What are the BEST brand(s) of guitar cables? Opinions Wanted!
- Thread starter maxon
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One of Jerry's Kids
Also, keep in mind the longer and more complex your signal chain is the better your cables need to be. I got a free cable with the purchase of a pedal recently. I was ready to throw it in the trash. Upon using it, the cheap little cable is fine plugged directly into an amp. I know if I used it with a few pedals it would be noisy as hell
Powdered Toast Man
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I have a Planet Waves/D'Addario cable. They're guaranteed for life. I had one that I used as my primary guitar cable for about 15 years and it started getting unreliable (cutting out). I took it to the store where I bought it and they just told me to go grab another one off the rack.
But my cable only gets used at home or rehearsal now. I've been wireless at gigs for the better part of the last 7 years.
For pedalboards, I will not touch George L's. Don't bother trying to convince me. Every single person I've seen or heard of who uses them has had problems.Every single time their board starts acting up, it's one of the George L's. I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone thinks a crimped connection is better than a soldered connection.
But my cable only gets used at home or rehearsal now. I've been wireless at gigs for the better part of the last 7 years.
For pedalboards, I will not touch George L's. Don't bother trying to convince me. Every single person I've seen or heard of who uses them has had problems.Every single time their board starts acting up, it's one of the George L's. I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone thinks a crimped connection is better than a soldered connection.
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NegativeEase
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I still have a few as well from 90s/00s... pretty solid.
NegativeEase
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Let me add a few technical reminders for people concerned that they missing out on not having George Ls or Mogamis etc...
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 to compensate for this roll off.
2) High frequency roll off in vintage cables is the hall mark of all the tones you guys 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"
3) Also, if you play active pickups it doesn't 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 (ruggedness, static crackling, 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. it's in the magnetic field emanating from the center conductor traveling through the dialectric polyfoam between the center conductor and the outer shield/braid conductor. This is why instrument cables are coxial and not twisted pair -because the are designed to carry a very weak passive signal from a transducer and mitigate environmental noise. Meaning every time you step on your guitar cable you slightly malform the dialectric shape in the cable, and create ading or misshape with creates reflectance 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.... 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 cables has a bigger impact over the life of the cable than a good quality cable versus a high end one.
5) Lastly, as I said before -just buy a quality brand naw guitar cable and keep the length between guitar and first buffer as short as you can stand the brightness and pick a cable that uses Switchcraft, Neutrik, or Amphenol connections and you can be sure compromises haven't been made elsewhere.
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 maybe? -unless you roll it off a the pedal or amp -in which case what's the point?
Now get back to playing more and spending less on prestige goods. if your guitar doesn't have dings -then you have more fun to be found playing.
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 to compensate for this roll off.
2) High frequency roll off in vintage cables is the hall mark of all the tones you guys 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"
3) Also, if you play active pickups it doesn't 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 (ruggedness, static crackling, 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. it's in the magnetic field emanating from the center conductor traveling through the dialectric polyfoam between the center conductor and the outer shield/braid conductor. This is why instrument cables are coxial and not twisted pair -because the are designed to carry a very weak passive signal from a transducer and mitigate environmental noise. Meaning every time you step on your guitar cable you slightly malform the dialectric shape in the cable, and create ading or misshape with creates reflectance 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.... 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 cables has a bigger impact over the life of the cable than a good quality cable versus a high end one.
5) Lastly, as I said before -just buy a quality brand naw guitar cable and keep the length between guitar and first buffer as short as you can stand the brightness and pick a cable that uses Switchcraft, Neutrik, or Amphenol connections and you can be sure compromises haven't been made elsewhere.
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 maybe? -unless you roll it off a the pedal or amp -in which case what's the point?
Now get back to playing more and spending less on prestige goods. if your guitar doesn't have dings -then you have more fun to be found playing.
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Metalman_666
New member
I'm late to the party but, the cable that has lasted be the longest is the Planet Waves Circuit Breaker with the button on the right angle end.
Within the first few months, it failed, took it back to L&M and was shocked that they said "just grab another one and come to the register". That was a decade ago and it's still going strong!
Also have a green/black Spectraflex that somehow ended up in my possession around the same time, and it's great. But the Peavey cable I got 17 years ago is dead.
I've debated brands like Rattlesnake (might still buy one), Lava, etc but can't justify it
Sent from my SM-N986W using Tapatalk
Within the first few months, it failed, took it back to L&M and was shocked that they said "just grab another one and come to the register". That was a decade ago and it's still going strong!
Also have a green/black Spectraflex that somehow ended up in my possession around the same time, and it's great. But the Peavey cable I got 17 years ago is dead.
I've debated brands like Rattlesnake (might still buy one), Lava, etc but can't justify it
Sent from my SM-N986W using Tapatalk
I used the braided Dimarzio for years. However, recently I learned that the MXR Pro Instrument cable, for not a lot of money, measures very low capacitance. They are also well constructed and quite supple. I have them in both 10 and 20 feet. I also plan on using the patch cables as well, if I ever get around to building my pedalboard.
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