Capacitance of braided shielded wire (Gibson type), if you please? :-)

[freefrog]

FWIW, my last reply wasn't based on theory: it was a sum up of my personal sonic experience with several LP guitars that I've rewired with vintage braided wire.

The huge inner capacitive load due to this wiring is what appears to create that vintage hi mid "zing" when two PU's are selected. If the PU's are vintage correct PAF clones, they have still plenty of brigthness to deliver whatever is the overall capacitance of the wires and cable.

A low capacitance wiring, on the contrary, gives to such pickups a kind of sterile hi-fi flatness. IME. Their tonal response becomes broader but the vintage zing is lost.

That's why I prefer vintage correct wiring for vintage sounds, unless the pickup itself has a high inner capacitance, is prone to Eddy currents or suffers from other factors darkening the sound.

I had already posted about this finding on another forum and since my topic has been resurrected here, I jump in the train to share my experience again. My readers will do what they want with this contribution...

A testimonial about stray capacitance of braided shielded wire there, from Manfred Zollner (enable autotranslation of the subtittles if needed):

https://youtu.be/AUigjP6t4aI?t=2250

The bit about the influence of moisture as increasing parasitic capacitance of such coax cables is not new to me but I find it interesting and meaningful when it comes to measured results. YMMV.

This question of moisture then the variable lenght of inner wiring as contributing to the sound of Les Paul's (VS SG's) are evoked after 38:45 approximatively.

FWIW.

[Helmholtz]

I hadn't seen this thread before as there was no activity since I joined the MEF.

Myself I had found out about the large capacitance of the Gibson PU coax wire in the 1990s when my job first time allowed me to play with LCR meters and impedance analyzers.
Moreover I found that the PU coax wire with cloth insulation sold by StewMac and others essentially behaves the same.
I also noticed that capacitance was higher in periods of high humidity.
Made me think of hygroscopic properties of the cloth insulation, especially as water has an extremely high permittivity (dielectric constant) of 80.

So I "baked" the wire in an oven at around 100°C for some hours and found strongly lowered capacitance.
Next step I potted the baked wire in paraffin to conserve the lower capacitance.
But while the potting delayed the capacitance recovery compared to a baked but non-potted reference sample, after some weaks it was up to the equilibrium value as before.