What Wire Is For Where?

[ijustwannastrat]

Looking at StewMac, I've noticed there are alot of different types of wire to wire your guitar up. My question is, what type of wire is appropriate for wiring? I am starting from scratch, no pre-existant parts. I have everything pick out except the wire. Help?

[newey]

Stew-Mac sells a 100' spool of 22-gauge stranded wire, which is fine for wiring up guitars. It's even pre-tinned.

But it's $40!!

Plus, 100 feet is enough wire to build more guitars than your rec room can accommodate, You'll only need a few feet for one guitar.

There are many cheaper places. Any plastic-coated stranded copper wire will do just fine, use either 22 gauge or 24 gauge. I prefer the 24 gauge, it's easier to work with.

Either of the big home-improvement chain stores- either the blue stores or the orange ones- have 22 gauge wire, but I can never find the 24 gauge therein. RS sells 24 gauge. I got a set of 4 spools, I think 15' each, one black, one red, one white and one green, so I can color-code my wiring (this is quite helpful in tracing complex wiring).

The cheapest way to go is to recycle- and it's "green" to boot. I cannibalized a wiring harness from a car stereo and got enough 24-gauge wire to do a couple of guitars, and again, multicolored as well.

Shielded cable to run to the output jack can likewise be cannibalized from all those extra stereo, TV, and computer cables you have cluttering up your place of residence.

In short, just about any wire will do. The voltages and current involved in guitar pickups do not require the use of thick wire. You could probably use smaller than 24 gauge wire just fine, but it gets pretty tough to work with if it's too small. Much bigger than 22 gauge gets too thick for easy routing of the wires, although I have used 18 gauge wire when I didn't have anything else.

[ijustwannastrat]

So, to dumb it down for myself, any wire is good, but it should be shielded to the jack?

[newey]

any wire is good, but it should be shielded to the jack?

If you are doing a shielding job, as described on the original Guitar Nuts site (see link at top of the page), use of a shielded cable to the output jack is recommended. But you can certainly use the same unshielded wire to the jack as you use for the rest of the guitar- most factory wiring jobs don't bother using the shielded cable.

Using the shielded stuff for longer wire runs may reduce noise- and the output jack is usually the longest run in a guitar, except for the wires from the pickups, which are usually shielded to begin with.