Understanding Guitar Wiring
This article explains how to wire a volume control, a tone control and a pickup selector switch. After reading this you will hopefully understand and be able to visualize the path of the audio signal from your pickups to your amp.
Terminology You Must Know To Understand This Article
Lugs - The little metal parts of a component (such as a switch or potentiometer) which are
meant to be soldered to.
Amplifier Gain Stages - When the audio signal goes through the guitar cables positive wire then
it goes to the amplifiers gain stages where the signal is strengthened and then comes out of the
speaker.
The Audio Signals Path
The sound starts with the plucking of the strings. Next comes the electric pickups. the
pickup when placed near the metal guitar strings will sense the vibration and turn that
vibration into an electrical signal. The signal then can go directly
to an amplifier where the electrical signal will be amplified through a series of gain stages
and then turned back into sound waves at the amps speaker.
This diagram below shows the two output wires of a single coil pickup going right to an
amplifier. The orange wire is the positive or hot wire and carries the signal while the black
wire, the ground wire, goes to the ground network of the amplifier (the symbol on the end of
the black wire is the standard symbol for ground and means that the wire should be connected
to all other wires with that same symbol).
The pictures below show one end of a guitar cable and a diagram of the female jack in which a guitar cable connects to. The other end of the guitar cable is just like this one. which has two wires in it (like the two pictured in the above diagram). there is a metal tip which is separated from the shaft with a non conductive material like plastic. The tips of the guitar cable are either end of the orange wire in the above diagram. There is a wire inside the cable connecting the tips of the guitar cable and and another wire connecting the shafts. The wire which connects the tips carries the signal which is coming from the guitar pickup to the amp. The wire in the guitar cable that connects the shafts of the cable is the black wire in the above diagram. They connect the guitars metal parts to the ground network of the amp.
The hot wire carries the signal. Easy enough. The ground wire is a bit harder to understand.
There are entire books on the subject of grounding so for the purpose of this article I won’t
delve too deep. The most important thing to know about grounding as it pertains to guitar wiring
is that all the metal parts of your guitar should connect and lead to the shaft of the guitar
cable which connects to the ground network of your amp which will connect to the ground network
of your house which actaully does eventually have a pole that dissipates electricity into the
ground... (grounding is also referred to as earthing) . The metal parts that do not connect to
the ground network will make an annoying buzz when you touch them.
So that is guitar wiring in a nut shell. Now you may be saying wait a minute what about all the
other stuff that is inside a guitar like switches and knobs. You always see guitars
with volume controls, switches and tone controls. Well how to wire those into your guitar is
pretty easy to understand if you also under this article. Read on...
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