... Also I wanted to know what the best gage of wire to use would be? Also solid vs stranded. ...
Gage is all about the thickness of the conductor, which is then all about current-carrying capability. Smaller number = thicker conductor.
22ga (and maybe smaller) is plenty for most internal amp wiring. I prefer 18ga for the wiring from the power cord, power switch & power transformer primary. I also tend to use 18ga wire for heater wiring between output tubes (and from the pilot light to the output tube heaters, if I'm wiring a Fender-style amp). I then use 20 or 22ga for all other tube heaters, as well as all other amp wiring.
The Hoffman cloth-covered wire is 22ga solid core, and is plenty. Hoffman also stocks green 18ga stranded, cloth covered wire for heaters. Hoffman's Teflon wire is 20ga
stranded; likewise plenty big enough.
Solid core wire stays in place better if you bend & place it. If it's too thick, it can be hard to bend. If you bend it back & forth repeatedly, it will break. Some people choose to use stranded because of the perceived risk to long-term reliability due to solid-core breakage. However, the original Princeton Reverb used cloth covered solid core wire everywhere (except for the 18ga stranded wire from the PT to the output tube heaters). Lot of Fender amps from the 50's and 60's still chugging after 60 years without issues...
Stranded wire is more flexible, so it bends more easily. But that also means it might not stay in place well if you're trying to route the wire just-so. And you have chances of stray strands going in unintended directions, such as when you try to insert a wire into a tube socket solder lug. However, the Teflon stranded wire is fairly stiff for stranded wire, and is a middle ground between typical solid & stranded wire.
... I do know I need a shielded wire for a couple of spots but I'm not sure exactly where. ...
You can use shielded wire if you want, but it's not necessarily mandatory. Fender didn't have any shielded wires in their classic amps.
Usually, you'd use a shielded wire in long runs of wire carrying low-level signals. For a typical blackface chassis, that might be the wire from the input jacks to the 1st tube stage, and perhaps from the Volume control wiper to a tube grid. New builders generally create more problems than they solve by using shielded wire, by having poor execution in keeping the grounded shield away from signal-carrying wires, or by creating ground loops by incorrectly hooking up the shielded wire.
... any advice on scratch building and types of resistors and capacitors would be very useful. ...
You're best advised to get resistors and capacitors of the correct value, and voltage/wattage rating.
Seriously, right parts-values matter more than type. Beyond that, different folks prefer different things. Some will claim a particular resistor type is most-toneful, while others say you should use a different type for less noise. Sometimes cap type makes some amount of difference, other times it doesn't. You could pretty much order any cap or resistor of a given value from the Hoffman site (regardless of specific type), and as long as it has the correct basic ratings, your amp will sound good.
You can always experiment with more expensive tweak-parts later to see how much, if any, tone change you get.
Ed posted while I typed. I don't believe we're saying anything conflicting...
Topic: Questions about gage of wire. (Read 6302 times)