NegativeEase
New member
My post is buried on page 3 of the expensive cable thread... so no one will ever see it, so here it is (grammatically corrected too)
-as I think it's important basic info with regards to cable quality.
1) Low capacitance high end cables don't necessarily mean better. Just brighter and closer to if you measured the frequencies of your tone at the output jack. The guitar cable is PART of your sound and most amps are tuned specifically to compensate for a portion of this roll off -and many have a specific bright compensation switch. From an information standpoint -higher end cables would give you more information to work with at your processing stage. That is the advantage -the question for you as a guitarist is do you need or use that information that you can gain?
2) High frequency roll off in vintage cables is a hall mark of all the vintage tones you guys usually dream of -especially single coil players like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, and Gilmour and all the Telecaster rippers of old etc. So don't think expensive is necessarily "better" -it's different. Bear in mind a high cables additional information can be rolled off later -so it's not like a classic tone can't be approximated or achieved with modern cables also.
3) If you play active pickups the difference between a basic quality cable and an expensive one doesn't really matter -the signal strength and signal/noise ratio of the output buffer amp of an active set exceeds the roll off effect at guitar frequencies at the lengths a guitarist would use. Just buy good quality to avoid the downsides of cheap cables (lack of ruggedness, static crackling/slippage, stage grade insulator, solder breaks/termination quality etc)
4) The energy of your signal traveling in the cable is NOT the actual electrons push/pulling back and forth inside your cable from pickup to amp/pedal input -instead the energy of your signal is in the magnetic field emanating from the center conductor traveling through the dielectric polyfoam between the center conductor and the outer shield/braid conductor of your guitar cable This is why instrument cables are coaxial and not twisted pair -because the are designed to carry a very weak passive signal from a transducer and mitigate environmental noise. and don't need to dissipate heat like a speaker cable. -
Meaning every time you step on your guitar cable you slightly malform the dielectric shape in the cable changing the geometry between the conductor and braid and create a reflectance point in the cable which is a wave that has now turned 180 degrees moving back toward the transducer (pickup) you have also changed the capacitance and resistance of the cable, and the capacitive and inductive reactance of the circuit -basically every electrical property in an AC circuit has now been altered slightly
.... So before you beat yourself up about having a cable that is 100pf higher per meter than a really expensive cable.... Stop stepping on your cable a lot will have a bigger impact over the life of the cable than the difference of a good quality cable versus a high end one.
5) Lastly, -at minimum -just buy a quality brand guitar cable and keep the length between guitar and first buffer as short as you can stand the brightness for what you need and pick a cable that uses Switchcraft, Neutrik, or Amphenol connections and you can be sure compromises haven't been made elsewhere in the cable itself.
If you need brighter -sure buy a badass capacitance of like 50pf but don't unless you have figured out really if you need it -there's nothing wrong with high end cables if you need them for your sound (bright as hell or snappy maybe?) -unless you roll it all off right at the pedal or amp -in which case what's the point?
Now get back to playing more and spending less on prestige goods if you don't need it.
-if your guitar doesn't have several dings -then you have more fun to be found playing.
-as I think it's important basic info with regards to cable quality.
1) Low capacitance high end cables don't necessarily mean better. Just brighter and closer to if you measured the frequencies of your tone at the output jack. The guitar cable is PART of your sound and most amps are tuned specifically to compensate for a portion of this roll off -and many have a specific bright compensation switch. From an information standpoint -higher end cables would give you more information to work with at your processing stage. That is the advantage -the question for you as a guitarist is do you need or use that information that you can gain?
2) High frequency roll off in vintage cables is a hall mark of all the vintage tones you guys usually dream of -especially single coil players like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, and Gilmour and all the Telecaster rippers of old etc. So don't think expensive is necessarily "better" -it's different. Bear in mind a high cables additional information can be rolled off later -so it's not like a classic tone can't be approximated or achieved with modern cables also.
3) If you play active pickups the difference between a basic quality cable and an expensive one doesn't really matter -the signal strength and signal/noise ratio of the output buffer amp of an active set exceeds the roll off effect at guitar frequencies at the lengths a guitarist would use. Just buy good quality to avoid the downsides of cheap cables (lack of ruggedness, static crackling/slippage, stage grade insulator, solder breaks/termination quality etc)
4) The energy of your signal traveling in the cable is NOT the actual electrons push/pulling back and forth inside your cable from pickup to amp/pedal input -instead the energy of your signal is in the magnetic field emanating from the center conductor traveling through the dielectric polyfoam between the center conductor and the outer shield/braid conductor of your guitar cable This is why instrument cables are coaxial and not twisted pair -because the are designed to carry a very weak passive signal from a transducer and mitigate environmental noise. and don't need to dissipate heat like a speaker cable. -
Meaning every time you step on your guitar cable you slightly malform the dielectric shape in the cable changing the geometry between the conductor and braid and create a reflectance point in the cable which is a wave that has now turned 180 degrees moving back toward the transducer (pickup) you have also changed the capacitance and resistance of the cable, and the capacitive and inductive reactance of the circuit -basically every electrical property in an AC circuit has now been altered slightly
.... So before you beat yourself up about having a cable that is 100pf higher per meter than a really expensive cable.... Stop stepping on your cable a lot will have a bigger impact over the life of the cable than the difference of a good quality cable versus a high end one.
5) Lastly, -at minimum -just buy a quality brand guitar cable and keep the length between guitar and first buffer as short as you can stand the brightness for what you need and pick a cable that uses Switchcraft, Neutrik, or Amphenol connections and you can be sure compromises haven't been made elsewhere in the cable itself.
If you need brighter -sure buy a badass capacitance of like 50pf but don't unless you have figured out really if you need it -there's nothing wrong with high end cables if you need them for your sound (bright as hell or snappy maybe?) -unless you roll it all off right at the pedal or amp -in which case what's the point?
Now get back to playing more and spending less on prestige goods if you don't need it.
-if your guitar doesn't have several dings -then you have more fun to be found playing.
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Thats the worst when you have a cable with a broken conductor somewhere down the line....
