Guitar wiring

Guitar wiring refers to the electrical components, and interconnections thereof, inside an electric guitar (and, by extension, other electric instruments like the bass guitar or mandolin). It most commonly consists of pickups, potentiometers to adjust volume and tone, a switch to select between different pickups (if the instrument has more than one), and the output socket. There may be additional controls for specific functions; the most common of these are described below.

The following section describes the most common components found inside an electric guitar.

Pickups convert the mechanical energy of a vibrating string to an electrical signal, allowing it to be amplified, processed and reproduced. Pickups vary greatly in construction, size, types of materials used, as well as various electrical properties, but are generally divided into two categories – single-coil and double-coil (also known as humbucker).

Potentiometers (often abbreviated as "pots") can be used to control a variety of functions inside an electric guitar. Most often they function as tone and volume controls, but can also blend two pickups together, attenuate one coil of a humbucker, and so on.

Potentiometers are differentiated by their electrical characteristics, of which the following are most important in an electric guitar:

Besides the common pots used for volume and tone controls, a number of specialised types exist:

Capacitors (often referred to as "caps") have several uses in electric guitars, the most common of which is in the tone control, where it combines with the potentiometer to form a low-pass filter, shorting all frequencies above the adjustable cut-off frequency to ground. Another common use is a small capacitor in parallel with the volume control, to prevent the loss of higher frequencies as the volume pot is turned down. This capacitor is commonly known as "treble bleed cap" and is sometimes accompanied by a series or parallel resistor to limit the amount of treble being retained and match it to the pot's taper.

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