hey Gary, can you tell me where you ordered that copper tape with aluminum colour? Maybe I'd try it on my Emmons with single coil wallace TT to reduce the hum... Thanks!

Bart Vervaeck wrote:Hey Gary, can you tell me where you ordered that copper tape with aluminum colour? Maybe I'd try it on my Emmons with single coil wallace TT to reduce the hum... Thanks!

I bought this:
https://www.stewmac.com/electronics/shi ... -tape.html

Sorry I missed your post Bart. Mine cam4e from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CR ... UTF8&psc=1

Thx Gary!! Did you just put 1 layer? Result = no more hum? even with VP down?

Bart Vervaeck wrote:Thx Gary!! Did you just put 1 layer? Result = no more hum? even with VP down?

One layer is fine, and should be soldered to ground. It doesn't take away all hum, but makes a big improvement.

The principle at work here is a Faraday cage or shield. One common application for these is the room that MRI machines are mounted in, they make the entire volume a shield. This prevent extraneous electrical or magnetic fields from affecting the images the MRI is creating.

Obviously you cannot build a full cage around a pickup, or it would not work since the magnetized string is in one sense an extraneous magnetic field LOL. However making the cage as complete as possible by shielding the bottom of the cavity can only help and does not have any downside.

Bart - all I can tell you is that in my case, when I replaced a True Tone with one of Scott's pickups and did the shielding as I described I have virtually no hum. I have by no means experienced a wide variety of venues. In fact I did one recording session out of the house since the install and that's it. I'm happy with the results for sure but your experience may vary as well.
I would recommend trying this in any case and I would very much like to hear about your experience.

As to grounding - if you have an aluminum neck all you have to do is overlap the tape on the inside of the neck. The tape is conductive on both sides so no soldering is required since the neck itself is already grounded.

I should probably add that Gary purchased a Z Series pickup, which similar to the original ZB pickup it is based on has less hum than than an Emmons or Truetone type or my CE Series single coil. This is due to the very tightly controlled and compact magnetic circuit.