It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
I believe it was £11k not £13k.
I wouldn't pay that for a new guitar, and I wouldn't pay it for pre-CBS Strat unless I had a lot more money than I do now, but there is a lot more work that does into a guitar than one of those £23k Russ Andrews cables.
The cable is probably of similar complexity to a pickup. Even if it was wound with silver wire, not even the richest PRS fan boy would pay £11k for a single pickup, let alone £23k.
I can understand paying a few hundred for a decent analogue audio cable if that's your thing. Up to that point you are likely to be improving audio quality very slightly. Beyond that though, it is snake oil. A double blind test would prove it to be snake oil.
Paying stupid money for a mains cable or a fuse is ridiculous though. It's all rectified to DC inside the unit anyway, so the mains cable or mains fuse will make bog all difference. Better filtering/smoothing in the power supply might make a difference, but beyond a certain point it won't be audible. If you think that the 50Hz mains will interfere then doing the AC to DC conversion in a separate, shielded, box might conceivably make a marginal difference, although I would be willing to be that neither you, or any other "audiophile" would be able to tell the difference in a double blind test.
As for the expensive digital cables. Don't know where to start on that. How thick can people be?
All this has been gone through before - just search for the thread. If you would prefer to believe in the sort of nonsense I cited above, go right ahead. After all we live in the Post-Enlightenment age where everyone can believe what they went, be this the supposed benefits to be had from a £23,000 audio cable, 'tone wood', magical 'mojo' or invisible all-powerful sky fairies.
But you just keep on repeating the same conclusion even though it totally flies in the face of that.
"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
All I'll say is that anyone who thinks this guy talks sense has no right to laugh at audiophiles.
Better bow out there, I don't want the 'tone wood' warriors to come after me - just look at what went on recently with Will Gelvin. What a fascinating car crash all that was!
But in all seriousness, @Three-ColourSunburst I would be genuinely interested in reading any papers you'd like to cite that support your conclusion, as I suspect they have glaring holes in their premise & methodology. Have I missed/forgotten an old thread with this stuff?
The remarkable thing is that the researchers so wanted to prove that it makes no difference that they didn't even look at their own data properly, despite publishing it along with the erroneous conclusion. Just like Three-ColourSunburst .
"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
Only I'm sure you've claimed to be an electrician in the past, and if that was true, then you'd know that this "cogging" notion is absolute bunkum.
There is mains powered scientific instrumentation that requires - and measurably achieves - orders of magnitude more precision in its motion than does a record turntable.
I honestly do not understand why you don't just read an electronics book or two and actually learn about the subject. Did you even read the white papers and audio design guides I sent you?
Why your insistence on ignoring the findings of that properly conducted scientific study that I cited and discussed in some length in the original thread?
https://physicae.ifi.unicamp.br/index.php/physicae/article/view/physicae.9.5
http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/112703/body-wood-affects-tone/p1
No laws of physics were broken, just a lot of useful data was obtained which showed absolute proof that there was a difference in the response from two different bodies.
You can try to spin this any way you want but you're simply wrong.
Exactly...
It should be clear by now that no evidence will convince you when you're determined to ignore it, so we may as well leave it there.
"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
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
I'd argue that the methodology should have used a mechanical rig as a "pick" to ensure that the force and position of the picking was identical in every case, and it should have been repeated LOADS of times, rather than apparently just a single pluck of each string. But the alder shows a clear increase in db above 6k Hz for all strings. Certainly the curves are nowhere near the same.
It's OK, we all know the answer. They sound different if you don't pile on enough dirt to make a cello sound the same as a kazoo.
I'm 42, and I can hear and feel the difference between different body woods played both acoustically and though an amp though. 3cs trying to equate 23 grand audio cables with getting a guitar made out of demonstrably more resonant wood is comparing chalk and cheese in an effort to prove a point which doesn't exist.
My Trading Feedback | You Bring The Band
Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after youI remember this discussion. I took out the following:
- it does not seem possible to fully conclude that body material has NO effect on the tone.
- the original study (student one) appeared to show that there were observable differences in different tone woods (as measured by frequency response) and that these differences were either overlooked, ignored or inadequately explained.
- any effect on tone from the body material is likely to be small relative to differences in tone settings, amplifiers, speakers etc. Additionally the sting to neck coupling was probably more important than the string to body coupling in terms of influence on overall tone
- it seems that no-one has properly investigated the full 'system' when playing an electric guitar - ie. the strings, guitar AND amplifier and the interactions between them.
- attempting to do so would be harder than a very hard thing
- that there aren't many PhD level physicists who are guitarists and those that are don't appear to be on this forum
- that I should buy a semi or hollow body guitar so that I can understand more about how the body influences tone, particularly when amplified via a speaker.
That last bit is very fun so at least some good has come from it!
As to whether someone will pay £1,500 for an old cable. Well, good luck with the sale, as they say.
This is partly why I find the audiophile habits of self deception and superstition so ridiculous. They refuse to learn about the underlying technology, and they don't understand how to make sound decisions (pun partly intended). The desperately bizarre explanations they come up with (such as juxtaposing 33.3rpm with 50Hz, as if the one has anything to do with the other) are just the daft cherry on the laughable cake.