Which wire for wiring?

BigMonka

I rewired my strat a few years ago using some thin wire I got from the labs at uni at its not been very reliable since so I was thinking of rewiring it. Is there a recommendation for gauge to use? How about using 1.5sqmm cores from a twin and earth as that should give a nice low impedance?

ThePrettyDamned

You just want regular hookup wire. 

The best stuff I've come across is what @theguitarweasel uses for his pickups - it's so nice that when I cut the pickup wires, I saved as much as I could for the rest of the wiring and future builds!  I think he sources his from allparts.

ICBM

If the thin wire is not reliable it's because the joints weren't done well. The wiring in a guitar does not carry enough current for the gauge to affect the sound or the reliability in any way. You could literally use a single strand from the finest multi-strand copper cable and it would work fine. The resistance is irrelevant because the pickups have an impedance of tens of Kohms and the pots hundreds, so even a few ohms would make no difference.

Any standard electronics connection wire of any gauge easy enough to work with and solder to the terminals will be as good as any other. Using twin & earth would be daft, it's too inflexible to make wiring it up easy.

ecc83

Buy a couple of mtrs of two core "balanced" mic cable and strip some of that. The red/black (maybe white/blue) cores are about the right weight for easy usage.

But, as ICBM says, don't matter diddly!

Dave.

BigMonka

Ok great, if the wire doesn't matter then I'll start by tidying up what's there at the moment. Am I right in presuming that the length of the cable runs won't affect anything other than how neat it looks? The reliability bit is more to do with the 5way switch which doesn't seem to be working properly (and it's the second one it's had) is there a way of cleaning the contacts in it?

GuitarMonkey

I use PTFE coated wire from RS as the insulation doesn't melt when it's soldered.

ICBM

BigMonka said:

The reliability bit is more to do with the 5way switch which doesn't seem to be working properly (and it's the second one it's had) is there a way of cleaning the contacts in it?

Just replace it with a CRL. There's no other type worth having (not even Oak Grigsby these days), they last near enough forever, feel more positive in use and they're not a lot more expensive than the cheapos really.

BigMonka

Well I solved the switch problem - it turns out I'd wired it up wrong when I changed to a master-tone-pot arrangement, d'oh!

So all positions now work perfectly, however I've got a new problem - time for a new thread!!

Gagaryn

The waxed cloth push back stuff sounds more vintage correct. :-)

Bullshit of course, but it is great to work with; no stripping required, just cut to length, push back and solder.