Does an upmarket Tele wiring harness really improve tone?

scarry67

I've got a dodgy switch and scratchy tone pot on CIJ 60s Tele but would a new full wiring harness add much that cheap versions wouldn't? Mojo Pickups sell 'em with interesting pitch that they bring out the best in the pickups... Your experiences?

ThePrettyDamned

Strictly speaking, the values of capacitors and pots etc are the important bits, as well as pot taper.  

With a top spec kit, you'll get Paper in Oil caps - these make NO DIFFERENCE to the tone.  Nope, none.  Assuming it's the same value as a mylar or orange drop or whatever, it will just be a capacitor.  Any audible difference you hear compared to a regular capacitor is because, if measured, they are different values - they have a tolerance rating.

The pots, however... Assuming it measures (for example) 250k exactly, and an import one was also 250k exactly, they'd sound identical.  However, better pots are smoother to use and tend to have nicer tapers, so the volume and tone roll off is more even across the pot.  However, all of that is down to personal preference.  

Better pots are less likely to develop crackles.

And lastly, buying Mojo etc means the wiring will be very good - the wires used DO NOT MATTER.  I use cheap, plastic coated thin hook up wire because it's easy to strip.  Mojo et al use cloth coated, which looks nicer and is more vintage accurate, but this does nothing for tone.  

I'm not saying it's a waste of money (I'm using a Shugz loom in one of my guitars, and my tele build has all CTS pots and orange drop cap).  But you're buying it for vintage correctness and feel good factor mostly.  The only important bits are cap value, pot value, pot reliability and pot taper.  

Some folks actually prefer different tapers to others - I use all Log, and like it.  Some folks prefer one log taper over another, and some folks prefer linear taper.  

stickyfiddle

^^ Wisdom for that man. Spot on

axisus

Yup, came here to say something but TPD pretty much nailed it for me.

juansolo

TPD is dead on. Use decent (CTS for example) pots. The mojo stuff makes no difference.

scarry67

Thanks for advice - makes my spending decision easier & cheaper...

ICBM

Agreed with ThePrettyDamned. The only slight caveat I would make is that different sizes/quality of pots *can* sound different, even at the same measured value. It's to do with "self capacitance", which is a genuine physical property and like any other capacitance value at critical points in the signal chain it will affect the top-end slightly. I think I can tell a difference between the usual cheap mini-pots you find in most far-east copies, and proper full-size pots. (Of more or less any brand.) Not a big difference, but still probably real.

Apart from that it's all down to the physical quality, robustness, feel etc.

Surprisingly, the actual value of the pot makes *less* difference than you may expect - there is an idea that you need tighter-tolerance pots than the usual 20%, or that if you replace random pots with "selected" ones of a particular value (550K seems to be talked about a lot), the tone will change. Not true. I've carefully A/B'd different values using real-time switching with added resistors, and the smallest change you can reliably hear is about 25%. I was surprised too!

Switches and cap types don't affect tone. Wiring just possibly can especially on something like a Les Paul where there is a large length of shielded wiring - again purely due to the capacitance of it. But you'd have to be in an extremely critical listening environment to hear it, since the difference is tiny compared to other capacitance values in the system.

ThePrettyDamned

@ICBM I never knew that! That's quite interesting, I tend to use big ones (even when using Alpha pots) because they're easier to solder up and they turn a bit nicer - the mini ones that came as standard were pretty awful, and obviously cheap, whereas the full size Alpha pots were not really much different to the average CTS pot to my hands and ears.  

I had a go on expensive, low friction ones before.  Bloomin' hated them! 

I suspect the CTS and Bourns stuff will last much longer though, so a better investment,  It's all I use now.

Megii

Add on question re pot values - we're often told that 250K pots are good for single coils, 500K for humbuckers - as the 250's sound less bright, and single coils are too edgy with 500K pots. I tend to use 500's with single coils myself, as I like the idea that I have a bit of extra treble zing available if desired, and I reason that I can always back the tone control off a tad to get to a 250K kind of tone... Am I right about that? Cheers!

jaygtr

Whether they sound better or not, I would still always buy a quality harness If needed it.
Well made ,quality components , nicely packaged and extra longevity mean I think they are worth an extra £15-£20.

Especially on a quality guitar.

I wouldn't change it unless I needed to though.

ICBM

Megii said:

Add on question re pot values - we're often told that 250K pots are good for single coils, 500K for humbuckers - as the 250's sound less bright, and single coils are too edgy with 500K pots. I tend to use 500's with single coils myself, as I like the idea that I have a bit of extra treble zing available if desired, and I reason that I can always back the tone control off a tad to get to a 250K kind of tone... Am I right about that? Cheers!

I tend to find 500K volume controls on single coils tend to sound harsh as well as too bright - rolling off the tone control doesn't quite give the right correction before it goes muddy instead.

You can mix volume and tone values though, if you want more treble - 250K volume and 500K tone give you the nicer basic tone but with a little more top-end - since the tone control doesn't affect the actual loading on the pickup and is purely a treble roll-off, higher value just gives you more range at the upper end.

(NB, it's not whether a pickup is single coil or humbucker that matters, it's the inductance - a high-wound single coil like a P90 does need a 500K.)

Megii

ICBM said:

Megii said:

Add on question re pot values - we're often told that 250K pots are good for single coils, 500K for humbuckers - as the 250's sound less bright, and single coils are too edgy with 500K pots. I tend to use 500's with single coils myself, as I like the idea that I have a bit of extra treble zing available if desired, and I reason that I can always back the tone control off a tad to get to a 250K kind of tone... Am I right about that? Cheers!

I tend to find 500K volume controls on single coils tend to sound harsh as well as too bright - rolling off the tone control doesn't quite give the right correction before it goes muddy instead.

You can mix volume and tone values though, if you want more treble - 250K volume and 500K tone give you the nicer basic tone but with a little more top-end - since the tone control doesn't affect the actual loading on the pickup and is purely a treble roll-off, higher value just gives you more range at the upper end.

(NB, it's not whether a pickup is single coil or humbucker that matters, it's the inductance - a high-wound single coil like a P90 does need a 500K.)

Cheers, appreciate the information.

imalone

jaygtr said:

Whether they sound better or not, I would still always buy a quality harness If needed it.
Well made ,quality components , nicely packaged and extra longevity mean I think they are worth an extra £15-£20.

Especially on a quality guitar.

I wouldn't change it unless I needed to though.

While I agree with the sentiment, paper-in-oil capacitors have a shorter lifetime than modern equivalents. The cheap poly versions are more robust than anything else. Wiring doesn't come under any particular demands provided the soldering is okay. Like ICBM says, pots are somewhere there is a difference, lifetime, taper, wiper noise, can believe the capacitance thing, though don't think I'd be able to hear it. Not sure what differences £15-20 will get you on a pre-wired harness, but a Bournes pot is about £3-4 at single-unit prices (that's cost, not extra cost compared to a normal one).
Edit:
To elaborate the wiring, I don't know if cloth lasts longer than plastic, which is about the only factor there, but plastic coating has been used for decades for electrical installation, so it lasts pretty well. (This is assuming the actual wire is a sensibly chosen gauge of multi-core, which I think is reasonable.) That's not to say don't get them, I usually get sprague capacitors because I like them as objects and the last guitar wiring I did was nearly in cloth just for coolness (changed to plastic for ease of use), but they are things no-one else will see. Vintage accuracy and its effect on resale value is a different thing, but probably only for vintage guitars.

ICBM

I don't bother with cheap replacement components even on cheap guitars. It sometimes seems a bit daft to be fitting a CRL switch or a Switchcraft jack to a cheapo Squier Strat or whatever, but the parts actually don't even cost twice as much, the labour is more expensive than the part and is the same whichever you use, and the never having to replace it ever again is priceless .

I recently did a whole job lot of school guitars, and I replaced the jacks (the fault with almost all of them - mostly come loose and turned round so they break the wires - with Switchcrafts because if you fit a shakeproof washer, superglue the nut and tighten it with a socket set ratchet handle it will withstand even school use… the cheap jacks just aren't strong enough to accept being tightened like that, and it's as much effort to tighten and re-solder a crap jack as fit decent one anyway. OK I won't be able to charge for doing the job again in a few months, but I really don't care!

Plus the feel of plugging in the cable is so much more positive, worth it for that alone!

ThePrettyDamned

I've just redone my LTD with parts I had laying around - full size alpha pots and an import switch.  And it's fine! 

That said, it's fine for me - if I sell on to forumites, I'll probably offer to redo it with proper quality bits if they want it, as well as correct the push pull (which works in reverse compared to normal - but I've found I really like it that way!).

If I ever need to redo again, I'll use CRL, CTS (will need to ream the holes a bit) and switchcraft.

JookyChap

I'm not sure there is a massive difference to tone, other than what the wise one aka. @ThePrettyDamned ; says about the pots. I tend to use the Mojo looms for convenience and because my soldering is shonky and I want it done right.

PIO caps - well, they look cool and I'm superficial and that is good enough reason for me

imalone

ICBM said:

I don't bother with cheap replacement components even on cheap guitars.I suppose that's what I meant,

Kind of what I meant by "A Bournes [sic] pot is about £3-4 at single-unit prices (that's cost, not extra cost compared to a normal one)", decent modern parts are cheap anyway, a cheaper £1-2 pot is only noticeably cheaper at manufacturer-quantities, same for switches. Not worth the saving for lower reliability.
I was trying to work out how a wiring rig could accumulate £15-20 difference in better parts (@jaygatr's comment, which might just have been an off-the-cuff number). Actually, looking at the mojo rigs and doing a quick tot up of price they're about what I'd expect (being a bit generous in converting my £ estimate to $, but that probably allows for mark-up).
On the other hand there's hyperbole like this, which I ran across trying to find out about the dijon capacitors they use (poly it turns out):
"The difference in these compared to ceramic discs is like driving a crappy car with no air conditioning and then going to a luxury sedan." http://guitarguruguys.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/upgrading-your-capacitors.html To be fair to the guy in a later reply on that page he also says he expects the brand not to make a difference, so possibly just for the sake of making it more interesting. And ceramic are not as reliable as poly, fine, but the page then goes on to say PIO are superior to everything... which is the kind of thing that leads to people spending £10 on a capacitor.
There also seems to be a bit of a thing of guitar parts places selling quite high voltage rated capacitors, I suspect that's because people expect to pay a certain amount and the lower voltage ones being cheaper are seen as less desirable (on the may as well spend a little more to get something better basis). Or maybe it just means the same stock can be used for amp parts.
The same search also stumbled across this, which suggests mylar capacitors were used further back than people realise http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/vendor-classifieds/168654-mylar-50s-bumble-bee-capacitors-not-paper-oil.html
Anyway, as others have said, unlikely to gain anything by replacing everything for just one pot, unless you think other components are on the way out, in which case you also save the trouble of opening it up again.
Hmm, rambling, apologies.

JookyChap said:

PIO caps - well, they look cool and I'm superficial and that is good enough reason for me

Now that's a reason I can get behind.

ThePrettyDamned

Lol I love seeing how people talking about caps affects their tone.  It's just a cap - it won't do anything different assuming the two caps are the same value (which they probably are not).  

GuitarMonkey

imalone said:

JookyChap said:

PIO caps - well, they look cool and I'm superficial and that is good enough reason for me

Now that's a reason I can get behind.

Only if you mount them on the outside of the guitar.

streethawk

JookyChap said:

I'm not sure there is a massive difference to tone, other than what the wise one aka. @ThePrettyDamned ; says about the pots. I tend to use the Mojo looms for convenience and because my soldering is shonky and I want it done right.

PIO caps - well, they look cool and I'm superficial and that is good enough reason for me

^This.

But I don't let my shonky soldering get in the way of doing it myself. 

>:D<