Cable Snobs - there has to be some here??

Col_Decker

To spend £££ on hand wired amps and true by pass pedals, and then to scrimp on £10 cables makes no sense. No sense I tells thee

Rocker

What the OP needs is a cable that he can depend upon. The price he pays for it is up to himself. He needs to know it will work for his next 'big' gig. This could be a jam in the local pub, his girlfriend's twenty first party, a slot on the Wembley stage. Whatever he deems big, once it works, the cable is good value. I appreciate the benefits of cables in a hi-fi system - appropriate wire can allow the system to perform to its potential. For a guitar lead I am less convinced. The guitarist has tone controls to shape his sound. What he needs to know is that his cable will work when most needed.

Shark_Eyes

I recently bought new cables, a mid price tweed Fender one and a very expensive Tobacco one. The Tobacco one was bought on recommendation and since it was fairly hefty, looked like it could probably take a fair while to work out.

The cables I was replacing were Planet Waves ones I bought when I first started playing around 12 years ago, and they'd started to crackle a bit, so I guess it's less amazing cables and more, retiring time.

Long story short, I think sound the sound quality improvement is probably down to cable quality and cable care, something I didn't fully understand 12 years ago.

crunchman

I don't buy really cheap ones as I find they don't last and they make noise when moved around.  However I don't normally spend more than £30.

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.

Deadman

I'd only buy Rob's off here. They're the best.

ToneControl

Col_Decker said:

To spend £££ on hand wired amps and true by pass pedals, and then to scrimp on £10 cables makes no sense. No sense I tells thee

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

ICBM

ToneControl said:

the old hifi law that says spend 10% of your hifi budget always made me laugh

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.

DartmoorHedgehog

crunchman said:

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.

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.

maltingsaudio

Just to add to the discussion I get most of my cables when we load out after a gig, and seeing as alot of mine get nicked when a guitarist shows up without a cable and asks to borrow one it seems to balance itself. ( We also get mains cables/plugs tuners stands drum sticks gaffa tape  and sometimes even amps and drum kits. Whilst we try to return the high price stuff and always have a look if someone comes and asks  it is quite amazing how many bands don't care about their accessories ) 

ICBM

It's not just the plugs - Planet Waves are the most unreliable cables I've ever come across. I wouldn't trust one as far as I could tow the Queen Mary with it. The shop I work for took a whole delivery of them and over 90% failed - some customers had them replaced more than once before they gave up. The cables hadn't been mistreated as far as I could tell - in fact for one of the customers (a friend of mine who I had recommended PW to when they first came in) eventually swapped them for some cheapo Westfield cables, and no more problems.

I've also seen quite a few failures with Monster and Van Damme cable, and a couple with Klotz a long time ago. The right-angle plugs on Venom cables are particularly failure-prone too.

grungebob

I have a whirlwind cable and an old curly grey cable I've had since I was 16, I'm now 36. Neither have ever broken but the whirlwind does snake a bit.

drwiddly

Van Damme cable with Neutrik jacks for me. Been using those for years with only one or two failures due to accidents/rough handling. A 6m lead works out less than twenty quid.

EdGrip

I meant to say in my comment above - I wouldn't have a Neutrik silent jack again. I don't trust it.

Rocker

ICBM said: ToneControl said: the old hifi law that says spend 10% of your hifi budget always made me laugh -------------------------------------------------------
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.
---------------------------------------------
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.

Another thing is to use 'difficult' music if you are going to a hi-fi shop for a system demo.  Almost any mix-n-match of kit will make AC/DC sound great.  AC/DC are great and I really enjoy their music, but it is lacking in any real dynamic range so it is not a good test of a hi-fi system.  IMHO the most difficult instrument for a hi-fi system to reproduce accurately is a concert grand piano.  Listen to a real concert grand before the demo to get your ears tuned in, I use CDs of Beethoven or Chopin [played by Naum Starkman] and then the 'differences' are very apparent.  Get Chopin piano music sounding 'right' and then AC/DC will sound magnificent.  The bad news is that Garth Brooks will too

Dave_Mc

JookyChap said:

I think there is a difference between buying quality, and buying snake oil.

+1

I basically agree (as usual) with ICBM (and everyone else who's agreeing with him).

Col_Decker said:

To spend £££ on hand wired amps and true by pass pedals, and then to scrimp on £10 cables makes no sense. No sense I tells thee

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.)

ToneControl said:

Col_Decker said:

To spend £££ on hand wired amps and true by pass pedals, and then to scrimp on £10 cables makes no sense. No sense I tells thee

the old hifi law that says spend 10% of your hifi budget always made me laugh

I've seen similar claims in guitar magazines regarding cables.

Col_Decker

You can buy cheap picks if you like, they'll wear out quickly though cos they're made of cheap plastic.

Col_Decker

You can buy that £10 bright orange lead too, but the jacks will break after a few weeks.

jpfamps

I wonder how many people have had their gig ruined:

a) due to the catastrophically detrimental affect their guitar cables have had on their "tone"

b) due a guitar cable failing

Van_Hayden

jpfamps;146908" said:

I wonder how many people have had their gig ruined:

a) due to the catastrophically detrimental affect their guitar cables have had on their "tone"

b) due a guitar cable failing

This. ^


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....

dindude

I buy half decent cables (maybe whirlwind or similar) on the expectation they will be fairly robust rather than sound better. However, the blatant snob-bating nature of the original question demonstrates the low point of this forum IMHO. Seriously, what's the point other than being self congratulatory and smug?