Cable Snobs - there has to be some here??

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  • EdGripEdGrip Frets: 736
    I think the intent was snob-baiting; snob-bating would be a thread with the opposite intent. ;)
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  • monquixotemonquixote Frets: 17485
    edited January 2014 tFB Trader
    I can give all my cable wisdom in one line:
    Cheap cables sound shit, medium priced cables sound fine, but break and higher end cables sound the same as the medium priced ones, but don't break. 

    You really can't go wrong with Kabl. Well made and good service. 
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  • Dave_McDave_Mc Frets: 2324
    edited January 2014
    You can buy cheap picks if you like, they'll wear out quickly though cos they're made of cheap plastic.
    nah i use the gator grip ones because they don't wear out quickly
    You can buy that £10 bright orange lead too, but the jacks will break after a few weeks.
    If you checked my post you'll see I said that I have no problem with paying for "quality" (implication being ones that don't break). Thing is, you can get that quality for £10-£15 a cable from the likes of kabl or award session.

    ^ Yeah pretty much @monquixote (or at least not the same, there may be subtle differences but I'm not convinced they're worth paying tons for considering how many other things make a bigger difference, not to mention that there are some things you can do to minimise, if not outright eliminate, those differences.)

    I'd also add the caveat that "higher-end" doesn't necessarily mean "super-expensive". As I'm guessing you implied with the Kabl reference.
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  • imaloneimalone Frets: 748
    Fender custom shop tweed.
    Because I like tweed.

    My cables don't get a lot of abuse though. Have a red 'cable guys' cable 3m, £12 a few years ago, no signs of falling apart yet. The planet waves patch cables I've got look more flimsy.
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  • LewLew Frets: 1657
    edited January 2014
    Only £39.99? Bless :-p 

    Get yourself some of this. Only $5999 for 10foot http://www.amazon.com/Analysis-Plus-Golden-Guitar-Instrument/dp/B00FISHUFW

    Evidence cable looks like good value at £75 for 10ft, now eh?

    But, yea VANDAMME cable and Neutrik jacks. What's the problem? It's hardly expensive. If you want to have shitty microphonic and unreliable cables go for it, it's your rig after all :D

    I really like the Hicon jacks I got from Rob at KABL. Great for pedalboards.
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  • EdGripEdGrip Frets: 736
    See, I thought that the £15 cables from KABL etc were at the low end, and the snob-cables were the £50 jobs. Everyone should have £15 hand-made cables, that's just sensible.
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  • EdGripEdGrip Frets: 736
    • Heirloom quality cable

    "Listen, son. You turn 18 tomorrow. Take a seat, go on now. Tomorrow you'll be a man. And when I turned 18, my father handed this box on to me. Hand made, this box! By your great-grandfather Simon, that's him there in the photo. See the marquetry, he was quite an artisan your grandfather... inlaid here you can see the little scene.... the man there, playing his electric guitar, and then in mother of pearl, see the cable come from his guitar... right along there, right around the outside of the box, see the little celtic knots in the corners... and then over to the other side, and into the front of the amp... we can't see what make of amp it is, he left that to our imagination, or maybe amps didn't have makes in those days... Anyway. Here. It's yours. Go on, open it!"
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  • EdGripEdGrip Frets: 736
    I just reviewed it; I suspect the seller won't allow it.
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  • imaloneimalone Frets: 748
    edited January 2014
    Lew said:
    What's the problem? It's hardly expensive. If you want to have shitty microphonic and unreliable cables go for it, it's your rig after all :D
    Microphonic? I don't like saying things aren't possible outright, so if that was a practical joke to see who would spend five minutes tapping cables with the gain whacked up to the point where you can hear your watch's action six inches from the pickups then I fell for it.
    However I now feel pretty confident microphonic cables are not a thing. At the level where you can hear the body of the guitar resonate in response to the shock on the cable you still can't hear anything when the cable is clamped down. The physics doesn't really work anyway unless the insulation is so thin the capacitance is significant, maybe if you had really bad jacks or, of course, you tried to design them that way.
    Reliability is another thing of course and a sensible reason to go for decent quality.
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71950

    imalone said:
    Lew said:
    What's the problem? It's hardly expensive. If you want to have shitty microphonic and unreliable cables go for it, it's your rig after all :D
    Microphonic? I don't like saying things aren't possible outright, so if that was a practical joke to see who would spend five minutes tapping cables with the gain whacked up to the point where you can hear your watch's action six inches from the pickups then I fell for it.
    However I now feel pretty confident microphonic cables are not a thing. At the level where you can hear the body of the guitar resonate in response to the shock on the cable you still can't hear anything when the cable is clamped down. The physics doesn't really work anyway unless the insulation is so thin the capacitance is significant, maybe if you had really bad jacks or, of course, you tried to design them that way.
    You've obviously never come across a microphonic cable then :D.

    They certainly can be. The capacitance is always significant, that's exactly why guitar cables sound different from each other and mostly why you lose top-end when you roll the guitar volume down. Most modern cables just have a good enough construction that the two conductors stay put relative to each other, so they aren't microphonic.

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • GassageGassage Frets: 30824
    I found out the proprietary cable that Pete Cornish uses for all his rigs. It's not cheap, but if you buy it yourself and solder it works out a damn sight cheaper than some of the so called boutique brands. And it's very durable. I'll find the link and post it.

    *An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.

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  • GassageGassage Frets: 30824
    OK- COrnish recommends and uses Belden 8412 cable that is £5.42/Metre EX VAT + ends and soldering skills.

    *An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.

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  • LewLew Frets: 1657
    edited January 2014
    imalone said:
    Lew said:
    What's the problem? It's hardly expensive. If you want to have shitty microphonic and unreliable cables go for it, it's your rig after all :D
    Microphonic? I don't like saying things aren't possible outright, so if that was a practical joke to see who would spend five minutes tapping cables with the gain whacked up to the point where you can hear your watch's action six inches from the pickups then I fell for it.
    However I now feel pretty confident microphonic cables are not a thing. At the level where you can hear the body of the guitar resonate in response to the shock on the cable you still can't hear anything when the cable is clamped down. The physics doesn't really work anyway unless the insulation is so thin the capacitance is significant, maybe if you had really bad jacks or, of course, you tried to design them that way.
    Reliability is another thing of course and a sensible reason to go for decent quality.


    That's not a fair test. The proper way to test it is to just gently lick all of the jacks whilst they are plugged in.

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  • imaloneimalone Frets: 748
    Lew said:
    imalone said:
    Lew said:
    What's the problem? It's hardly expensive. If you want to have shitty microphonic and unreliable cables go for it, it's your rig after all :D
    Microphonic? I don't like saying things aren't possible outright, so if that was a practical joke to see who would spend five minutes tapping cables with the gain whacked up to the point where you can hear your watch's action six inches from the pickups then I fell for it.


    That's not a fair test. The proper way to test it is to just gently lick all of the jacks whilst they are plugged in.

    Did you know red cables are strawberry flavoured?

    ICBM said:

    imalone said:
    However I now feel pretty confident microphonic cables are not a thing. At the level where you can hear the body of the guitar resonate in response to the shock on the cable you still can't hear anything when the cable is clamped down. The physics doesn't really work anyway unless the insulation is so thin the capacitance is significant, maybe if you had really bad jacks or, of course, you tried to design them that way.
    You've obviously never come across a microphonic cable then :D.

    They certainly can be. The capacitance is always significant, that's exactly why guitar cables sound different from each other and mostly why you lose top-end when you roll the guitar volume down. Most modern cables just have a good enough construction that the two conductors stay put relative to each other, so they aren't microphonic.
    Kind of what I was getting at but didn't want to get into too much of a ramble about caveats, you need relative movement (it being change in capacitance that's needed), and they need to get quite close, and unless there's a really bad hot spot you need this along a significant portion of the length (since it's the length of the cable that racks up the capacitance). Since plastic is cheaper than copper even cheapish cables would have to really try to get this wrong (I generally avoid the cheapest ones since jacks are usually terrible). I guess if the cable itself is microphonic then it's incredibly frequency dependent and orientation dependent and you'd also get noise just from moving the thing.
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71950

    imalone said:
    I guess if the cable itself is microphonic then it's incredibly frequency dependent and orientation dependent and you'd also get noise just from moving the thing.
    They tend to rustle when you move them. I wouldn't say particularly orientation-dependednt - more or less any movement seems to do it. It also only happens when there's either a signal going through it or if the amp has a tiny DC leak from the first valve stage (not uncommon) obviously, since otherwise there is no signal produced.

    Same principle as a condenser microphone really, just on a much less intentional scale :).

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • Ok make my own here as well. A friend and I bought a 100m drum of Van Damme cable and a bundle of Neutriks. We did notice there are different Neutriks , so we bought the slightly higher price ones (nice looking black ones with gold coloured tips) , and some silent jacks.

    I like the cable , very slim and flexible , yes they are a bit of a fiddle to strip back. Though my friend and I set ourselves up a little production line one afternoon. I was doing the stripping , and he the soldering (He is a electronics engineer so I also got a soldering lesson , he makes it look so easy using a tiny amount of solder). The cables are now over 3 years old and some gigged a fair amount and all working well. What we also did was put our names on the cables with clear heat shrink so they don't get aquired by others at gigs ....

    I originally had planet waves silent , and they were very poor.  I still have a "curly" I bought back in the 70's .... haven't tried it in years . I must plug it in and see what happens  :-)  Perhaps I can sell it on Ebay as a classic relic lead .....
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  • JalapenoJalapeno Frets: 6378

    You really can't go wrong with Kabl. Well made and good service. 
    This.

    I've Wisdom'd you !

    Well made, good service, and a free plectrum no less !!!!!!!!!!
    Imagine something sharp and witty here ......

    Feedback
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  • timmysofttimmysoft Frets: 1962
    I've done a bit of cable testing in my time ( i used to test sub-sea oil and gas survey cables) so i know a little bit about what makes a cable good and how to keep a cable working effectively.

    I recently bought a batch of Fender leads, the new thick ones with the lifetime warranty. Out of 6 cables i had 1 that failed out on tour (failed because of impurities in the solder joint), took it back to the shop and they'd run out of these cables so they gave me one of the new braided sheath custom shop cables as a replacement.

    interestingly the custom shop cable which is supposed to be more expensive, to my ears doesnt sound as good, its slightly duller but doesnt kink or bend as easily. 

    Just remember a cable is only as good as the termination on each end, you can have insane cable but if you've got some shitty jacks on the end that are held on by tape then its still going to sound like dog.
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  • Gassage;147246" said:
    OK- COrnish recommends and uses Belden 8412 cable that is £5.42/Metre EX VAT + ends and soldering skills.
    Thanks for that. I wasn't sure what cable to get when mine finally break, but might as well use that. Though whether there is cheaper stuff that's just as good, I don't know.
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  • GassageGassage Frets: 30824
    edited January 2014
    Gassage;147246" said:
    OK- COrnish recommends and uses Belden 8412 cable that is £5.42/Metre EX VAT + ends and soldering skills.
    Thanks for that. I wasn't sure what cable to get when mine finally break, but might as well use that. Though whether there is cheaper stuff that's just as good, I don't know.
    Pete tested loads I believe, and liked this the best. He's a good judge. I bought a few off him, now I make my own and the only diff is the 'hand that soldered'. If you buy a braided sleeve, they're very strong as instrument leads, as well as patch cables.

    *An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.

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