OT: Making the perfect cables?

[John Egerton]

hey guys...

I was wondering if you could give me some pointers on making my own cables...

I can make one cable and a 2nd one exactly the same length and sometimes the tone i better on one of them...

Is there a way I can test my cables usin my multimeter?

Thanks in advance...

John

[object88]

How does the tone change?

[R.G.]

The capacitance of the cable materials varies a lot. That is the most likely culprit. Some cables have capacitances of up to 100-200pF per foot. Good cables get down to 30pF or less per foot.

In a 10 foot cable, that's the difference between putting a 0.01uF cap on the output of your effect (or your guitar, likely both) and a 300pF. Big deal. The higher the output impedance of your effect/pickup the more that causes rolloff of treble.

You can also get resonance effects with some pickups.

The acknowledged "secret" is to use low capacitance cable. George L. is one. Belden has a "Brilliance" series as well that's pretty good.

[WorkBench]

The Belden 9271 (blue cable) sounds great!

[aron]

R.G.,

The current BUZZ around here is "directional" cable.

yep! Gotta remember to plug it in the correct direction or ?

Anyway, people are raving about it here.

[R.G.]

Directional cables?

My friend the amp-tech gets to go on tour with Eric Johnson sometimes to keep the amps running, and of course, Eric is a modern day icon for pickiness, including preferred directions on all his cables. I've heard a lot about directional cables.

I've been an EE for thirty years and an electronics nut for longer than that. I can postulate a few ways that you could hear a difference in a cable being plugged in one way or the  other, but none of them are because the cable itself is directional.  I don't know of any way you could make an ostensibly-uniform cable material direction-sensitive if you *wanted* to.

I can think of ways to make cable non-uniform, perhaps by changing the shielding along the way, or by increasing the diameter of the insulation between the center conductor and the shield, or by gross things like including diodes  in the center conductor or the shield.  RF stuff can have length sensitivities for impedance mismatched cables, but they'd have to be miles long to have some chance of even detecting that at audio frequencies.

I *can* think of ways for connectors to have a preferred direction.

Consider this: you have two "1/4" jacks and two "1/4" plugs. The jacks and plugs come from four different companies and have four different sets of materials and surface finishes. One of the jacks has an internal sleeve diameter that's 0.01" smaller than the other. One of the jacks has a spring constant that's 3oz more than the other. One plug is 0.01" bigger diameter than the other, and one has a surface that's more prone to oxide formation than the other.

If you made a cable from the two plugs and any reasonable cable material, could you detect an audible difference in the direction the cable is plugged into those two jacks? I suspect that under some circumstances you could. Contact area, spring tension, oxide formation, wiping action and many other manifestations of electrical contacts would come into play.

It is always possible that there is a physical process that would explain directional *cables*, but I don't currently know of any; I'm open to learning. Please ask any expert on the topic to debate it with me - I would love to learn about areas that I don't know yet.

The human mind is such a slippery judge of intangibles like "tone" that I personally compare any new theory or phenomena on tone against possible natural law explanations, and if none are apparent I put the phenomena down to placebo effect, peer pressure, wishful thinking or the like, if not downright advertising ( I've also come to think of "advertising" and "lying" as near-synonyms).

I'm well aware of the concept that that attitude is curmudgeonly, senile, stuck in the sand if not the mud. But it works very well on most new sensations. I'm always willing to accept new things where they do not violate physical laws, and to accept elaborations of physical law where it can be independently verified, but these days that's hard to do with audio.

I've been wrong with this set of attitudes before.

Twice so far.

[Mark Hammer]

For me the classic test of a cable, or rather the EFFECT of a cable, is to compare the sound of my guitar plugged directly into the amp with the shortest patch cable I have (one of those 8" patch cables for connecting pedals), compared against a standard length guitar cable.  Normally, even with a pretty good cable, the shorter one sounds better, with more definition due to preservation of more top end.

As RG notes, the space/material between the outside and inner conductor on shielded cable can act like an additional  tone capacitor to ground.  As he also noted, capacitance is measured  on a per-foot basis.  So, not only do poorer quality cables lose high end definition, but so do longer cables of ANY quality.

The implication is that you can diversify your cables, but should take every effort to make cables using poorer quality cord as short as is feasible.  I can assure you that the molded stompbox patch cables you can easily buy for $2 each in music stores are NOT great quality cable, but they ARE mercifully short.  Spend BIG when buying or making your main long cable, but feel free to cut a few corners (not too many, mind you) when making very short length ones, where the difference between state-of-the-art and bargain basement quality may be only 2pf per cable at most.

A second factor that can make a difference is simply the resistance of any and all connections to plugs.  Cold-ish solder joints may conduct but with higher resistance.  If you look at the schematic representation of a lowpass treble-cut filter, you will note that it is a resistor in series with the signal, followed by a capacitor to ground.  A high resistance connection to a cable, coupled with high cable capacitance looks exactly like that.

Finally, note that if cable capacitance is determined by cable length, that all those various cables connecting your guitar to your pedals, your pedals to each other, and your pedals to your amp and/or P.A., ADD UP when calculating overall cable capacitance.  This is one of the reasons why some folks are dead set against true bypass as a solution to all sonic problems.  Their argument is that if there is an always-on buffer between pedals, whether in bypass or effect mode, that overrides the summing of cable capacitance.  In reality, they are partially right.  Running your guitar through a 20-foot cable into a dozen true-bypass pedals, then out another 20-ft cable to your amp is the same as running your guitar through a 45-plus foot cable (one assumes there is about 6-8ft linking the pedals) and it is not going to sound all that great (though somehow Albert Collins always made 100-foot cords work, but that's another matter).   Even a single always-on buffer in just ONE of those dozen pedals is going to improve matters.  That's why they are only partially right - because you don't need all 12 to be buffered to yield the benefits.

[Hal]

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=home/search/detail/base_pid/330080/

I just bought 4 of those.  I already have 3 one foot cables, so there's my board.  This seems like the best type of 'cable' to me :-D.

whats with the monster cables that "want" to be plugged in a certain way?

[R.G.]

whats with the monster cables that "want" to be plugged in a certain way?

?
Maybe monster's makers "wanting" to sell to people who believe...

[bwanasonic]

I can make one cable and a 2nd one exactly the same length and sometimes the tone i better on one of them...

Hmm, if you made both cables of identical materials and identical lengths it's highly unlikely there is a *real* tonal difference between them (assuming they are both properly soldered, etc.). Playing thru one cable for a while, then unplugging it, then plugging in another cable and playing, you may well subjectively *hear* a difference. The question is, if blindfolded with somebody else doing the swapping, would you pick the same cable significantly more than 50% of the time after repeated listenings? This also applies to the asinine claims of directional cables, brilliant pebbles, etc.  There are very simple mechanisms to test these claims, but more often the people making them don't want to be confused with the facts.

Kerry M

[mojotron]

Anyone know where to get like 50' of Belden "Brilliance" series coax (part numbers...)for making cords? Mouser will only allow you to buy 500' or 1000' quantities.

[Satch12879]

Anyone know where to get like 50' of Belden "Brilliance" series coax (part numbers...)for making cords? Mouser will only allow you to buy 500' or 1000' quantities.

Try Markertek, Allied Electronics, or Newark.

whats with the monster cables that "want" to be plugged in a certain way?

I've seen that; it's got a little mark or arrow.  Super high-end cable maker Van den Hul labels their cables that way as well.  For VdH and the cables I mount myself I know it to be fact but I can only assume that with Monster those cables have their shield grounded at one end only (known as floating shield, semi-balanced, etc.)  You use a balanced two conductor with a shield, use the two conductors as hot and ground, and tie the shield to ground at the "source" end of the signal only.  This way, the shield acts as a true, dedicated shield and shunts all interference to ground.  This may be the origin of the whole "directionality" nonsense; some half-witted tone snob or snake-oil charmer cable maker.

[moving_electrons]

whats with the monster cables that "want" to be plugged in a certain way?

?
Maybe monster's makers "wanting" to sell to people who believe...

You used monster in lower case, so perhaps you were refering to large.  If you did mean Monster Cable there are some very good reasons to avoid any product from them.  One is the absurd prices for things you can get elsewhere for much lower prices from companies that do less advertizing and salesman "spiffing" (direct extra commisions to salespeople).   The other reason can be found on this page.  (Cool shirts to) :

http://www.monstervintage.com/

[WorkBench]

For smaller lengths of Belden cable try WWW.HLDALIS.COM

[Connoisseur of Distortion]

the real secret... is the cotton sleeve  :lol:

[Hal]

whats with the monster cables that "want" to be plugged in a certain way?

?
Maybe monster's makers "wanting" to sell to people who believe...

You used monster in lower case, so perhaps you were refering to large.  If you did mean Monster Cable there are some very good reasons to avoid any product from them.  One is the absurd prices for things you can get elsewhere for much lower prices from companies that do less advertizing and salesman "spiffing" (direct extra commisions to salespeople).   The other reason can be found on this page.  (Cool shirts to) :

http://www.monstervintage.com/

hahaha i used monster in lower case because i was lazy.  

similarly, i heard that apple records are suing apple computers.  an earlier settlement on the names said that apple computers must stay out of the music business.  apparently they forgot that when they released itunes and ipod.

[chokeyou]

well, i dont really buy into the whole MONSTER cable thing, but I do use Monsters for my guitar cable and my pedalboard->amp cable and I keep an extra handy. I have them only because of the no questions asked replacement at any Monster retailer. I've gotten the value out of them probably tenfold by now...

what can i say, I'm hard on my equipment and I rock out on stage :roll:

[TheBigMan]

All of my cables are homemade with Neutrik jacks.  I use Klotz La Grange for stage cables and Sommer Spirit for patch leads.  The Sommer isn't as easy to work with, but it's more flexible which is better for 6" patch leads.

[SteveB]

I don't know if you consider this "perfect", but using George L's cable & connectors definitely has an effect on tone. More clarity & presence (or overall brightness). It is definitely noticeable compared to other cables.

No soldering, super easy to repair, too. Some people feel that they are not roadworthy because of the small diameter of the cable, but I've gigged with the same ones for quite a few years with no problems at all.

Steve

[snorky]

Here's what I did recently:

Canare GS-6 cable from markertek.com
Switchcraft 226 connectors from avcable.com

Really good prices, and you can build nice cables.

Also, get some good heat shrink from Mouser or wherever.  They sell heat shrink with adhesive which I'm going to try one of these days....

There's a guy some of you may know called "Lord Valve".  I get mailings and have bought some tubes from him.  In one of the last mailings, he was raving about some cable called ProEl.    He sells cusom-made cables, but I think he also sells it by the foot (don't know the price).  Don't know if anyone's tried this stuff, but I might be tempted next time I need some cables.

- Mark