Grounding pickups and toggle switches that use braided guitar wire can be tricky - the below video offers an easy technique to use yourself. The key is tinning.
Tinning is winning. This means maintaining a well tinned soldering iron which allows for easy heat transfer and easy flow of solder onto the braid as well as tinning the pot casing and the wire itself.
Braided hook up wire is great - it is two wires in one.
- The outer braid is the ground
- The inner cloth wire is the hot/signal wire
Having the ground so close to the signal wire helps reduce unwanted feedback/noise interference.
To use the wire properly, the outer braid needs to be soldered to ground and obviously the signal wire goes to the hot connection.
Use the below diagrams and photos as a guide to working with braided guitar wire.
To seperate the inner wire from the braid, there are two methods.
1) Kink the wire, create a hole and pull the inner cloth wire through
2) Cut away the braid using a fine nose wire cutters
The below video is a demonstration on how to solder braided wire.
- Tin the back of the pot where you want to ground the braided wire. Spread a small puddle of solder onto the back of the pot casing.
- Tin the under side of the braided wire that will be grounded to the pot.
- Hold your soldering tip (ensuring it is well tinned) against the side of the braided to transfer heat.
- Start to flow in your solder - it will gradually creep up the braid.
- Hold the wire firmly in place with a screw driver or similar device and rotate your soldering iron to spread the solder over the braid.
- Repeat this process on the other side of the wire.
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