Variable capacitance cables....anyone using one?

Lewy

Not really a making or modding question but this seems like the best place. I'm thinking of things like the Neutrik Timbre plug. Anyone using these?

I have a Kingtone switch in one of my strats which also works by adding capacitance and I really like the effect ... it's different to what you can achieve just by fiddling with tone controls although I wouldn't have a clue as to why. Anyway, it would be nice to be able to do a similar thing to guitars that don't have a Kingtone seeing as they're £100 a pop.

Anyone got any real-world experience or recommendations?

Stratavarious

I just use some old, thin grey radio shack cables I bought about 40 years ago.. rolls off all that top end harshness  

You could put the internal guitar stuff into a stomp box case maybe

PeteC

I just use really long cables when i want to add some small capacitance.    Good quality cable usually specifies the capaitance per foot in picofarads.   

Roland

We used to use curly leads.

Danny1969

The cable in a variable capacitance cable is fixed by it's length and the stray capacitance between the inner conductor and the shield. I've never seen one but I imagine there's just a low pass filter in series with the cable  to mimic the loss of treble in a long cable. Most tone controls just use a cap to shunt higher frequencies to ground which is a more primitive way to do it. 

Often when I'm coming up with mods I build them into the jack plug rather than keep taking the guitar apart. I've done kill switches, light dependant tone controls and pre amps in this fashion. 

Basically a lowpass filter is a resistance in series with the signal followed by a capacitance connected from signal to ground. So you can easily fit this within a typical jack plug. To work out the values use one of the mainly RC low pass calculators online. 

Lewy

Danny1969 said:

The cable in a variable capacitance cable is fixed by it's length and the stray capacitance between the inner conductor and the shield. I've never seen one but I imagine there's just a low pass filter in series with the cable  to mimic the loss of treble in a long cable. Most tone controls just use a cap to shunt higher frequencies to ground which is a more primitive way to do it. 

Often when I'm coming up with mods I build them into the jack plug rather than keep taking the guitar apart. I've done kill switches, light dependant tone controls and pre amps in this fashion. 

Basically a lowpass filter is a resistance in series with the signal followed by a capacitance connected from signal to ground. So you can easily fit this within a typical jack plug. To work out the values use one of the mainly RC low pass calculators online. 

Interesting, thanks!

fretmeister

My wireless unit has a Cable Length simulator setting for this.

I usually set it to about 30ft and it just gives a harshness reducing treble roll off that I really like.

BillDL

I never realised this was now a "thing".  I find it quite amazing, and mildly amusing, how things often go full circle.  For decades people have striven to make and obtain cables that retained as much of the original signal as possible even over longer runs, but we now have cables that deliberately seek to create what I suppose could be referred to as a "retro" feel.  A few decades back most effects pedal manufacturers were pushing digital delay, digital reverb, etc to the forefront, but now there is a strong market for new pedals that mimic analogue effects and older pedals that didn't have to mimic anything.  Some pedals now have a switch to simulate a half-dead 9v battery to attain a specific sound that resulted from something that most players would have tried to avoid by carrying spare batteries.

Oh my.  I must try and keep up with the latest technology 

Danny1969

BillDL said:

I never realised this was now a "thing".  I find it quite amazing, and mildly amusing, how things often go full circle.  For decades people have striven to make and obtain cables that retained as much of the original signal as possible even over longer runs, but we now have cables that deliberately seek to create what I suppose could be referred to as a "retro" feel.  A few decades back most effects pedal manufacturers were pushing digital delay, digital reverb, etc to the forefront, but now there is a strong market for new pedals that mimic analogue effects and older pedals that didn't have to mimic anything.  Some pedals now have a switch to simulate a half-dead 9v battery to attain a specific sound that resulted from something that most players would have tried to avoid by carrying spare batteries.

Oh my.  I must try and keep up with the latest technology 

It is funny, totally agree. 

But I always thing the sound people chase is a sum of the parts. Some older Marshall's are insanely bright to my ears, even with the treble rolled off so a tone sucking 25 foot cable was probably a good idea for Hendrix. 

I can actually tell you what happens when you put a Les Paul through 50 odd foot of cable. Because an engineer in the studio misheard my instructions when I said someone wanted to record their part in the control room and to use the passthroughs to the live room to his cab. 
He should have put the head in the control room and used the speakon passthroughs to power the cab which was in the live room. Instead he patched the guitar signal into the main patchbay in the control room which then went 50 odd feet around the live room before coming out and reaching the head which was on top of the cab. The guitarist who was a good friend showed me there was no difference at all between the bridge and neck pickups. Neither had any top end at all with the cable acting as a huge RC filter. 

Just to see what would happen with my EMG 81 / 89 guitar I repeated the same mistake and this time there was no treble loss at all. 

ICBM

Danny1969 said:

The cable in a variable capacitance cable is fixed by it's length and the stray capacitance between the inner conductor and the shield. I've never seen one but I imagine there's just a low pass filter in series with the cable  to mimic the loss of treble in a long cable. Most tone controls just use a cap to shunt higher frequencies to ground which is a more primitive way to do it. 

Often when I'm coming up with mods I build them into the jack plug rather than keep taking the guitar apart. I've done kill switches, light dependant tone controls and pre amps in this fashion. 

Basically a lowpass filter is a resistance in series with the signal followed by a capacitance connected from signal to ground. So you can easily fit this within a typical jack plug. To work out the values use one of the mainly RC low pass calculators online.

A simple capacitance to ground is a very accurate model for the cable capacitance - the resistance is so low compared to either the source or receiving impedance that it's effectively zero for all practical purposes, and there's no significant (or probably measurable) inductance either.

The reason why it's different from the normal tone control is because firstly the value is much smaller - typically in the 100pF to 1000pF range depending on cable length and quality - and secondly it's effectively turned all the way down all the time. What changing the 'length' of the simulated cable does is change the value of the capacitance, rather than adding a resistance in series with it like a tone control does.

Danny1969 said:

Some older Marshall's are insanely bright to my ears, even with the treble rolled off so a tone sucking 25 foot cable was probably a good idea for Hendrix.

Hendrix typically used four "10ft" curly cables in his stage rig - the three pedals were linked together with them as well. Bearing in mind that a "10ft" curly cable is actually about 30' long when pulled out straight, that's roughly 120' of cable! And all in series with the guitar when the pedals are off (even discounting the tone suck from the two non-true-bypass ones - only the Fuzz Face is true bypass, and that only because it bleeds fuzz into the bypass otherwise). No wonder that Marshall kept making their amps brighter and brighter from the 60s to the mid-70s...

Use the 'Hendrix set-up' today with short modern low-capacitance cables and it will probably literally make your ears bleed.

PeteC

Glen kuykendal is well known for using long cables with his original and clone Trainwreck expresses to cut a little of the highs   Theres a few vids on YT showing it.     Thats where i first saw it and then tried it.  

Lewy

ICBM said:

The reason why it's different from the normal tone control is because firstly the value is much smaller - typically in the 100pF to 1000pF range depending on cable length and quality - and secondly it's effectively turned all the way down all the time. What changing the 'length' of the simulated cable does is change the value of the capacitance, rather than adding a resistance in series with it like a tone control does.

So if I understand you correctly, what I'm enjoying more about using the Kingtone switch, and why it feels and sounds different to using the tone control, is that rather than deciding how much of a given frequency range to get rid of (the tone control) I'm selecting to entirely get rid of a choice of different frequency ranges - the same as having the tone control all the way off and changing the value of the tone cap?

This isn't really about cables for me, it's about achieving that sort of effect. Maybe sticking the Kingtone switch into a box as per @Stratovarious suggestion would be just the ticket!

ArchtopDave

One of my cables has a Neutrik Timbre Plug on it ... I didn't set out to buy one, but it was on a cable of the length I wanted that Designacable had on sale at a much reduced price. It does "what it says on the tin", and is convenient to set and leave, allowing you to use your guitar tone controls for other purposes.

Lewy

ArchtopDave said:

One of my cables has a Neutrik Timbre Plug on it ... I didn't set out to buy one, but it was on a cable of the length I wanted that Designacable had on sale at a much reduced price. It does "what it says on the tin", and is convenient to set and leave, allowing you to use your guitar tone controls for other purposes.

Nice. Out of interest, being a right angled jack, have you ever tried it on a strat per chance? 

ICBM

Lewy said:

So if I understand you correctly, what I'm enjoying more about using the Kingtone switch, and why it feels and sounds different to using the tone control, is that rather than deciding how much of a given frequency range to get rid of (the tone control) I'm selecting to entirely get rid of a choice of different frequency ranges - the same as having the tone control all the way off and changing the value of the tone cap?

Exactly! But more subtle because the values are smaller, so the start of the roll-off is at higher frequencies.

ArchtopDave

Lewy said:

ArchtopDave said:

One of my cables has a Neutrik Timbre Plug on it ... I didn't set out to buy one, but it was on a cable of the length I wanted that Designacable had on sale at a much reduced price. It does "what it says on the tin", and is convenient to set and leave, allowing you to use your guitar tone controls for other purposes.

Nice. Out of interest, being a right angled jack, have you ever tried it on a strat per chance? 

I'm very much a Humbucker person, but I do own one Strat. I've checked today. The plug goes into a Strat Jack Socket fine. As you say, it is right angled, and the Red shaft bit of the Neutrik is at an angle of 35/40 degrees to the surface of the Body of the Strat. Personally, this would not cause me problems in terms of playing.

Lewy

ArchtopDave said:

Lewy said:

ArchtopDave said:

One of my cables has a Neutrik Timbre Plug on it ... I didn't set out to buy one, but it was on a cable of the length I wanted that Designacable had on sale at a much reduced price. It does "what it says on the tin", and is convenient to set and leave, allowing you to use your guitar tone controls for other purposes.

Nice. Out of interest, being a right angled jack, have you ever tried it on a strat per chance? 

I'm very much a Humbucker person, but I do own one Strat. I've checked today. The plug goes into a Strat Jack Socket fine. As you say, it is right angled, and the Red shaft bit of the Neutrik is at an angle of 35/40 degrees to the surface of the Body of the Strat. Personally, this would not cause me problems in terms of playing.

Ah thanks ever so much for checking. Much appreciated!