guitar cable wiring trouble

[nocebo]

I think this post fits here...
A friend of mine gave me a guitar cable that he reported had failed because i told him i could fix it. I took the end off and soldered on a "Silent Plug" where there is a spring mechanism that slides over the plug to prevent buzz and pops when plugging it in. I don't think i'll buy those anymore. but here's my question: If you snip a few of the ground wires (out of the several dozen that are coiled around the signal cable) when you are stripping some plastic sheath off, will that make for any sort of signal loss?
i tried the guitar cable out and it would play, but at significantly lower volume and wouldn't carry much gain, either.
i tried my regular cable out and it's fine. might it be the plug? the ground wires (a few) that i snipped off? or maybe just the cable, which i hadn't tried before.
thanks

colin

[darren wilson]

The braided/coiled wires aren't there for grounding, they're for shielding. They do get connected to the guitar's string ground, but they shouldn't have any effect on the signal coming down the main conductor. I'm guessing there's a fault in the main wire or the connector(s).

[bammbamm]

Darren, that all depends on if he has a shielded 2 or 3 conductor cable.

Just be more careful when stripping the wires...

Bamm

[steve]

That's a cold solder joint if ever I heard of one: try re-heating the solder joints and make sure all of the contact is clean (no crossover from shield/ground to hot).