Cable length?

Closed Eye

Closed Eye

New member
For you non-wireless cable users out there what's the average length (in feet or meters) of your cable from instrument to amplifier? or, if you use a pedal board, from amp to board to guitar?

I'm also going into a live situation and would just like to know, from you live guys in particular, what's a good length to have in general for that kind of situation. Thanks!
 
Re: Cable length?

Yeah I've usually run 20 feet from amp to pedals, and then 6 to 10 feet from pedals to guitar. All depends on how much running around you do. Keep in mind that the signal diminishes slightly somewhere around 30 feet or so.
 
Re: Cable length?

Jay 77 said:
Yeah I've usually run 20 feet from amp to pedals, and then 6 to 10 feet from pedals to guitar. All depends on how much running around you do. Keep in mind that the signal diminishes slightly somewhere around 30 feet or so.
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Strictly speaking, that means you are 10 to 14 feet short of being able to reach your amp...

I guess I should have said - 20 feet from pedals to amp and 20 feet from guitar to pedals. So I guess I have exceeded to 30 foot limit mentioned by Jay 77 above. But I really feel I need this length.
 
Re: Cable length?

I only ever buy 30 ft guitar cables unless they´re to be used for patching, those I make myself because most patchcables I´ve seen and used are crap.
 
Re: Cable length?

I normally use a 10ft cable from guitar to pedalboard and usually another 10ft cable from pedalboard to amp.
 
Re: Cable length?

RW James said:
Strictly speaking, that means you are 10 to 14 feet short of being able to reach your amp...

I guess I should have said - 20 feet from pedals to amp and 20 feet from guitar to pedals. So I guess I have exceeded to 30 foot limit mentioned by Jay 77 above. But I really feel I need this length.
Click to expand...


Hey, if you need it go nuts. It's not like your signal will drop out or anything. I used to go 20ft from pedals to amp and 15ft from guitar to pedals but there's just too much tangled up in front of me like that.
 
Re: Cable length?

After about 20ft you not only loose signal your signal to noise ratio increases. That means more noise for the amount of signal you have, not good for pedals. So use the shortest possible cable length possible. In other words if you are a gigging player you should carry with you a few different lengths.

It all depends were you stand on stage, how much you move on the stage and how big the stage is. Also, where do you put your amp? Is it in the back line or up closer.

I always had a bag with extra cables, strings, picks, tools and anything else I could think of that I might need at a gig. I was never big on pedals so I just had a few 18ft cables. If you have a pedal board I would carry a few 10ft, 15ft and 18ft. if you are far away from your amp use the 18ft cable to the amp from the pedals and the 10ft from the guitar to the pedals. That way you could get a better signal to noise ratio, you might have to add a little gain on the distortion/overdrive pedal. That would be better than having the long cable from the guitar into the pedals.

When I did use pedals I had to do it the other way around, some places had no stage so I was always worried about people stepping on my pedal board. So I used the 18ft first and the 10ft from the pedals to the amp. It worked OK since I didn't use a high gain setup.
 
Re: Cable length?

I might add that if you feel you need more cable it might be time to think in terms of a wireless system.

I wonder if there is some type of relay system so you have one from the guitar to the pedal board and one from the board to the amps.
 
Re: Cable length?

I've got 18ft between pedals and the amp, 10ft between guitar and pedals.

When using the pedal board, I've got two 18ft cables zip-tied together. One from the wireless receiver to the pedals and then the other back to the amp. Homemade snake. :)
 
Re: Cable length?

I've heard from several sources over the years that about 18ft is where the average human ear begins to hear the difference. I think an experienced ear/player can tell at about 5ft. It's cumulative, but only in a true bypass situation. If you have 18ft to the pedals, and the pedal buffers the signal (low impedance) than 5-25 feet or more shouldn't make a difference from pedal to amp. Likewise, 20ft+ from wireless to pedals is fine, too, for the same reason. But without turning this into a cable debate, I have some lousy 6-10ft cables that sound worse than good 20ft's.

I have a loop pedal & A/B switch I made, and I don't like it true bypassed, because that's about 30ft of cable total. I lose too much signal from guitar to amp. I don't like the pedal's buffers either, though! So I'm going to put a Bartolini preamp in there, so "true bypass" will really be buffered. Then maybe I'll put a mini switch in there so I can really use true bypass with shorter cables, too.
 
Re: Cable length?

With my 5150 i tend to use a 20 footer to a pedalboard that has an ON/OFF Morley switch for guitar change overs, and a wah... the a 10 footer from the board to the amp.... so maybe 31 feet.... on really small stages i have used 2 10 foot cables...
 
Re: Cable length?

Let's see...20' to my stomp boxes...6 x 6" to connect them...a 3' jumper to connect the stomp boxes to my GT-6...another 20' to the amp. So that's about 46 feet. I use good cables and don't have any problems with noise.
 
Re: Cable length?

Here's the truth as I know it and I have been seriously doing this cable thing for a couple of years now:

With good cable the average ear will not notice any signal loss until after 40 feet or so. (Eric Johnson uses a 40' George L's for instance - I spoke to him at show backstage and he uses George L's because it maintains signal strength to his ears at that length.

I think your first consideration should be quality and then length - only for how you far like to be in front of your amp how you move around on stage.
 
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