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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Texas Specials

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9/8/1999 10:05 AM
Mike O	Texas Specials I just put Texas Specials in one of my guitars.They sound great,but are they noisey.Especially if someone is in my basement where I have a dimmer switch in the rec. area. Sounds like I need a good shielding job.Any suggestions on a good method? Thanks, Mike O

9/8/1999 5:40 PM
nic	I have some TS on my strat. I also shielded my entire cavity with that foil from Stewart Macdonald. Although it doesn't rid me completely of my hum when around floresant lightsd or the TV it does get rid of some of the other noises that plague single coils. You could also try the conductive paint from stewmac.... nic

9/9/1999 2:58 PM

High output pickups have more turns of wire than their standard output counterparts. Unfortunately, along with greater signal output, the annoying hum pickup is also greater.

There was an excellent tutorial on guitar wiring & shielding , with nice graphics, on a site by John Atchley. It disappeared, and Steve Ahola nicely posted the article for a while. He also had shielding instructions on his website, but I just checked there before posting this and wasn't able to locate this stuff.

Steve, when you get a chance, can you point us in the right direction?

9/10/1999 12:21 PM
Liam	Mike, The excellent John Atchely site is at: http://home.swbell.net/jatchley/wiring/index.html Have fun there Liam

10/10/1999 4:16 AM
don schultz	I've done a number of guitars w' Atchley mods and they are all excellent projects. I have a nice Mex Strat w' Texas Specials that is extemely quiet because of the Atchely silencing. I've also built a "Tone Monster" and will be building a new one based on a Hamer T-51 w' a Texas Special added to the middle AND the Fishman Power Bridge. John Atchely is my hero!!!

9/12/1999 5:34 AM

Doc:

John Atcheley's site has been back up for about a year now. I did discuss some of his shielding/grounding ideas on my articles on Tele and Paul Jr wiring. Here is the link to his site:

http://home.swbell.net/jatchley/wiring/index.html

Steve Ahola

P.S. I think the best solution to strat hum and noise is to use humcancelling linkages whenever necessary. I like the bridge/neck series linkage as a thicker and muddier version of the neck pickup by itself, and the b/n parallel linkage as a brighter, sweeter version of the bridge pickup by itself. When there is not a lot of static in the air I prefer to use the neck pickup by itself most of them time... but I like having those other linkages up my sleeve!

10/12/1999 4:09 PM

I find that dimmer switches, when turned less than all the way up, are probably the worst offenders as far as introducing noise into pickups and guitar electronics. So much so, that it's not even possible to make an objective judgement about how noisy/quiet a pickup is unless all the dimmer switches in the house are turned off. ANY single coil pickup can appear to be terribly noisy, even if well shielded, if there's a dimmer control turned up halfway in the next room.

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