Shortening PU Wires

[TRU]

My tech forgot to shorten the internal wire of the Fishman Rare Earth that was installed.

 

 

 

Im not taking it back just for this.

 

 

 

After removing the PU and clipping the wire in the proper place, how do I correctly splice them back together?

 

Any videos y'all know of?

 

 

 

This is more than just guitar tech stuff, I know. Its probably the same as if I want to trim battery cables on fishing boat hardware. Its $hit a guy oughta know. I just wanna be sure.

[WRGKMC]

If its causing no problem and working properly leave it alone. There wont be any tonal quality benefits by trimming a few inches of wire and that wire met be needed later when the unit needs to be partially removed for servicing or a jack replacement.

 

If this is an acoustic and the wire is excessive and rattling around, I'd just use some hot glue to tack it in place where it wont be seen. If there's like footy of extra wire, then maybe it needs to be shortened. The only proper way to do this is to remove the wire from one end by de-soldering it, then trimming, re-tinning the ends, and re-soldering it back in place. The worst thing you can do is attempt to cut the wire in the center. Cut wires that are re-soldered together are exposed to EMF and you wind up getting more hum when you have unshielded leads exposed.

 

If you don't know how to solder, don't mess with it. A botched job by an amateur only winds up causing more problems then it cures. Take the time and learn to solder and de-solder and do the job right if you want to do it yourself. You can find plenty of videos on line showing you the right way to solder. The key is you heat the metal connection first, then apply solder. The heat wicks the solder up into the joint. If you try and apply solder to a connection before its at a hot enough temp, it doesn't bond with the metal causing an electronic fault when the lead eventually tarnishes. Over heating will destroy components and melt and short wires from the inside, or let in oxygen, again causing problems down the road when the copper tarnishes and rubs together making crackle noises or pops.

 

Heating the end of a glue stick with a lighter then dabbing it on the wire to neatly tack it in place is by far the simplest method of dealing with some extra wire, plus it doesn't do any damage and its there in case you really do need it. A free inches of wire has no impact on sound. If you're talking 10' then that's a different story. You may begin to have some capacitive effect with guitar cords over 25' long.