Coily Cables

HAL9000

If you stray too far from your amp a coily cable will reel you back in. At least that's what appears to happen to Wilko Johnson.

Niallmo

I have a Vox coily cable, definite decrease in treble over my Monkey FX Klotz/Neutrik (iirc) straight cables. I like the softer sound, especially with multi-fx. I also used to own an a PRS Custom 24 with a Sweet Switch but never liked the "Santana 30/50/100 FT cable" on setting which should approximate using a curly cable lol.

stonevibe

capo4th said:

stonevibe said:

They are really heavy and its noticeable compared to a regular cable. 

I have just compared a Divine noise to a fender tweed and there is no real difference in weight certainly nothing you would notice without putting them on digital scales. You also don't need to tidy up a coily cable.

My one is a bullet cable and weighs a lot more than my other non-coiled ones. 

So maybe just their ones that weigh a ton. I had loads of coiled ones in the '80s and they were not as heavy as this one is.

ICBM

The classic 60s and 70s ones aren't heavy at all, because the actual cable is thin. The ones which are more like a coiled standard cable in thickness are a lot heavier.

tone1

Gearmandude uses them! Nuff said

stonevibe

ICBM said:

The classic 60s and 70s ones aren't heavy at all, because the actual cable is thin. The ones which are more like a coiled standard cable in thickness are a lot heavier.

Great for sorting out 'neck dive' on SGs and the like.

Roland

Straight cables can get looped around mic stands and pedals. A curly cable goes in search of something to tie itself around, and failing that ties knots with itself

SNAKEBITE

Wilko Johnston seems to do ok.

Roland

IIRC Wilko used the cable to fence Lee in

samzadgan

i use to have the fender koil cables...and i did like the effect on the top end, but i didnt like the crackly sound when the cable would hit the floor or move around...the sound would actually come through the amp. It may have been a bad cable, but that always pissed me off about it, which is why i got rid of it.

TinLip

Jimi used coily cables and his tone was shite.

hobbio

I fancy using some shorter coily cables at home for neatness.

guitarfishbay

samzadgan said:

i use to have the fender koil cables...and i did like the effect on the top end, but i didnt like the crackly sound when the cable would hit the floor or move around...the sound would actually come through the amp. It may have been a bad cable, but that always pissed me off about it, which is why i got rid of it.

Actually Planet Waves have pioneered a way of engineering that in to a straight cable.

Gagaryn

ICBM said:

Gagaryn said:

I have a Bullet one, weighs a ton and removes a fair whack of top end, especially with a Jazzmaster for some reason!

1Meg pots. That increases the effect of cable capacitance. I found the volume control almost unusable on my Jag unless I used a 10' (straight) cable with it.

Strangely enough Fender's supplied cables of the 1960s were actually very low capacitance. They were also some of the first to use solderless plugs. [/trivia]

Yip, that will be it!

Skipped

hobbio said:

I fancy using some shorter coily cables at home for neatness.

I think that was part of the equation for the less famous gigging musician.
You put your Twin Reverb on a Stand. Or a chair. The curly cable goes straight down (to the chair leg and the floor) and then stretches forward to the just heavy enough (first)  pedal (Cry Baby) right at the front of the stage  This is a very neat arrangement..... quite apart from the tone sucking wall of sound awesomeness.

ThorpyFX

ICBM said:

They do definitely give a slightly softer sound.

It's just that they're actually very long - if you pulled a "10-foot" one out straight it would be about 30 feet long - so they have more capacitance than a standard cable, and hence take off a bit more top end. The number of turns with an air core isn't enough to produce enough inductance to make any difference to a guitar.

When you think about Hendrix's stage rig with four of these - a total cable length of about 120' - and two tone-sucking half-bypass pedals (the Fuzz Face is actually true bypass) - the treble loss must have been enormous, and is why it sounded good with a Strat and a fully cranked Super Lead. If you try to recreate that rig with modern cables and true bypass pedals, you get an unusably shrill sound.

The Gigrig Z cable is great for adding/subtracting this effect without having to change cables.

SHOOTOUT

Cable effect on tone is 99.99% down to total capacitance before buffering with passive pickups, other than interference noise.

So this depends upon the cable capacitance per metre x actual length.

http://www.shootoutguitarcables.com/guitar-cables-explained/capacitance-resonant-frequency.html

Higher capacitance reduces resonant frequency and high end all other things being equal.

Coiled cables look less long than they actually are, but other than that there is no difference.

Cheers.

Marc,

Shootout Guitar Cables, UK

57Deluxe

The idea was originally, that they didn't get under your feet on stage... that was all...

capo4th

hobbio said:

I fancy using some shorter coily cables at home for neatness.

I have two divine Noise 50/50 everything is neat and tidy with added length just when you need it