Tricks to "uncut" wires?

[glebert]

Yes, I'm being lazy. Yes, I've spliced wire together. What I'm wondering if anyone has any good tricks for doing something as close to a end-end butt joint as possible with cloth covered wire. I picked up a 1977 Traynor YBA-4 (combo version of YBA-1) that someone was doing to convert to something else and cut all the wires coming off the eyelet board and then gave up. I'm planning on putting it back to stock so want to basically undo the cuts. Some wires don't have much extra length, so stripping and splicing is going to be a bit of a PITA. It's doable, obviously, even if I need to add an inch of wire into each, but if someone has a better way I'd love to hear it.

TIA,
Greg

[g1]

Butt connectors are about an inch long. No matter what you do, you are going to cover it up with heatshrink anyway, right?

[Tom Phillips]

I would bite the bullet and replace the wires if it were on my bench. That would probably turn out to be less work that splicing them all and would end up looking better.

[The Dude]

Agree. I think it would be more work to do all the splices than to just replace wires.

[tedmich]

Uncutting wires is often NOT pretty!
McMaster sells a variety of brass thin wall tubes which I've used to solder splice wires and they disappear under insulation or heat shrink. I can use un-serrated flat jaw mini pliers to crimp them as I need once wires are inside. These are a bit like the thin tubes sold in Hobby shops.

[loudthud]

Note that the wire used in Traynor amps looks like the cloth covered push-back wire used in Fender amps, but it's stranded wire underneath.

[Helmholtz]

So like Fender PU cable?

[glebert]

Thanks for the replies. This is the approach I've come up with so far, but have not implemented yet (I have to go and trace out the wires and label, etc). Thoughts?

First, I hate stripping cloth covered wire. I made a little stripper from a pencil sharpener.


Removed the blade, used a minihacksaw to cut slot across channel. Inserted blade to create little guillotine. My wire is big enough I had to cut the channel just a little bit wider using a razor knife. Put wire into channel until it hits the end, push down the blade with your thumb, rock it back and forth a little, spin it around the wire, and pull the wire out to strip it.


Gives pretty clean strip of precise length.


Next I made a wire holding jig with a scrap of wood that I cut a slot into and two cheap clamps.



This is the point where solder would be applied, and in my case I would probably have forgotten to slip the heatshrink tube on before so I would have to undo and repeat


I will probably make a smaller clamping block, those clamps are overkill but are what I had lying around.

[Helmholtz]

That's neat.
But that wire usually isn't stripped.
Just cut it and push back the cloth.

[glebert]

That's neat.
But that wire usually isn't stripped.
Just cut it and push back the cloth.

This stuff doesn't seem to push back. It has a layer of something under the cloth, like a vinyl but don't know for sure.

[Chuck H]

Interesting discussion and experiment so far. I still vote for post 3.

[glebert]

Interesting discussion and experiment so far. I still vote for post 3.

It will be a mix, as some wires are cut too short to splice, but some are long enough to just strip and reach to the eyelet board. On the ones I can splice though it is going easier than new wire (one solder joint made instead of unsoldering and then resoldering two, same amount of stripping either way).

[Chuck H]

It will be a mix, as some wires are cut too short to splice, but some are long enough to just strip and reach to the eyelet board. On the ones I can splice though it is going easier than new wire (one solder joint made instead of unsoldering and then resoldering two, same amount of stripping either way).

Okay. Not trying to be a turd in the punch bowl, but...

Doing the splice means stripping wire that's short and already soldered at one end to the board, tube socket or pot. Which, for me anyway, is notably harder than stripping a piece of wire I can hold loose in my hand. And then there's the shrink tube. Which has to be cut, slipped over the wire before the splice and then heated to shrink it. Adding a step of greater effort than making a second solder joint. And, again for me anyway, soldering the splice joint in place as it's already attached to the amp so you must align and secure that jig would be at least a little more difficult than heating a hole and sticking a stripped lead end in.

This as it applies to just the effort. Not even taking into account the aesthetic consideration of having fifty wire splices in the circuit.

This is just my stream of consciousness on the matter.

[glebert]

Chuck, that is all valid, and I've considered those points. At some point it becomes a preference thing. I prefer to keep things as close to they are as possible. I'm not crazy OCD on "only vintage wire" but if I can keep what's there that is what I prefer. I like things to keep their stories, and for this amp the fact that it was going to be converted but then wasn't is part of its story. That sounds dumb, but maybe that's why I don't like shiny new guitars and actively hate fake relics. Luckily this is my amp so I don't need to think about the most profitable way to fix it, and no customer to complain about how it was done.

[georage]

Wire Nut.