Hello once again musical faces of Guitar.com it is I... that crazy strange guy that always wears wigs and beards in his videos. today, i would like to talk about a couple tech tips that can make your guitar sound better and keep it gigworthy for years to come.
      Many Guitarists eventually want more from their guitar in some way or another, and in many forums i have seen people asking about what kind of pickups they should install in their guitar, while this is a personal preference, the methods you use to wire it into your guitar should be stable, standardized methods that are strong, create little EMI (electromagnetic interference), and dont allow stray EMI in from other elecrical sources. this will give you a clear, articulate sound that will last a long time.
     first, a little more about EMI. EMI is present in everything electrical. it is a byproduct of passing electricity through a wire, or waves wirelessly like cellphones and wireless computer routers. it becomes INTERFERENCE when these waves disrupt the signal of another electrical device. the object of this lesson is to find out how we can lesson the amount of EMI that enters our guitar and creates feedback and hum, and how to make the guitar itself create less EMI so it doesnt start to disrupt itself. in the process, we will discover a better sounding guitar and a longer lasting electronics assembly.
      ok, lets go through the process step by step. we are assuming that you have already decided which pickup you are going to replace and what kind of pickup you are going to replace it with. for the lesson, we will assume that we are going to replace 2-  4 conductor humbuckers. with 1 volume and one tone control, and a 3 position switch. we will keep it basic and not do coil splitting or anything like that. we just want to learn the techniques to help out our axe.
 Below is a wire schematic of the guitar i mentioned above. 2 humbuckers, 1 volume, 1 tone, and a 3 way switch. this schematic and many others are available on seymourduncan.com

 This diagram will serve as our go-to image for tech data. ok, now the steps to better tone.....
#1- COPPER SHIELDING!!!- if you open up your guitar you may notice that there is copper tape on some areas of the body or pickguard, or maybe not. the fact is, you can not have too much of it!!! the purpose of this shielding is to try to keep EMI out of your control cavity and stop it from interfering with your sound. copper shielding tape is available from many companies and is quite inexpensive. i get mine from www.warmoth.com they are a great source for anything you could want guitar part wise. when you get this tape, remove all of the electronics from your guitar and completely line your control cavity and pickup cavities with it. as well, if you have a pickguard, line the underside of it 100% with no left over spots. trhen, when you reinstall your electronics, you have made a good shield to prevent EMI from entering. think of EMI as herpes and the tape as a condom.... get it now??? good! below is the way i copper taped my own strat.

#2- wire type- Do yourself a favor, do not just go out to the garage and grab the wire you use on your car to do your guitar. www.warmoth.com and other companies will have specialty wire kits made specifically to wire your guitar with. they are the right diameter adn material and will help you stay sane when wiring your baby up.
 #3-wire length- ok, as you pass electricity through a wire it has a certain amount of resistance, thus, the longer the wire, the more resistance you will get, and the more your sound will dull out and disapate. keeping every wire that you install in your guitar as short as possible will minimize resistance and improve the quality and quantity of your sound. this includes the wire that is already attached to your pickups when you buy it! dont just keep that wire at the length that it came and shove the excess into the controll cavity!!!
#4- neatness- keeping wires neat is a great thing to do, many people use small zip tiesto bundle them up in your guitar, i personally use wax string and do something called "bundle lacing". basically i just use it to tie wires together and keep them neat. but again, if you do that, then you are putting wires closer together and they may just interfere with each other. to prevent this, separate the wires with a non conductive matierial, heatshrink works well and is just another anal way of keeping EMI from ruining your life and making you fall into a deep depression which you may or may not come out of.
#5- soldier prep - have you ever gone to solder all of those pesky wires to the bottom of the pot and they just wont stick??? well, heres how you fix that one.... get some emery cloth or light sand paper and scuff up the bottom of the potentiometer to get any coating off that may be on there, then lightly clean it with denatured alchohol. when you go to solder the wires to the bottom make sure you use flux core solder (flux help prepare the surface). the hotter the soldiering iron the better n this case. dont sit there with the iron pressed up against the soldier waiting for it to melt, because at the point that it actually does, it still isnt hot enough. you need that thing so hot that it immediately turns the soldier to thin liquid. make sure both the bottom of the pot and the wires you are attaching are very hot prior to touching the solder to the iron. then you will have a much easier time attaching it to the pot.
#6 - TAKE YOUR TIME!!- if you just spent over $200 on a set of nice new custom pickups, do you really want to go quickly and not get a good sound out of them??? TAKE YOUR DAMN TIME! and if you get frustrated, leave and go back to the project later. dont expect everything to go as planned right away.
#7 - GET A GOOD GROUND!- at the end of this whole thine, you may not realize it, but your body is the best ground for the guitar. we ground our electronics to the bridge and from there the bridge transferrs that ground to the strings and to our body. try turning your amp up, and not touching your guitar, listen to the hum it makes, then, touch the strings, dont play a note, just touch them. you will notice the hum goes away. BECAUSE YOU ARE THE GROUND!! YAY!! LETS HOPE YOU ARE A WELL GROUNDED INDIVIDUAL! so, in order for this to work well, you need to make sure the ground going to your bridge is good. this means that if your bridge is chromed or painted, you need to sand off a small area of the underside to expose the bare metal and ground it there for best results. dont assume that because you just bought a new guitar that it is already done for you either. to save time, many companies just ground it with the paint/ coating on it still.