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Ed Conway & The Unlawful Men - Alt Prog Folk: The FaceBook and The SoundCloud
'Rope Or A Ladder', 'Don't Sing Love Songs', and 'Poke The Frog' albums available now - see FaceBook page for details
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
I steer clear of Planet Waves these days as well. Normally, when a cable goes it is in the last 6 to 8 inches near the jack. You can normally chop off the end, and resolder the jack and it's good to go again. The Planet Waves ones with their moulded jacks make this impossible. The ones I've had haven't lasted long either. I've had them go bad in three or 4 years, where Whirlwinds have lasted me 15 years.
Picking up on something else that has been commented on, I steer clear of the switching jacks these days. They are too unreliable - even the Neutrik version in my experience.
One thing I have found with the recent trend towards Neutrik jacks everywhere (and black insulation) is that it gets very difficult to keep my leads from getting mixed up with the ones that belong to the church I play at. I think we need to go back to the days of flourescent green guitar leads.
the old hifi law that says spend 10% of your hifi budget always made me laugh
People would spend £20 or £50 on phono connectors, but if you took the lid off - little thin cheap wires, onto PCB tracks
Similarly with handwired amps, although they have thicker internal connectors when compared to hifi, there is little point vastly exceeding the spec of the internal cables the designer knew were adequate. Obviously speaker and instrument cables need to also allow for effects of cable length and handling noise, but you can get good cables under £10, e.g. Neutrik one for £9: http://cpc.farnell.com/_/av21107/guitar-lead-premium-3m/dp/AV21107
you can even get silent neutrik ones for £15: http://cpc.farnell.com/neutrik/g039ba/guitar-lead-silent-3m/dp/AV19615?in_merch=Products .I use these
"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
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
When I make cables I tend to put a bit of coloured heat shrink tube around each end of the cable, then it's easy to tell which are mine and which is which when connecting up effects loops and stuff (various colours of shrink tube).
Regarding Planet Waves cables, I had a few that I had no problems with, but I became paranoid about using them after somebody (ICBM I think it was) pointed out that their jacks are an odd shape and hold the contacts on sockets open further than normal plugs do - so could eventually make the socket too loose for other plugs. As I often leave my kit set up at home for a week or two between outings I started to worry about it and stopped using them - built myself some more Neutrik/Van Damme ones.
"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
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Me too. If you have a system that cost five grand, would you spend £500 on cables? The same cables that were more than adequate for a £500 system will be just as good.
"Rules" like this are stupid. Find out what the important characteristics of the cables you need are (both electrical and physical), spend enough to get ones that meet the requirement, job done. There's no point spending more.
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Firstly, @ICBM, what you call a 'rule' is actually only a guideline. Nobody is going to insist that you spend 10% of the total cost of the kit on cables. But a system costing five grand ought to sound superb. And I mean knock you sideways good. But anyone spending that much on a hi-fi system needs to have it demoed in a good hi-fi dealer listening room. Equipment synergy and all that. It would be remiss of the dealer if he did not demonstrate the improvements in sound better cables can give that system. Then YOU can decide if the improvement suggested is real or imaginary. Beware, those are the moments the most cynical of us [me for one!] will find their jaw hitting their knee.
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
I basically agree (as usual) with ICBM (and everyone else who's agreeing with him).
Making up arbitrary black and white rules which don't make sense makes no sense, if you ask me. Spend money on what you need to spend money on.
I can do that too
"To spend £££ on hand wired amps and true by pass pedals, and then to scrimp on 35p plectrums makes no sense. No sense I tells thee"
Right I'm off to buy boutique plectrums
:P
Or what about strings? Holy cack, most people with expensive guitars are using normal strings!
(And that's before you even consider that amps' being handwired or pedals' being true bypass doesn't necessarily make them better, there's faulty logic even in your claim before you even start looking at the rest of it.)
I've seen similar claims in guitar magazines regarding cables.
Ed Conway & The Unlawful Men - Alt Prog Folk: The FaceBook and The SoundCloud
'Rope Or A Ladder', 'Don't Sing Love Songs', and 'Poke The Frog' albums available now - see FaceBook page for details
Ed Conway & The Unlawful Men - Alt Prog Folk: The FaceBook and The SoundCloud
'Rope Or A Ladder', 'Don't Sing Love Songs', and 'Poke The Frog' albums available now - see FaceBook page for details
And the best way to make your cable, any cable, sound noticeably better is chop it in half and re-terminate.
Although I went through a cable phase and have got a bunch of fancy guitar cables and a collection of daft hifi cables. Great fun if you've got time and cash, it doesn't hurt anyone. I like George L over Pete Cornish and Kimber Btw....