Single coils....why not use shielded cable?

[crusty philtrum]

Hi everyone

Why isn't shielded cable used on single-coil pickups? ... This is a question i have wondered about often.

Personally i can't imagine the short lengths of shielded cable used for the average pickup would be long enough to cause much treble loss ... but even if it did ... It is standard to use shielded cable on humbuckers, but not single coils. *IF* shielded cable caused some treble loss, surely the humbucker would be the pickup type which didn't need to lose any tops and single coils might be? (Also the *humBUCKER* is supposed to reject hum by the nature of it's construction and so it would seem less needy of shielded cable, whereas the single-coil is known to be noise-prone and therefore more likely to need help via any means available).

I have fitted shielded cable to Strat pickups often and not felt that anything has been lost.

SO it it simply a matter of traditionalism? Are we convinced that 'vintage' wiring is vital for good single-coil sound? We never seem to have any problems with humbuckers having insulated shielded cable as opposed to the un-insulated, exposed-braid type of shielded cable used on earlier humbuckers. Do we think that vintage-style 'pull-back' cloth insulation is easier to work with when we will happily wrestle with preparing shielded cable on a humbucker? Does the fact that 2 pieces of wire, one black and one white, contain a certain mojo contributing to good single-coil sound?



I do admit that there could be a small advantage to non-shielded cable if it comes to reversing the wiring on a single-coil, but that's also easily enough done with shielded cable, you just have to reverse it at the pickup end.

So what is the explanation?

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Artie]

Re: Single coils....why not use shielded cable?

I'm going to guess that it simply wouldn't be worthwhile to shield 6 or 7 inches of wire, while the whole coil hangs out in the electromagnetic battlefield.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: Single coils....why not use shielded cable?

You could just twist the leads to provide hum attenuation. A more effective way to shield single coils from hum is by building a foil shield around the coil.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Single coils....why not use shielded cable?

Leo was just too cheap to do it. The capacitance of a shielded wire definitely doesn't play a role in these short distances.

Keep in mind the back of the guitar is usually shielded by grounding the player. And that Leo's guitar designs hum anyway.

The properway to deal with this is to shield the guitar's cavity all the way through the pickup wire channels. Easy enough to do in a Strat.

 

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: Single coils....why not use shielded cable?

I'm going to guess that it simply wouldn't be worthwhile to shield 6 or 7 inches of wire, while the whole coil hangs out in the electromagnetic battlefield.

Exactly my thought. Sure, you can eliminate some hum that way, but not all of it.

 

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Single coils....why not use shielded cable?

Exactly....SOME of the hum could be eliminated. Obviously with a single coil, shielded cable alone would never eliminate hum, but it could probably be kept only to what the coil picks up without adding more noise from unshielded wire.

It's so strange to consider that the humbucker DOES usually have shielded cable, when i would have imagined they would have been the type that may not have needed shielded wire so much......

 

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: Single coils....why not use shielded cable?

Exactly....SOME of the hum could be eliminated. Obviously with a single coil, shielded cable alone would never eliminate hum, but it could probably be kept only to what the coil picks up without adding more noise from unshielded wire.

It's so strange to consider that the humbucker DOES usually have shielded cable, when i would have imagined they would have been the type that may not have needed shielded wire so much......

Because they want to shield the rest of the cable length to prevent hum. That's why they're called humBUCKERS. Single coils are going to hum regardless of it you shield the wire, so you might as well not bother doing so.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Single coils....why not use shielded cable?

Well, keep in mind noise some in two variants: 50/60 AC cycle hum and "random" atmospheric static electricity. What the single coil itself pick up is the AC hum. An unshielded cable picks up more of the random noise, which I find much more annoying.