A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

I found this fix a while back on another forum after pulling my hair out using dryer sheets and other magic tricks to eliminate the static from a pickguard on my Teles and Strats.

The fix I have found is to remove the pickguard, and use foil or copper tape and cover the length of the wiring from the pickups to the control cavity. I have even wrapped the wires in foil tape, but you can simply cover them and it will also work. THEN--run a lead of thin copper tape or foil (or use a trimmed end of the existing wrapping) to the control cavity of the Tele or Strat so it runs to ground with an existing screw, or under the switchplate on a Tele. The main thing is to cover the wires in the cavity with the foil/tape.

This has worked every time for me after much trial and tribulation.

The dryer sheet trick has never worked for me. I just leaves my guitars with a film of dryer sheet residue and smelling like flowers.

I've had a couple guitars that I had to line the back of the pickguard with copper foil tape to get rid of the static pops and crackles. Some even had factory shielding that just didn't cut it. I also take the opportunity to line the body cavity with copper foil tape as well.

I always line both the pick guard and cavity of Strats with copper tape with a conductive adhesive. The factory shielding and shielding paint don’t cut it. You can also shield the pickups if you leave a break in the tape (full loops will impact tone much more supposedly due to Eddie currents).

I used to use the dryer sheet trick years ago, but that's just a temporary fix. I always cover the back of the PG with shielding tape and make sure it makes contact with the shielding in the cavities, which should be making contact with a ground point. As a side note; something that I find people neglect to mention when talking about shielding a guitar is that the shielding (whether foil tape or paint) has to be grounded. If it's not, it will do nothing at best, and at worst, you'll have made an antenna instead of an RF shield.

Whenever I think about shielding, I'm reminded of this hilariously idiotic thing that John Hall said once... The Rickenbacker 4003 was the noisiest bass I've ever owned. Partly because they have single-coil pickups, and both of them are wound in the same direction, with the same polarity, so there's no humbucking effect when both pickups are engaged... and also because they don't use any shielding at all (something you would expect in a guitar in that price range). That bass picked up RF like crazy... I got tired of the fanboys telling me on the Ric forum that the annoyingly LOUD BUZZ that the bass produced was part of its "signature tone" whenever I asked how they dealt with it, and went in search of answers on my own. That's when I came across an old thread (from one of the rare times that John Hall deigned to interact with the plebs on the forum), where someone asked him why Rickenbacker doesn't shield their guitars. His response was: "Shielding is a kind of black art, that only a handful of people in the world know how to do properly".

Really???

I wished I were around when that comment was made. I would have offered my services as one of the scant few geniuses who know how to make what amounts to a frickin' Faraday cage! But my services don't come cheap, and I think what John really meant to say was: "We make more money if we don't shield them".

On Teles I just cut a strip of aluminum foil long enough to reach from the foil on the back of the pickguard to the closest screw on the control plate. Remove the control plate and put the strip of foil over the screw hole and replace the screws. Loosen the pickguard and slide the strip of foil under far enough so that it contacts the foil under the pickguard. Easy and works perfect. No more static.

To do similar on a Strat would require removing the pickguard and place the strip of foil wher it contacts the foil on the pickguard and use a screw from the switch to secure it between the pickguard and switch.