Kurt Vonnegut Fan

It's NOT notrocellulose, so you have nothing to worry about. The finish is some sort of urethane or polyester, non-reactive to latex.

To test, turn both volumes to 10, put selector switch in center position. With a small screwdriver (or any other metallic probe, or pushing a string down to touch) simply tap on a pole piece of each pickup. The audible pop will be obvious if the pickup is active. Again, if either pickup volume is turned all the way down with the switch in the center position, NEITHER pickup will be active.

That's all good and well, but messing around needlessly often causes situations like this: http://forum.gibson.com/index.php?/topic/55016-epiphone-riviera-p93-custom-wiring/ BTW, I believe the term is "old school"

I say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. On a low-current circuit, like an electric guitar, the type of wire means zip.

You say "better parts" - is there something wrong with the ones that are in there now, and/or have you identified what's in there now? Cap values of .047 are typical for Fender-type single-coil pickups - there's some erroneous info out there that because Casinos have single-coil pickups (P90s), they use the same caps as Fender. That is not the case; Gibson/Epiphone uses the same components on P90s as with Humbuckers.

My personal experience is that, if doing so specifically as an upgrade to enhance tone, it will yield absolutely nothing. Your guitar will sound exactly the same afterwards. That said, if doing so because one or more of the pots are getting scratchy, replacement will end the scratchiness, and high-quality pots (like CTS) will last a lot longer than many stock Epi pots. Same for doing it as a preventative measure. In my case, pots were getting scratchy after only about 3 years of light use. All has been stable with CTS pots ever since (4+ years). Epi often uses 500k audio taper for tone, 300k linear for volume, and .022uf tone caps. From what I can tell, many folks upgrade their Epis (as I did) with all 500k audio taper pots. I don't think caps are anywhere as big a deal as some assert - aside from value, a cap is a cap.