How to keep wiring neat?

Thoughts or tips for keeping wiring neat? I've seen some super clean wiring jobs online (like the Huffschmid guitars, or some of Marcel's work here on the site)

Just curious to know what to keep in mind before starting out? From the few pedals I've built I figure that things like keeping wires as short as possible helps, but I'm sure there are a hundred noob mistakes and I'd rather avoid them!

I'd start by always using a cardboard template and sticking the pots switches and jacks on that. Very easy then to cut the wires to the right length and it's always better access than trying to wire up within a cavity. You just need to take your time and plan ahead. Don't block the tags on pots with ground wires between pot casings so that it's difficult to solder the pickup leads on.

I tend to use the cloth-covered push-back wire with a solid single core. It's quite stiff, so for short distances it stays nice and rigid. You can use a solid wire to connect the backs of pots together; something Gibson used to do and I've done it. Marcel used a nice looking piece of bare copper for the last build I saw of his. Just be careful with the routeing of that and your other components if you do that, to avoid any signal carrying wire or component accidentally touching it and causing silence. Use heat-shrink insulation if necessary.

Obviously having a good, temperature controlled soldering iron helps get your joints looking neat. Also lots of soldering practice.

Yep, a good temperature controlled iron like a Hakko or a Weller.... a little planning and plenty of patience.!!! and practice !!

That bare copper wire Simon mentioned in my builds in most cases actually has clear tubing over it that goes all the way right up to the solder joints.

Stiffer wire is easier to bend into position, and if bent correctly will remain in the same position during soldering. However don't discount the thinner wires of choice colours that is supplied with the kits as they will work just as well as any other wire, although the process of getting them into and stay in place might be a little more fiddly. When you think that the thinnest wire in any guitar is in the PU's then any wire thicker than that will do the job very well. As for '50's cloth push-back wire I find it is very easy to work with, looks and is period correct, yet has near nil difference in tone when compared to other wire, so for me and as it usually costs a small mint to buy it is used in my builds purely for aesthetic reasons. The exception is when I need to do a longer run across a build (such as to a LP selector switch) then I do prefer to use the shielded cloth push back cable on those runs to the switch to minimise potential RFI.

My typical plan is to first imagine as best as possible the general layout of where I want wires of different functions to go. Occasionally I may do a rough drawing and assign colours based on the bits of wire I have on hand. Often it's Black or Green for Earths, Red for anything to do with the bridge PU and maybe Yellow or Orange for the neck PU, and White or Blue for the output side of the selector switch, and so on. I check that I have enough length to do each 'jump', and if not then swap colours until I do. I never cut to exact length any 'jump', always between 1cm and 2.5cm longer than I need, usually 2.5cm. Use a wire stripper or sharp knife to bare the ends and twist the strands. The bare ends can be 5mm or 1cm depending on the point it is being soldered to, 5mm for a selector switch or 10mm for doing a 'hook' around a tag on a pot or output jack. Once the wire is in place and does not move then use both hands to solder with one holding the iron and the other feeding in exactly the right amount of solder... Then cut off any unwanted daggy bits that you know shouldn't be there.

Stripping and soldering one end of the wire, then dressing the wire into place, then cutting the wire a bit long, then striping and soldering the other end is my usual procedure. Having a wire that are seemingly a little or even way too long is not a crime (such as leads from a PU or from a switch far removed from everything else), just have a plan on what you are going to do with the excess wire... Bend the wire into a more appeasing shape or coil the excess up and hide it under a PU of in the cable tunnel if you have one, or just get your jump to take 'the longer way' within the cavity...

Most of all when I'm finished I like to be able to just look and I can follow the paths of every wire, where each comes from and where it goes to. I've built other gear before (actually it was a rebuild of a tube based RCA shortwave radio) where all the wires were Blue and bound up tidy with zippy ties and wax looming tape, and while it looked great and really Pro it became an absolute nightmare to fault find. The choice is yours...

Thanks so much guys, this is really helpful.

One quick shielding question while I’m thinking of it - if you’re not using shielded wires, do you need to shield the drilled holes which run from PU cavity to control cavity? And if yes, how does one go about such a feat?

There's only so much you can do, so the general answer is no, you don't. A lot of pickups use shielded cable anyway, so its normally only the Fender single coils that have two unscreened wires coming from them. Even then, you can mitigate noise pickup by twisting the wires together (as tight a twist as possible) so that the ground wire provides partial shielding and a reduced level of noise pickup. But you won't get much noise from a short section of wire unless it's very near a noise source.

Conductive paint is one possible means to screen a short section of connecting hole, but to get the paint to flow across all the surfaces of a roughly drilled hole is near impossible without plugging the hole at one end, filling it up with paint from the other and then removing the plug. Rather messy.

Or if you enlarge the hole with another drill, you could probably fit a piece of copper or steel tube in to the hole, and solder a ground wire to it. Aluminium tube is probably easier to use and lighter, but you can't solder to it, though you could use copper tape with conductive adhesive to bond it to ground.

But on something like a Tele, you can coat the underside of the pickguard with copper tape. With that on the top and your body at the rear (connected to ground through the strings), then the wiring is reasonably well protected from most angles.

Great, thanks Simon! That’s one less thing to worry about then