Copper Shielding - Part 1

The body was in good shape and I was too lazy to start on the neck. It would have been fun to start adding all the shiny chrome parts to the body but I thought that might backfire. It might be best to keep the body as it was until the neck ready to go. I decided to add the copper shielding to all the control cavities.

Copper shielding tape added to both pickup cavities.

I bought a ten-foot roll of copper tape from a seller on eBay. I cut strips of tape and began applying them to the inside of the pickup cavities. I used the eraser end of a pencil to burnish the tape into tight corners and around curves. The tape went on easily and conformed well to all the complex shapes.

Applied in strips, the tape conformed easily to the cavity shape.

I was applying the tape on my kitchen table and something about the lighting in the room really made imperfections in the finish stand out. There were a lot of scratches in the clear coat. The more I looked the more I saw. They were on all sides of the guitar. I assumed that this was an artifact of grit getting lodged in the sandpaper which cut gouges in the paint as I sanded. I tried to ignore the scratches as I continued applying the copper tape.

It was no use, I realized I would never really be happy with the finish even if the scratches were only visible in just the right light. I decided to re-polish the guitar. I stopped applying the copper tape since it would now need to be masked while I tried to fix the finish.