Correct Wire for Guitar Circuits?

[greco]

Re: Correct Wire for Guitar Circuits?

Shielded wire is good to use from the input jack to the volume pot. Ground only one end of the shielded braid. This helps filter out some unwanted noise and sends it right to ground.

Erik: ^^^^^This interests me. Didn't know.^^^^

Do you use shielded wire fo all of the other connections? Just makes it easy to have the ground "go along" with the conductor and should also help to reduce noise...Correct ?

What make/type of shielded wire do you use ? Anything specific?

Thanks

Dave

[ErikH]

Re: Correct Wire for Guitar Circuits?

I've got the shielded wire from Warmoth, single conductor with a braid and clear insulation over that. The thing is, the braid gets connected on one end and the other end is left floating. The wire running through the middle is the hot. This does not substitute the actual ground wire at all. The shield just shields the hot lead. So far i've only used it from the volume pot to the jack on my Kramer. Good results too. It's dead quiet and has barely any other shielding in it other than what was probably done at the factory.

[HumanJHawkins]

Re: Correct Wire for Guitar Circuits?

Erik: ^^^^^This interests me. Didn't know.^^^^

Do you use shielded wire fo all of the other connections? Just makes it easy to have the ground "go along" with the conductor and should also help to reduce noise...Correct ?

What make/type of shielded wire do you use ? Anything specific?

Thanks

Dave

It's only been a decade, so why not reply?

Like anything musical, there is no simple answer. Shielding reduces noise, but also adds capacitance. The amount is tiny and I thought this was BS as a concern. But then I fully shielded an awesome sounding guitar in hopes of making it better (quieter). There result was awful. Very noticeable tone-suck with no changes other than wire and cavity shielding.

That said, no shielding can just be too noisy, or too variable because one place (with low EMR) may sound good, whereas another with noisy lighting may be buzzy.

There are preferences involved. My preference is for unshielded cavity, shortest possible wire runs, and shielding for any wire longer than about 2 inches. It's a pain to work with, but low-capacitance micro coaxial cable would be best... As has been noted, your pickup wire is smaller than 40 gauge. So something in the ballpark of the 38AWG hitachi cable would be ideal (http://www.hca.hitachi-cable.com/pro...xial-cable.php). There are probably 24 or 26 gauge equivalents.

NOTE: There is a wide range in what "low capacitance" means. If you search mouser/digikey/etc, you'll often find one that is way lower capacitance than the others in the group. I haven't bought anything like this for a while, so don't have a specific recommendation.