Can I use un-shielded wiring in guitar with shielded cavities?

[krm27]

I am replacing pickups in a guitar with shielded cavities (copper tape). I have un-shielded wires, not shielded, and wanted to use those to connect everything. However, I thought I read once that it is "necessary" to use shielded wire when the signal is passing between shielded cavities. I have no clue if that is right, thought I'd check on here before proceeding.

Thanks,

Ken

 

[Snake Aces]

Re: Can I use un-shielded wiring in guitar with shielded cavities?

It helps to use shielded wire for the lowest amount of hum possible, however, you do not have to use shielded wire. All my guitars are shielded but I only had shielded wire for one of them when I was wiring them up.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Can I use un-shielded wiring in guitar with shielded cavities?

I am replacing pickups in a guitar with shielded cavities (copper tape). I have un-shielded wires, not shielded, and wanted to use those to connect everything. However, I thought I read once that it is "necessary" to use shielded wire when the signal is passing between shielded cavities. I have no clue if that is right, thought I'd check on here before proceeding.

You need to ground the shield in the cavities. Normally that is done by simply soldering it to the shield of the wires.

Of course the unshielded wire will pick up lots of dirt, more than unshielded pickup cavities.

Your objective is unclear to me.

 

[krm27]

Re: Can I use un-shielded wiring in guitar with shielded cavities?

The objective is to make everything fit and minimize hum / extra noise. The guitar already has copper tape shielding in the cavities. In rewiring this, I had some shielded four-wire that I tried to use to run from the 3-way switch to the control/pot cavity, but it's kind of thick. The location of the hole that the wire runs through between cavities is not flush with the bottom of the pickup cavities, and the cavities are very tight, so I'm running into a problem trying to fit the pickups in along with this shielded wiring. If i were to strip the shielded insulation and let these wires run separate, that would fix this space issue.

I initially thought of finding the thinnest shielded wire possible, but I was searching online for a while without finding anything that looked like it'd work. Another fix would be boring out the holes between cavities so the wiring could exit the pickup cavities more flush with the bottom of the cavities without having to go up first, but I hate to cut into a guitar body if there's another fix that can avoid it.

So, anyway, if unshielded wiring running between cavities will create a significant noise issue, there are other fixes. But I don't know the science of how guitar wiring hums or makes noise, so I just don't know if it will make a big difference. The pickups would be two P-Rails.

Ken