Squier Bronco bass mods Ep.3: Will shielding the pickguard & cavity reduce the noise?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- In episode 3 of this series, I will be shielding the pickguard, and then the cavity of this Squier Sonic series bronco short scale bass in efforts of reducing the noise (single coil hum, RF noise) from the pickup.
We will be using copper foil tape to shield the bass. Benefits of the copper tape: easy to use, easy to clean up, easy to shape, conductive adhesive so overlapping pieces form a conductive sheet and relatively inexpensive (2" x 20ft roll from Amazon was $13 CDN). As an added bonus, if you don't like it, it can easily be removed.
This video will also feature objective measurements of the pre and post shielding noise using a loudness meter plugin within Logic X. We will also be using a Gallien Krueger 800RB's transformer to induce electro-magnetic noise. Close proximity of the bass to the amp causes a humming noise through the pickups.
a) Control measurement: PRE-shielding resting noise and induced noise
b) Phase 1: POST Shielding the pickguard only and re-measurement
c) Phase 2: POST Shielding the cavity in addition to the pickguard and re-measurement.
Will shielding reduce the noise?
00:00 Intro
00:19 Background info
01:02 Reference noise levels of other basses
04:50 Bronco noise measurement PRE shielding (control measurements)
06:03 Shielding the pickguard only
07:40 Re-measurement after shielding the pickguard only
08:45 Shielding the cavity
09:38 Re-measurement after shielding both pickguard & cavity
11:11 Assessment
jonathanwong.bandcamp.com - เพลง
I am a novice guitar player and just got a bronco bass. I am playing learning bass using headphones. I am very impressed with the quality of the stock bronco straight out of the box. All I have done is tune it. 😊
Yeah man! Indeed, the new sonic series is a big step up from the previous generations of broncos. There’s nothing one ‘needs’ to do to it! But I’m also an endless tinkerer in the pursuit of tone, so here we are!
Thanks for watching and commenting! Enjoy being a bass player!!
@@jonathanwong458music thanks for your reply. Just wondering are high end pickups night and day to a novice player like myself?
Despite what this series might be implying, the honest answer is ‘no’ . I don’t think you need high end pickups. I think a lot of tone comes from how your fingers fret and pluck the strings. In short, playing technique. I’ve seen lots of monster players gig with $200 squiers and sound great, and players with several thousand dollar basses who don’t sound nearly as good. So I would definitely invest the time for developing good playing technique. Afterwards, there’s tons of time to tweak your instrument to your taste. Cause that’s really what different pickups ultimately do. Fine tunes the tone to one’s liking. And everybody’s tastes are different! Hence the bizzillion aftermarket options out there.
For me, I can’t stand noise and hum, so pickups have to be quiet.
That was a very enlightening experiment! I didn't expect the end result at all. Thank you for doing this.
Thanks for watching! Much appreciated
Thanks for sharing. I believe your quiet environment, as you mentioned, leaves little room for improvement. In a live setting, it would likely be quieter with the shielding. Thanks for sharing; I'm really enjoying this series! Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks so much for watching! Yeah, there are so many factors when it comes to noise, unfortunately. More mods to come!
Very interesting and informative video as usual. I really like this series on the bronco bass
Thanks for watching!
Thank you so much for this series. HIghly helpful, informative, and inspiring. I'm considering to get a Bronco myself but make it into a custom mustang.
Thanks so much for watching! More mods to come!
Thanks Jonathan...seems to confirm that the quality of the pickups is vital.
I agree! That’s one of the reasons I used some of my other basses as a reference in the beginning.
Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
Great info, Dude!
Thanks for watching! Hope you’re enjoying the series.
That bass actually does have a small amount of aluminum foil shielding on the underside of the pickguard, beneath the two pots and output jack.
Fair enough! There was, however, nothing around the pickup area, nor in the cavity. But yes, there was a small stick on sheet around the pots.
Good eyes. Thanks for watching!
Logically Presented as always.
Spock would be happy. 👍❤️🎶🎶😊
Thanks so much!
Loving the GK
Yeah! I love that amp! Nothing modern (especially Class D) really sounds like it, so I've kept it all these years. Still truckin'. I modelled my Line6 patch after this. Always nice to have the real thing to A-B it with.
Thanks for watching!
@@jonathanwong458musicGK, Sunn, Acoustic, Peavey, Trace Elliot...lots of good analog solid state amps for bass...not so many good ones for our 6-string friends...not our problem lol
Haha! My guitarist music partner recently ditched his 30w tube amp for a Boss Katana. At half the weight, he’s quite happy with it. From my half of the stage, it sounds pretty good!
@@jonathanwong458music Quite a few people making a switch to modellers like the katana these past few years...as for myself, I tend to avoid modern amps because of questionable long-term reliability, and they often use cheap transformers and lousy power supply filtering...heck, fender is trying to gaslight the public that amps are supposed to have an audible hiss because of all the complaints among the online community about their late-model products being noisy like those new fr cabinets they recently released
I was a recent convert to a Line6 & QSC rig. But I’ve had enough of unreliable pedal boards. Now I have a single rig for both bass and electric cello. It’s made my life so much easier!
I appreciate the info on shielding, although I agree I didn't hear much difference. I did find a significant difference in noise when I had the shielding on my Gretsch duojet upgraded. I have a topic suggestion I'll put in a separate comment
Did the topic suggestion post? I don't see it. About Bass VIs
I think how dramatic the effect of shielding is going to be dependent on the room and its noise floor. I think my place is just quiet (which is a great thing!). Thx for watching!
No, I don’t see it either. But I also don’t have much experience with Bass VIs..
My question is, how does the new Fender Bass VI compare to the Squier Bass VI which, to my knowledge, is still available. The Squier had a number of QC/setup problems, as described in numerous TH-cam reviews. When I ordered mine direct from Fender a year ago, I asked them to examine the guitar closely, correct any problems, and give it a setup. Much to my appreciation, Fender obliged, and it is wonderfully adequate for the few use cases I have for it. But the introduction of the new, more expensive Fender model has me wondering if they corrected all the bugs and raises the perennial question, is it worth the upgrade. Meanwhile, another cheaper VI was on my radar from Harley Benton. I opted for the Squier VI because of sale pricing and my preference for a Fender brand. So I would like to see a comparison/review. For any who are not familiar, these short-scale, six-string basses are tuned E to E like guitars, and are preferred by many making the transition, even if part-time (see "Get Back"), from traditional guitar.
Good question. Unfortunately I haven’t played either. Sorry I can’t be helpful here.
It's not entirely surprising that the improvement from the screening wasn't dramatic. A metal screen (such as the copper you are using) is good for shielding against electric fields, but they don't do much for magnetic fields. The transformer in your amplifier will be pumping out a large alternating magnetic field (that's how transformers work) and that will pretty much pass straight through the copper. If you don't believe me, get a permanent magnet (such as a horseshoe magnet) and put some foil over the poles. It will still pick up bits of iron as though there as no foil there.
What puzzles me is why the first bass you use, which seems perfectly quiet before you switch the amp on, becomes noisy when you turn on the amp. True enough, there's an alternating magnetic field from the transformer, but the humbucking pickup should fix that by mutual cancelation of the signal in the two halves of the pickup. Possibly the noise you hear comes from induced current in the rest of the electrics rather than the pickup.
Good question. I am far from being an electrician or engineer, so it would be wrong of me to hypothesize. We have all either experienced it ourselves, where our amps hum more when we go back to it to adjust knobs (or have guitar players who do this!!), so I used the amp as a 'real world' type noise-generator.
Thanks for watching and commenting! Please let me know if you have ideas or suggestions.
Where the source of the interference is a magnetic field (as opposed to an electrostatic field) the advice is generally to avoid 'earth loops'. To appreciate what an earth loop is, you might remember from school days that a changing magnetic field can induce a current in a closed loop of wire, which is basically how a pickup works. We envisage the loop of wire being threaded with the magnetic field. Move the loop, or change the field strength, and a current is induced.
Let's say you've got a pot (volume control, maybe). You connect its metal case to an earthing point on the foil. Nearby you have another pot (tone, maybe) and you connect that to the foil at the same point as the first (which would be good practice). Now you think 'just to be on the safe side, I'll connect the metal cases of the pots together with a wire'. This third wire creates a closed loop with the other two and could potentially have a current induced in it by a varying magnetic field. That arrangement of wires has created an earth loop. @@jonathanwong458music
@@acj2789 that's so interesting! As the copper foil tape is continuous, could it in effect, create an earth loop between those pots?
If I understand correctly what you say (maybe I don't), I think not. You have to ask yourself whether there is a closed conducting path that has a cross-sectional area through which a magnetic field can be threaded.@@jonathanwong458music
Jeez!! Why you keep doing things backwards? This should have been your first installment. Has I said in another comment; me and my buddy, both bought this exact version of the Bronco, and they were very noisy, due to no shielding. First thing we did, before toying with different pickups was filling the cavity with copper foil. And it made a night and day difference, basically they both are dead quite. So the problem in your comparison is your pickup and not the shielding.
Another thing; you don’t need to do the whole pickguard with foil, only enough so it closes the entrance of the cavity, way to speak.
Thanks for the feedback.
The results are totally unsurprising. Shielding does absolutely nothing for single coil hum, it only eliminates the buzz you get when you don't touch any metal parts. Did you even have that? My Bronco came perfectly shielded already (black paint in thr cavity), so it ony had single coil hum but it's a 2020 from the previous iteration, with a 2-saddle bridge, wider nut and worse tuners.
Thanks for watching! In browsing the forums, there are many single coil playing guitar players who have attempted shielding their guitars to mixed effect - some who claimed they had good noise reduction and some who did not experience any significant change. Same thing with single coil equipped basses. The purpose of this episode was to demonstrate the effect (or lack thereof) in a bronco bass with some objective measure. I think it was worth showing to viewers of all experience levels even if the end result was predictable to more experienced players/viewers.
Absolutely. I wonder why your Bronco is not shielded when mine, which has objectively worse hardware, is well shielded. Did yours buzz whe you were not touching the strings?
I noticed an aluminum pickguard can reduce single coil hum a bit because it has so much metal mess. Shielding paint/tape is too thin@@jonathanwong458music
Some ground noise was reduced when grounding out with a finger/palm/touch. Insignificant reduction though, so noise was multi-factorial. Big companies are all about cost savings unfortunately so that’s likely the reason for the lack of shielding. I assume they feel that most students or beginners, the demographic target, would not know better or care?