Shielding Paint Questions

[Matt R.]

How is paint better/worse than copper tape? And do you have to ground pots, etc to the painted surface somehow (and if so, how?)

Thanks

M

[Rodent]

Shielding paint is great for production shops where you want to maximize the shielding on your instruments while minimizing your time investment (most customers can't justify the aded $100 for copper foil shielding with soldered seams) One problem with shielding paint is that some products become flaky after several years, and this turns into a mess in your cavity

I personally use shielding foil on my custom instruments, and the Stewmac shielding paint only on those instruments where the bottom line is critical for a customer. The foil, if done right, will be every bit as solid 25 years from now as the day you installed it. You can also solder to it, which makes it easy to connect a ground lead to your pickup cavities

when using paint you should have a common ground wire connecting the cases of all your pots, the jack ground, the bridge ground, and your cavity grounds. I typically install a copper strip into each pickup cavity botton and one on the side of the control cavity, solder a ground lead to each of the pickup cavity strips, and then connect the four ground leads (both pickup cavities, jack/pots, and bridge) together into a lug. Once this is done I apply three applications of the shileding paint (per directions on the can) covering the copper strips in the cavities being sure to leave an area bare on the control cavity foil strip. once all of the electronics are installed I attach the ground lug with a screw to the bare spot on in the control cavity (it helps to pre-drill a pilot ole into the bare spot prior to installing the pots/electronics)

make sense?

all the best,

R

[Matt R.]

Makes perfect sense, thanks. I think I will stick with copper tape then.