Coily cables (I'm absolutely livid!)

WiresDreamDisasters · December 2020

I can't believe the 3 hour debate I've just had. Me and @TTony were on a call, and the conversation turned to whether we thought coily cables made any difference to the tone or not. And I said that I thought they made a huge difference, and that part of the stock "I wanna sound like Hendrix" kit involved a coily cable. Well Tony pulled out his perfectly straight and angular cables, and some old naff coily thing he had that was clearly of substandard 2010's quality, and did an on the fly A/B test for me.

He used his full PMC based rig, with high quality 64kbps streaming over the internet to show me that in actual fact, the coiled cables sounded no different to his angular nazi salute cables, and the whole thing escalated into a 3 hour debate where we both got quite aggressive and threatened to drink each others R Whites (half pints) at the next tFB pub session (in 2026, when we've all stopped dying of covaids)

I am so livid. I have spent my entire guitar life believing that coily cables were the be all and end all... and now a bonefide scientist has proven me wrong! How can I get over this change in mentality, or alternatively, how can I prove him wrong beyond a shadow of a Gwen Stefani ????

samzadgan · December 2020

Coily cables react differently to different tubes...im sure you need to try them on el34’s and kt88’s to be sure

Andy79 · December 2020

You sure he had them plugged in the right way round?

Adey · December 2020

It does depend which way your curlies are wound (clockwise or anti-clockwise viewed form the guitar end). Depending on which way your pickups are wound you can end up with a reduction in pickup inductance.

Perhaps

guitars4you · December 2020

I'll see if I can find a link about such an article on Hendrix and his curly cables - In an American mag and think it was Premier Guitar - They measured the capacitance of a curly cable and found it to be higher enough to have an impact on the tone - So as most curly cables are poor quality and many players wish to use a good straight cable, the article gave you a value of a capacitor, to wire into the output of your guitar, to replicate the value = to that in the curly cable - I never tried it - Not sure if true or not - I dare say @ICBM can have a good input to this

p90fool · December 2020

All cables add capacitance over lengthy runs, coiled leads are just longer than most people realise.

So boringly, all else being equal, that's where the reputation for signal loss comes from.

riffpowers · December 2020

I think you need to take into account that the internet isn’t true bypass so those readings may have been buffered by the time they got to you.
You may have got a more accurate result if you’d used germanium transistors in your broadband router instead of silicon.

TTony · December 2020

I'm not sure that some of the comments here have taken the question entirely sensibly.

Rather than more of this uninformed speculation and baseless opinion, we really need some knowledgeable, expert, input (and output).

We need an oscilloscope operator ...

TTony · December 2020

riffpowers said:

You may have got a more accurate result if you’d used germanium transistors in your broadband router instead of silicon.

It wouldn't matter because he's using a digital router, albeit with some plugins.

What we really needed was proper analogue.

guitars4you · December 2020

Found it

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/The_Vintage_Coiled_Cable_Simulator_Mod

merlin · December 2020

TTony said:

What we really needed was proper analogue.

We no longer have proper analogue since 5G masts. Our brains are now digital. The chip in the Covid vaccine isn't going to help either.

grungebob · December 2020

The results are flawed if the ambient temperature of each cable and that of the room are not also recorded.

It’s a known fact the coils suffer from thermal extremes. Should the coil be subjected to too cold a climate the coil becomes tight and brittle, too much heat and the coil becomes too plasticised and almost straight.

Hendrix often would temperature check his cables before each gig and on one particular night when the coils were too cold and tight causing a harsh brittle edge to his tone he attempted to warm them up mid gig, of course it went horribly wrong and he ended up setting alight to his guitar by accident.

rpr · December 2020

Coilies look cooler and all that really matters...

Funkfingers · December 2020

TTony said:.
What we really needed was proper analogue.

Try spinning a vinyl pressing of The Shadows' "Rockin' With Curly Leads".

On second thoughts, perhaps not.

drofluf · December 2020

Adey said:

It does depend which way your cookies are wound (clockwise or anti-clockwise viewed form the guitar end). Depending on which way your pickups are wound you can end up with a reduction in pickup inductance.

Perhaps

Is if different depending whether you’re in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Stands to reason as water flows the opposite way “down south” I assume the tones would also flow the opposite way.

poopot · December 2020

Hendrix mimed all his guitar parts... the Millie vanilli of the guitar world... the coiled cable was just for show!...

guitars4you · December 2020

Talking about Hendrix and curly leads - In my EXPERIENCE it is best to just use a straight lead

sgosden · December 2020

You've been duped bud. I have it on good authority that @TTony actually irons coily cables flat. So the straight one was a plant !

scrumhalf · December 2020

drofluf said:

Adey said:

It does depend which way your cookies are wound (clockwise or anti-clockwise viewed form the guitar end). Depending on which way your pickups are wound you can end up with a reduction in pickup inductance.

Perhaps

Is if different depending whether you’re in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Stands to reason as water flows the opposite way “down south” I assume the tones would also flow the opposite way.

What happens if you are on the equator? Silence as the sound gets stuck in the cable?

TTony · December 2020

sgosden said:

You've been duped bud. I have it on good authority that @TTony actually irons coily cables flat. So the straight one was a plant !

Now you're just being silly.

I have people to do the ironing - I'd never do it myself.

drofluf · December 2020

scrumhalf said:

drofluf said:

Adey said:

It does depend which way your cookies are wound (clockwise or anti-clockwise viewed form the guitar end). Depending on which way your pickups are wound you can end up with a reduction in pickup inductance.

Perhaps

Is if different depending whether you’re in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Stands to reason as water flows the opposite way “down south” I assume the tones would also flow the opposite way.

What happens if you are on the equator? Silence as the sound gets stuck in the cable?

That’s the one situation where it’s permissible to use a straight cable.

as long as you don’t move North or South

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Coily cables (I'm absolutely livid!)

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