the strange case of the tone sucker cable

[fatboy135]

hey man what do you know about cables and its properties????
Did you know that a bad cable could collapse all your sound???'
Today I was testing my TA with my pedalboard and I could hear a terrible tone sucking. I was so amazing because my pedalboard has a true bypass system, so I take all my pedals into my oscilloscope I generate a high frecuency sinusoidal waveform and I test all the pedals and pedalboard.
Nothing. That was nothing on the pedals nor the pedalboard so I connect the TA alone and the tone sucking wasn´t. I connect the pedalboard and the tone sucking appears again. I just test with the oscilloscope again and the results was the same, the signal was perfectly on the input/output of the pedalboard.
I last I decided to take the cables in a stand alone mode to test it with the oscilloscope and great **** one of my cables were the perfect low pass filter.
So even if you have a road king, a gibson les paul, the best mullard nos tubes if one of your cables is in bad condition you will sound closer to a valvestate than a road king.
So do a favour yourself, buy good cables and maintain them in good conditions.

 

[screamingdaisy]

I always say the same thing, but someone always comes along and says that they can't hear the difference between cables and that we're waisting our money on the expensive stuff. Which I've always found funny considering how much money people spend on everything else.....and yet they skimp when choosing between spending $10 for a cable or $30.

 

[fatboy135]

If people saids that they couldn´t hear any difference is:
1) Maybe they have a great piece of **** into the ear conduct
2) Maybe they didn´t really do the test with cables
There is some significant differences, and there is not only an ear matter, it is a tecnology matter, you could take a poor cable and a good cable and test it with an oscilloscope.
The oscilloscope never lies, and if you can´t hear the difference try on the osciloscope, you could then see the tech differences

 

[musicbox]

there are audiophile guys that dump $1000-$2000 on power cables alone, never mind interconnects and speaker leads.

i think there is a bigger difference between a $5 and a $75 cable, then there is between a $75 and a $500.

with guitars, there is so much distortion in the preamp, in the poweramp, and in the speakers that a cable isnt going to make as big a difference as it would in a hi-fi stereo, but having a cable with crushed shielding, shody saudering and poor jacks is deffinitly going to be a hamper on sound.

perhaps if your guitar is sub par, and your amp isnt great, a crappy cable isnt going to be a big deal. BUT, if you spent on the money on good gear like screamingdaisy said, your sound is only going to be as good as your weakest link.

 

[fatboy135]

that is man
some time ago we were discussing about NOS tubes and orange drop caps. but what about the cables did the people think that they aren´t so necesary to connect the guitar to amp????

 

[ylo]

It isn't just the cable, but the combination of cable with effects. You get some tone suck even with true bypass pedals. One solution is to build a switchbox with a DPDT footswitch and switch out your entire line of pedals when not in use.

 

[fatboy135]

It isn't just the cable, but the combination of cable with effects

Hey man believe me I take all the effects out of my audio chain I connect the triaxis directly into the guitar with the bad cable, it is impossible to do a better link the guitar just staight on the triaxis, and this ****** cable was doing a amazing low pass filter

 

[Red Barchetta]

i think there is a bigger difference between a $5 and a $75 cable, then there is between a $75 and a $500.

I agree. I use all George L's...not the most expensive out there, but it is the best cable that I can hear the difference in. I have A/B compared the George L's with other more expensive cables (monster, mogami, and some boutique sh!t), and have heard no difference. The George L's give me the best sound. Period.


RB

 

[ylo]

Another trick is to use a short cable to your pedals, maybe 10 feet to 15 feet max, then run a buffer or effect with a buffered output at the end of the pedal chain to drive a longer cable to the amp without losses.