Abstract This study describes new experimental techniques for dynamic analysis of bonding wire. The techniques employ a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) for non-contact measurement of wire response to transient, impact, and steady-state (harmonic) excitations. The first technique determines the transients and response time of the wire to current pulse excitations. The second technique, employs impacts delivered by a solenoid actuator to perform modal analysis on bonding wire and obtain their natural frequencies. Steady-state experimental techniques are also developed to obtain the mode shapes, nodal points, and frequency-response curves of bonding wire under thermal (current) excitation. These techniques are deployed to study the response of 300 μ m diameter Aluminum and Aluminum coated Copper bonding wires to DC and AC currents. The experimental results are interpreted and verified by comparing them to numerical results obtained from finite element analysis. This study experimentally measures and reports, for the first time, the second and fourth in-plane and the second out-of-plane bending mode shapes of bonding wire.