Stupid question about vintage braided lead wires...

[Tor]

I ordered two wide range humbuckers with "vintage braided lead wires" from The Creamery. The other option was having 4 wires. Thought I'd be getting two wires per pickup, but there's only one. I assume there's a way to ground them? Using the braided hose or whatever it is?

[FuseG4]

Re: Stupid question about vintage braided lead wires...

yeah the braided metal shielding is your ground conductor.

[Tor]

Re: Stupid question about vintage braided lead wires...

Cool, got a little nervous at first.. Thanks!

[ItsaBass]

Re: Stupid question about vintage braided lead wires...

They are two conductor, however, they are both built into the same "unit." The outside tube of bare braided wire is usually used as the ground wire.

It's sometimes cool as a space saver, but it also sometimes doesn't give you enough movement to rout the wires in the most convenient way.

Note: You need to push back the black cloth insulation from the center wire, and you need to push back the braided wire from the black insulation. If you don't do that second step, the ground wire and hot wire run the risk of connecting, which will give you a dead pickup.

[idsnowdog]

Re: Stupid question about vintage braided lead wires...

They can be a little hard to solder so use some flux so the solder flows evenly.

[Tor]

Re: Stupid question about vintage braided lead wires...

Thanks a lot guys!

[uOpt]

Re: Stupid question about vintage braided lead wires...

I ordered two wide range humbuckers with "vintage braided lead wires" from The Creamery. The other option was having 4 wires. Thought I'd be getting two wires per pickup, but there's only one. I assume there's a way to ground them? Using the braided hose or whatever it is?

This stuff is very confusing because people sometimes count the shield as a "wire" and sometimes they don't.

Braided wire has 1 lead and 1 shield and you solder the shield.

4-conductor wire has 5 conductors, 4 leads and 1 shield. To add to the confusion the shield consists of a foil and a lead with no insulation. You solder the lead.

The other common one is 2 leads + shield, so you can use it for series/parallel and out-of-phase but not normally for split - unless you do. This is randomly called 2-conductor or 3-conductor wire.