Soldering then mounting or mounting then soldering

lapua65

Moving on from my last post about dodgy pots, I now wonder if there is benefit in soldering before mounting pots and switches to the scratchplate. Seeing as most of the guitar wiring I have had anything to do with seems to use semi rigid wire as opposed to flexible there is some chance of things going wrong when fitting the pre soldered and loaded plate. 
Is the use of the cotton covered wire a legacy issue rather than a beneficial one? I can't see any benefit myself. 

normula1

Unless you have a template, I'd solder after mounting. I've never really used cotton covered wire, but I quite like the idea of its "puah back" nature.

Funkfingers

lapua65 said:

Is the use of the cotton covered wire a legacy issue rather than a beneficial one? I can't see any benefit myself. 

Guitar pickup conductor wires with the push-back cotton insulation are thicker than plastic insulated single. If you bend them into a specific shape, they tend to hold it. This is very convenient on something like a traditional SSS routed Stratocaster.

thermionic

^^^ Yes - I just rewired a Tele and the relative rigidity of the cloth covered wire compared to the plastic covered wire I had made it much easier. 

ICBM

lapua65 said:

Is the use of the cotton covered wire a legacy issue rather than a beneficial one? I can't see any benefit myself. 

You can’t melt cotton no matter how much you heat the wire. It’s even quite difficult to burn unless you really try.

normula1 said:

I quite like the idea of its "puah back" nature.

This too - very quick and easy.

Funkfingers said:

Guitar pickup conductor wires with the push-back cotton insulation are thicker than plastic insulated single. If you bend them into a specific shape, they tend to hold it. This is very convenient on something like a traditional SSS routed Stratocaster.

And this.

While both types work, and there’s no *major* difference, cloth wire does have some practical advantages as well as being ‘right’ in a vintage-style Fender-type guitar.

Roland

lapua65 said:

Moving on from my last post about dodgy pots, I now wonder if there is benefit in soldering before mounting pots and switches to the scratchplate. ... 

I’m not an expert, but I’ve been rewiring guitars for over 50 years, and now use a simple rule of thumb for making the job easy, and protecting the guitar’s finish. Solder splashes, flux can spit, and some cavities are difficult to work in.

If controls are mounted on a scratch plate then I take the plate off and solder well away from the body. If controls are body mounted, particularly in a narrow cavity like a Telecaster, then I use a template with holes drilled in the right positions, and solder up the components before assembly. With a Les Paul, where there’s plenty of space in the cavity, I mask off the body around the cavity with cardboard or thin plywood.

Dave_Mc

Yeah as @Funkfingers , @thermionic and @ICBM said, the cloth stuff is just very pleasant to use (and I can corroborate that it's hard to melt as @ICBM says, because I've given that the good college try!  But you definitely can singe it...   ).

It also often (not always) has single stranded wire too, which is a fair bit easier to fit through lugs/contacts than the annoying stranded stuff, too. Granted- the stranded stuff might be a bit easier to solder to the backs of pots for the ground wire.

So yeah. I'm always happy when single coils have nice cloth wire. It makes the job a lot easier, and it looks nicer too. I don't think it has any real practical difference once it's wired up.