Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

[Pat_rocks_and_rolls]

Hello,

I have been asking myself if the lenght of your pickup wire affects your tone. I had a jb in one of my superstrats i decided to resolder the pickup to the pot and i cut the wire and made it shorter. Strangely it appears brighter and more responsive. Is it in my mind or is it the cut i did ?

 

[Chris Pile]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Definitely in your head.

The wire would have be really long before you noticed any actual change of tone.... longer than you could fit in the guitar.

 

[Derpottsie]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

You probably had a stronger connection when you resoldered it. My jb wasnt as aggressive as it should've been when I first installed it. I went back and burned the solders off and started again and boom. Sounds beautiful now. Of course that was after having plenty of practice installing pups on other guitars after the first time installing that jb

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J320A using Tapatalk

 

[daenius]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Electronically yes, the length of the wire has capacitance

But practically that's not really audible

I would say your better sounding result probably just came from a better soldering job this time! haha

 

[EDX]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

the quality of your solder work and the actual solder used will afect your tone on a really noticeable way in comparison to pickup wire, pickup wire is practically un-audible difference, whereas solder work can be a very audible difference

 

[AlexR]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

There are probably quite literally hundreds of metres of wire in your pickup. A few cm of hookup wire which has a diameter way above the hair thin coil wire will tonally do absolutely nothing.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Yeah, while there might be a measurable difference with some sort of graphs or charts, in real life you'd never hear it.

 

[Johnny the Kid]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Yeah, it does, but it's so negligible that hearing it would require some seriously sensitive ears.

 

[EDX]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

probaly your dog or cat can tell the difference from pickup hook up wire lenght

 

[The JEM Ghost]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Yeah, while there might be a measurable difference with some sort of graphs or charts, in real life you'd never hear it.

Exactly!! This reminds me of an obsessed "luthier" over here who used to cut the wires so short when installing pups you could not use them anymore afterwards without rewiring them! I thought he was simply crazy! Could not believe what I saw when a customer of his came to me to install new pups and I noticed that so called "luthier" had cut about all the slack of the wire away to install those pickups, I just had to rewire them to install them in another guitar.
When that guy contacted the "luthier" to complain about that as I suggested him to do, the "luthier" said it made a huge difference tonewise, those couple of inches of wire would make your pickups sounding muddy according to him... Imagine that... It just does'nt...
That guy was just hooked on graphs and charts and electronical theory, for example, he also claimed some pickups had more clarity, because when he measured them they put out frequencies that were not audible by human ear! :crazy:
In my opinion he just about ruined every pickup he ever installed cutting the wire near the baseplate...

 

[Mincer]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Well, I am certainly not anit- charts, we also have to consider practical experience when working with sound.

Can you hear it?
and
Can you make up for the change somewhere else?

 

[The JEM Ghost]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Well, I am certainly not anit- charts

Me neither, don't get me wrong. But the guy I mentioned was obsessed with them and left out any practical experience in his thinking, drawing conclusions from charts and measurements that were not reality.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Yeah, I've met people on this forum just like that.

 

[SJ318]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Hey Mincer-
I resemble that remark!
Steve Buffington

 

[Darg1911]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Not going to judge whether anyone can hear it or not but I would think it would also depend on the wire type itself. For example, with single conductor vintage braid, capacitance can be up around 100pf per foot. Wire an entire LP, for example, with that wire, including pickups with vintage braid leads and using vintage braid wiring to and from toggle switch ... that's a lot of added capacitance compared to some wire types which may have 1/2, or less, the capacitance. So if someone is obsessed with using the lowest capacitance instrument cables that they possibly can, maybe they should also be obsessing about what their guitars are wired with as well. Personally, my favorite instrument cable is fairly low capacitance. I don't sweat the rest.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

Hey Mincer-
I resemble that remark!
Steve Buffington

Haha, I wasn't talking about you, though!

 

[jeremy]

Re: Does the lenght of the pickup wire affect your tone ?

i keep my wires short since i like things to be clean in there but i cant say ive noticed any difference