el84ster
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2001
- Messages
- 1,420
I recently rewired my R8. I mean I took ALL the wiring out and replaced it. An amazing thing happened: the tone opened up big-time. I didn't use shielded cable like Gibson uses, I used solid core single strand wire.
So I started thinking that all that extra capacitance in that shielded cable was responsible for deadening the tone some (vs. my non sheilded replacement wire). So I measured the stray capacitance of Gibson's shielded wire vs. the single strand I used and found that the capacitance was about twice as high on Gibsons shielded/braided wire. Hmm.
Then I measured that the bridge pickup signal travels through almost exactly 3 feet (!) of wire before it gets to the output jack. And the bridge pickup goes through about 2.5 feet before the jack. THat's a lot of wire, and if you use crappy shielded cable with just a little bit high stray capacitance, it's going to effect your tone big-time!
So I didn't have any extra PAF cable to measure against the modern Gibson braided cable (I wasn't going ot chop up my PAFs) so I don't know if back in the 50s they used wire with less stray capacitance. But judging from the crappy Gibson guitar cable that came with my R8, I'd say chances are decent that the wire inside my Historic not be the most sonically transparent.
So, maybe this is another difference between the old LPs and the Historics. I dunno, but it's interesting to consider. What I do know is my guitar now sounds a lot better with less stray capacitance going on.
By the way, with the stock Gibson wire, I measured 200pf across the output jack...that's like putting a 200pf cap from your pickup hot lead to ground! All those highs are never making it to your amp. Maybe it was the same back then too...but somehow I doubt it.
Food for thought.
So I started thinking that all that extra capacitance in that shielded cable was responsible for deadening the tone some (vs. my non sheilded replacement wire). So I measured the stray capacitance of Gibson's shielded wire vs. the single strand I used and found that the capacitance was about twice as high on Gibsons shielded/braided wire. Hmm.
Then I measured that the bridge pickup signal travels through almost exactly 3 feet (!) of wire before it gets to the output jack. And the bridge pickup goes through about 2.5 feet before the jack. THat's a lot of wire, and if you use crappy shielded cable with just a little bit high stray capacitance, it's going to effect your tone big-time!
So I didn't have any extra PAF cable to measure against the modern Gibson braided cable (I wasn't going ot chop up my PAFs) so I don't know if back in the 50s they used wire with less stray capacitance. But judging from the crappy Gibson guitar cable that came with my R8, I'd say chances are decent that the wire inside my Historic not be the most sonically transparent.
So, maybe this is another difference between the old LPs and the Historics. I dunno, but it's interesting to consider. What I do know is my guitar now sounds a lot better with less stray capacitance going on.
By the way, with the stock Gibson wire, I measured 200pf across the output jack...that's like putting a 200pf cap from your pickup hot lead to ground! All those highs are never making it to your amp. Maybe it was the same back then too...but somehow I doubt it.
Food for thought.