Please everyone, whats your opinion or take on this

[David Schwab]

If it is magnetic hum fields that are the concern, he has to explain why it would pickup less of that, but still pickup as much from the field of the vibrating string.

Smaller surface area. The magnet circuit induces the signal of the strings into the pickup coil. Interference doesn't need the magnet.

Lace Sensors are similar in that they are single coils with shields and flux guides. They claim they radiate a small magnetic field over the pickup, and as single coils are are very quiet.

As far as leads, unshielded wire certainly can pick up noise.

[Mike Sulzer]

Smaller surface area. The magnet circuit induces the signal of the strings into the pickup coil. Interference doesn't need the magnet.

Lace Sensors are similar in that they are single coils with shields and flux guides. They claim they radiate a small magnetic field over the pickup, and as single coils are are very quiet.

As far as leads, unshielded wire certainly can pick up noise.

Magnetic material (relative permeability greater than one) inside the coil will amplify the fluctuating field from the string and that from interfering sources. How much of each is a complicated question. I doubt that Bill Lawrence can answer it. The claim smaller coil = quieter pickup could be demonstrated by 1. measurement, or 2. theoretical modeling. Has he done either?

Unshielded wire: I thought Possum was objecting to all that shielded cable in cheap guitars. So the original vintage flavor is enhanced by vintage wiring that enhances the hum?

[David Schwab]

Magnetic material (relative permeability greater than one) inside the coil will amplify the fluctuating field from the string and that from interfering sources. How much of each is a complicated question. I doubt that Bill Lawrence can answer it. The claim smaller coil = quieter pickup could be demonstrated by 1. measurement, or 2. theoretical modeling. Has he done either?

You would have to ask Bill. Whatever his reasoning, he came up with something that works. I doubt he just made a very small coil with very thin wire just to have fun. He already had stacked pickups that work.

I'd bet he neither has to do any modeling or measurements. He's been designing pickups for a very long time. But I have seen photos of test equipment in his shop.

Same with the Lace Sensors. I'm not crazy about their tone, but they are very quiet, so their design is successful.

Unshielded wire: I thought Possum was objecting to all that shielded cable in cheap guitars. So the original vintage flavor is enhanced by vintage wiring that enhances the hum?

What's vintage flavor? I don't know what Possum was objecting to. Nothing wrong with shielded cable.

[Joe Gwinn]

What's vintage flavor? I don't know what Possum was objecting to. Nothing wrong with shielded cable.

He's objecting to the taste of the modern wire when he strips it with his teeth.

[Possum]

..

I guess you guys have never rewired any recent Epiphones or Chinese fare. I swear I took out at least 6 feet of wire in my recent aquisition. Thats alot of capacitance added for no benefit whatsoever. The cheap stuff is thin wire, more resistance, the vintage type Gibson braided wire is alot thicker, less resistance. If you think the wiring in your guitar, the quality of the switches and pots have no effect, you'd be wrong. I put some pickups in a Jay Turser and they sounded dead, very little treble response. Again it was full of way too much cheap skinny shielded wire, computer type hookup connectors for the pickups, mini-pots and cheap ceramic caps. I ripped all that crap out and did it over, the difference was nite and day. Nothing wrong with shielded cable, but the cheap stuff sucks. If you skimp on that stuff or get any recent budget guitars and leave that stuff in you may as well leave the cheap pickups in there and live with what it is, better pickups won't help it much. I prefer the licorice flavored cloth covered wire, as well....

[Joe Gwinn]

Again it was full of way too much cheap skinny shielded wire, computer type hookup connectors for the pickups, mini-pots and cheap ceramic caps. I ripped all that crap out and did it over, the difference was nite and day. Nothing wrong with shielded cable, but the cheap stuff sucks.

The cheap shielded wire may reveal a key issue. What dielectric was used? Polyethylene, or polyvinyl chloride? (I assume that teflon is out of the question.) The easy way to tell is to burn some and sniff the (perhaps acrid) smoke. Polyethylene smoke smells much like a candle, while PVC smells quite acrid, and the edges of the flame will be tinged with green.

[David Schwab]

I guess you guys have never rewired any recent Epiphones or Chinese fare. I swear I took out at least 6 feet of wire in my recent aquisition. Thats alot of capacitance added for no benefit whatsoever. The cheap stuff is thin wire, more resistance, the vintage type Gibson braided wire is alot thicker, less resistance.

Oh yeah, I agree. I had a customer bring me an Epi Sheraton II. Real pretty guitar, and nice woodwork, but the hardware was crap. This was back when Gibson revived the Epi brand, maybe mid 90's. We replaced the pickups with Duncans, all new pots and wire, and I replaced the bridge and tailpiece.

It was like a totaly different guitar after that.

There is good thin coax wire. I never use the Gibson style stuff, I don't like the uninsulated braid.

[Possum]

...

I love the gibson braide stuff, its all we used back in the 60's, you got shielded cable at Radio Shack and thats what it was. You can strip it with regular wire strippers if you're careful. Both my LP's I've wired with that stuff, if you're going to go "authentic" there's nothing else to use, "get 'er right!"

One of my pro player friends also insisted on using real thick copper wire in his strats, a bitch to use but he claims he can hear the difference. Really you have to look at the whole wiring harness as being a musical element of its own, use cheap junk, crappy wire and pots/switches, you just shortchange what your guitar is capable of. My $200 Ebay Stellar is a real cheap guitar but it's really playable and has good acoustic tone, putting all good wire and parts and pickups in it made it into a beautiful sounding instrument. On the other hand my Epiphone LP is just missing something because of the wood probably, cheap Chinese product and not their better work....still, changing all that stuff out did make it much more than it was, stock.

[Mike Sulzer]

One of my pro player friends also insisted on using real thick copper wire in his strats, a bitch to use but he claims he can hear the difference. Really you have to look at the whole wiring harness as being a musical element of its own, use cheap junk, crappy wire and pots/switches, you just shortchange what your guitar is capable of.

You have 2000 plus feet of really thin wire is a pickup, and you think 1 foot of wire of any size you can physically handle matters? This is another thing that requires a double blind test to be believed.

[TD_Madden]

Doesn't matter what others believe...the PLAYER believes it.

[Mike Sulzer]

Doesn't matter what others believe...the PLAYER believes it.

True, but it not just players who are gullible; in fact, they are no more so than any other group. Remember "damping factor"? The really low output impedance of a really good solid state amplifier (less than .001 ohm) was supposed to control the motion of a woofer better than, well, anything in the universe. And for that to work you need these gigantic cables costing $500 per foot. Actually, the speaker coil resistance is about 6 ohms. Neglecting the capacitance of the speaker coil (which has a huge irrelevant shunt impedance at bass frequencies), that 6 ohms is in series with the cable resistance and the amplifier output impedance. That 6 ohms is what limits speaker damping, not the amp or the cable.

[David Schwab]

I had a pair of stereo speakers I had made from empty cabs someone gave me. They already had crossovers and wire in them. The wire was pretty thin, like 28 AWG.

I got my drivers and new crossovers, but left the wire harness, since it had all the connectors. After trying the speakers out, I rewired one of them with 14 AWG zip cord. That cab was louder than the other one, and just sounded better, even if you adjusted the balance to match the other cab.

So there was a situation where using larger gauge wire did have a very noticeable effect on the sound of the speakers, since both cabs were identical except for the wire gauge.

Ever since then I make my own speaker cables for my amp using heavy gauge zip cord.

[Mike Sulzer]

Everything else equal, louder always sounds better.

[David Schwab]

Everything else equal, louder always sounds better.

Right, except when I balanced them to the same level and switched each one out with a speaker switch, the heavier wire sounded better. And why would it be louder in the first place?

[ken]

Hello...

Possum is right about the wiring harness in new Epiphones. I bought some Epis for demonstrators last year and they had extremely small diameter 'VCR grade' coax wire in them and computer type connectors. I had a set of my humbuckers I just pulled out of a late '60s Gib LP and they sounded great there, so I couldn't figure out why my pickups sounded so bad in the Epis. I pulled out all the wiring in them except for the pickup selector switch and started over with new pots and Gibson style uninsulated coax. It really made all the difference. I later learned that at audio frequencies the original wire rolls off really large amounts of highs.

Now if I buy any new demonstrators of any kind, I always rewire before I use them.

Coaxial cables from different makers can have different frequency responses. I remember a 'taste test' that GP did awhile back with guitar cables from different makers. Basically you DO get what you pay for there, up to a point of course.

Happy recuperating from Thanksgiving,
Ken