Stratocaster Style Handcrafted Wiring Harness Kit

A little bit of tech talk, for the nerds and the newbs…

Deluxe Or Premium ?

The only difference between our Deluxe and Premium Kits are the brand of the components. Electronics component manufacturers have a very wide range of products that are more or less doing the same job. The electronic used in a guitar application have always been taken from other industries, aviation mainly. The original CTS potentiometers were designed for military applications. Since the 50’s not much has changed, at least in the guitar world, the main difference between now and then is the way we put them together, having a direct, and improving, effect on the signal path, therefore the “tone chain” has gotten better and the quality of assembly as well as the consistency in the quality of manufacture. Pots can vary up to 20% in value which is why we test them prior to assembly! Now when it comes to guitar technology & development, things move rather slowly. We even developed a tendency to conserve what we think is responsible for the sound we fell in love with. Fair enough, after all if it ain’t broke…
As a result modern players still demand for a vintage style harnesses and components, and guitars are still build with technologies that are almost a century old. There is also a lot of heated debate and myths being spread in regards to the tone capacitors, the values of the pots and the stye of wiring in regards to the tone… We are not a church, so we won’t tell you what to believe in, we are just here to facilitate your ascension to the tone heaven but you have to walk the path, ultimately it’s up to you to know what you need! At the end of the day, one key factor seems to be the quality of the soldering job during assembly to guarantee a hum free, reliable and transparent signal that can be fine tuned. This is what you pay for here, the peace of mind that once your pickups are connected, the sound can travel freely, respond to your fingertips at will to your amp and let the magic starts!
The Premium Harness features components that you can find in all the vintage and modern instruments that are manufactured and imported from the U.S. under the highest quality control. It’s the favoured choice for high end instruments & vintage restoration. The capacitor used in this kit are the famous “orange” sprague cap which are widely used and renowned by industry professionals to be ultra transparent and reliable tone provider. Choose this kit if you want the best available components.
The Deluxe Harness features high quality component manufactured and imported from Asia and South America. We use the top of their range and having extensive experience with them we can guarantee their quality for players who simply want to upgrade a budget guitar or simply a second-hand instrument which needs an upgrade or a refreshment of its electronics. Choose this kit if you want a reliable upgrade to your current setup without breaking the bank.
The vintage cloth wire waxed low noise cable and the output Jack is from “Switchcraft” (US made) for both grades and supplied with washer and nut.

Installation and configuration tip : Both kits have 10mm (3/8”) diameter shaft, Split Shaft With Nut, Lock & Dress Washer. US thread and 24 spline - if your guitar was built in Asia, chances are that the control plate will have 8mm hole diameter, it’s an easy thing to fix with a drill and a 10mm HSS bit. Push-on plastic and metal knobs must be fitted with care, do not apply excessive force to risk damaging the pots.

Potentiometers for Volume and Tone

It’s the resistance value of your Volume and Tone pots. For a typical Stratocaster wiring we use and recommend 250k pots on all 3. Even with an HSS configuration. You may want to have a different wiring for a different tone control.
There is a myriad of pot styles and values out there, some players like to mix up values as it gives them a very different and more sensitive gradient of tone cut to play with (i.e. having a 250k Volume pot and a 1Meg Tone pot ) - If you were to require such setup, please go back to the shop section and select the Custom Harness Kit., we will happily provide advice and pot & cap values values to suit your requirements

The Value of the Tone Cap on the Telecaster Wiring harness Kit is predefined with the pot value:

• 250k pots value comes a 0.047uf

• 500k pots values comes a 0.022uf

• if you wanted to swap tone cap values, just leave us a message a checkout - It’s FREE !
  
  

Treble Bleed or not ?

A lot of players will play their guitars with the volume on 10, just about all the time. Comes to a moment when they start experimenting and fine tuning their output and rolling off that tone pot a bit, eventually they’ll do it with the volume pot too. That’s where it gets important. Your volume pot behaves like a gate and by shutting the gate a little bit or by a half, not only you reducing the volume, or output, but also some of the frequency range, typically the higher frequencies gets shut off first as they are part of the weakest part of the signal. A treble bleed “mod” is a little add-on of a combination of a capacitor and a resistor to prevent the leakage of high frequencies when the volume gets turned down. What for you say? Well you will be able to access the full spectrum of your pickups and articulation of your tone even at lower volume configuration, giving you a genuine fighting chance to play with volume dynamic. It’s something rather crucial when playing with other people. You want to be able to turn down but not loose your precious tone. That’s what it’s for. Leo Fender started using it on its very early model because he knew very well the effect of treble bleed on magnetic pickups. It’s becoming so necessary that most high end guitars come with it installed from the get go. Ultimately it’s up to you!

At WGCo. we uses a high quality 250K resistor in parallel with a .001 microfarad capacitor

Pickguard

If your pickguard is damaged, or you are building from a kit or restoring an old project guitar, maybe you want to keep a different setup handy to swap it within minutes between session to work out which on is best, who knows… you may want to have the possibility to get the plate at the same time, here is your chance. We don’t even make money on it we sell it to you the price it cost us! If you want a different layout than SSS or a different colour than the ones in there, we’ll make it happen ! We even offer the relic treatment if you want!

The standard pickguard comes in SSS configuration, if you wants something else or a specific layout (1 ply, 3 ply, tortoise, etc…) mention it at the checkout in the comments and we will make it happen!

Aluminum Shielding

What the heck? Aluminum in my Strat?
Stratocaster can be noisy, mainly due to the nature of the pickups. However there is a few tricks around this, apart from having a quality job on your electronic harness, having a aluminum shielding really improves the overall grounding. Most pickguards come with a very thin aluminum or copper tape. it’s okay but not ultimately doing the best job. Adding on a substantially thicker aluminum shield you can really make sure to keep your Strat quiet and if that doesn’t work you can always shield the inner cavity with copper shielding tape and/or conductive paint, unfortunately if you want that from us you’ll have to come in store!

A bit more about WGCo.’s Wring Harness Kits…

We have been wiring and re-wiring guitars for a little over 10 years and it’s more than often that a customer comes in with a pricey custom harness only to realise that if he would have bought it from us it would have been cheaper, faster and even sometimes a little more suited to their requirements, they just didn’t know we could do it. There is a lot of offers out there for wiring kits, especially coming from the U.S. and usually coming at a high cost for the end consumer here in Australia after shipping, a variable exchange rate and GST, not to mention the waiting times… Truth is, It’s been a while since we wanted to offer those online but if we were to do it, we only wanted to do it right! We wanted people to have a real choice between budget and option without compromising on quality for a true custom shop experience! It’s the same service quality we have face to face with our clients and we want to extend that to our online store.

It’s now here, the aftermarket electronic wiring harnesses kits by WGCo. featuring:
- High quality parts, tested and professionally assembled at the time of order - no stock sitting in boxes for years…
- Cloth-covered waxed Pushback 22 AWG vintage wire
- Insulated ground connection between the potentiometers,
- Stabilised insulated socket contacts
- Easy instruction
- Treble bleed mod available
- Extra options available (pot and tone cap value, control plate, Custom wiring)