Hum

[Simon Barden]

It does indeed.

[Simon Barden]

Apart from the cap you should have is 0.022uF, not 0.22uf (which would be very dull sounding indeed). I'm sure you have the right cap, it's just the drawing value that's wrong.

[DarkMark]

👍 many thanks once again. Yes, wrong cap value written. It may yet be a very dull sounding guitar (in my hands).

[robsmith]

For those not lucky enough to have a source of braided wire at sensible prices one possible solution is to get hold of de-soldering braid which pretty cheap, and with care can be opened out into a tube (most of the small braids I've seen are actually flattened tubes) and, with care and possible lubrication with vernacular English, one can get un-braided wire to feed into the braid tube. You can then proceed as Simon describes in his posts about using braided wire.

[DarkMark]

Thanks for sharing robsmith. I’ve got the braided wire now, however I am familiar with your “lubrication technique.”

[Simon Barden]

The downside of using soldering braid is that is untinned, and so over time the copper will oxidise and its resistance will start to increase. It won’t happen overnight, and you’ll probably get a minimum of several years use before there’s any effect on the signal. Where it’s only being used just as a shield (braid connected to ground at one end only) it will continue to work well at this, but where used as a signal conductor, you may notice hum levels start to increase over time. Then again it will be so slowly that you’d probably not realise it was happening.

Rate of oxidisation will depend on local humidity and pollutant gas levels, so it will happen quicker in humid cities than in dry country settings.

You can mitigate all this by tinning the exposed ends of the braid yourself with solder (once fitted) and covering the copper braid with heatshrink, just leaving the ends exposed for soldering.

So, it’s always best to be prepared and have at least one guitar’s worth of braided cable in stock if you plan to carry on guitar building or fettling existing guitars.

[fender3x]

I agree everyone else that shielding the wire is about the practical way of shielding the wiring of ES style guitars. The one suggestion I haven't seen already is to use relatively heavy gauge, single strand braded wire. I am not sure what gauge I used, but the single strand was about the largest size that would fit through the eyelet on my pots. The single strand wire will hold it's shape somewhat, and that enabled me get the pots and jack more easily positioned after getting the #$%@^& thing through the F-hole.

FWIW I have used tinned wire sleeves like this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/22464426720...UAAOSwTZJhZP1q

...It's a PITA to use, and it's not really cheaper than braded wire. IMHO it's only worthwhile using the a wire sleeve if you are running different colored wires, or a bunch of wires from one place to another in an ES style build. Even then, the one time I have done it I kept thinking "there must be a better way to do this."

[Simon Barden]

The larger sized braid is fine if you are running several wires in the same braid, but not really worth it for single conductors when you can easily buy braided cable. As F3x says, it's normally quite substantial and stiff, much more so than single core screened wire with a plastic sheath. And stiff wires are good for making harnesses, especially for fitting inside hollow bodied guitars.