"Stretching" a pickup wire

[Alexander Higgins]

I have an old set of EMG passive bass soapbar pickups I'm trying to re-use. The neck pickup wire is about 1" too short to reach the pots. The pickup wire has a center core wire with an outer layer of shielding wire, which was soldered to the back of the volume pot. The core wire can easily be extended, the shielding wire not so easy. Can I just solder a "jumper " wire to the shielding wrap and solder that to the back of my pot?

[Mark Swanson]

You can do that but the extended part will not be shielded. However, if it's just 1" then I don't think it would matter much at all.

[Alexander Higgins]

mark,
Thanks for the reply. I tried to splice a short section of shielded wire onto it, made a mess of it trying to solder the braid from one section to another, not happening with my limited soldering skills. I'm going to shield the cavity with copper foil anyway, and these are humbucking pickups I never heard much noise out of before.

[Daryl Kosinski]

We did a lab when I was in college 40 years ago on shielding, a twisted pair is almost as good as a braided shield. When a shield is used for a shield only ( not a ground or carrying a signal ) it only needs to be grounded at one end. So to make a long story longer, unbraid a small portion of the braid so the solder doesn't melt the center conductor insulation, splice (solder) on a bit of wire, cover the splice with shrink tubing, twist the wires together and your done.

[David King]

Exactly what Daryl said above.

[Alexander Higgins]

Thanks! That cuts through my mental chaff quite nicely.