SOT - Monster cable hype- what's for real?

[aaronkessman]

heh. i use george L's anyway. they're great, cheap, and can be had for 70 cents a foot at a local shop - more than online, but its easy. just wish there was a little more girth to them

[NeveSSL]

... Or if you want speaker wire that runs under a carpet, use ribbon cable & connect odd and evens at each end, this gives a very low inductance & capacitance, compared to anything else (including MONSTER A$$HOLE cables).

Hmmm... that's a really neat idea!  *Brandon scribbles in his mental audio notebook*  

I've heard great things about George L's, too.  I just prefer the price of my Mogami.  Great thread!

Brandon

[R.G.]

Keen's Fourth Law: If you can't measure it, can't even think of a way it hyphthetically *could* be measured, it's probably not real. You certainly don't know enough about it to depend on it by superstition alone.

Keen's Seventh Law: Predictability is better than magic. Even if magic exists, unpredictable magic is worse than none at all. Even wizards will demand that their magic work predictably. Otherwise, it's no use at all. Causality, even random causality as in quantum physics, is always better.

[toneman]

does Harry Potter play guitar???

[sir_modulus]

The real thing to do, is to take a bunch of these cables, have a o-scope and a signal generator (20hz-30khz) and just run the sig all the way up and record the results. This way you could get the frequency response of each cable, and also the relative distortion vs. frequency of each cable.

Cheers,

Nish

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

The reason the Monster A$$hole guys are so fierce about protecting their trade name, is that it is the ONLY thing they have going for them. If their cables really were better than anyone else's, then the newsgroups would be full of people saying how great they are. WE'D be doing their advertising!!

"In former days old English taverns bore a sign of an ivy bush over their doors, this to indicate the excellence of the liquor supplied within, hence the old saying 'A good wine needs no bush'." And no BS either. :wink:

[petemoore]

The real thing to do, is to take a bunch of these cables, have a o-scope and a signal generator (20hz-30khz) and just run the sig all the way up and record the results. This way you could get the frequency response of each cable, and also the relative distortion vs. frequency of each cable.

Cheers,

Nish

Don't forget to induce worse case scenario stuff like slamm the cable on the floor and see how much 'crap' from the floor 'gets in' the signal path.

[Doug_H]

The reason the Monster A$$hole guys are so fierce about protecting their trade name, is that it is the ONLY thing they have going for them. If their cables really were better than anyone else's, then the newsgroups would be full of people saying how great they are. WE'D be doing their advertising!!

"In former days old English taverns bore a sign of an ivy bush over their doors, this to indicate the excellence of the liquor supplied within, hence the old saying 'A good wine needs no bush'." And no BS either. :wink:

I've noticed in the music/audio electronics world that there is an equation like:

"more imaginative concept" = "less bragging about materials used, construction methods, and mojo"

and vice-versa. Each side of the equation always balances the other- more on one side and less on the other, etc.. Basic algebra...

It seems to me that, electronically speaking, cables are the dullest and least interesting component of an audio system. Therefore the marketing for them contains some of the wildest claims of any of the components.

I'm with you  Paul. I love my whirlwinds for my guitar. I've replaced them once in about 26 years, the price is right, they are constructed well, they sound good to me.  Funny you mention speaker cables. I had decided a while ago to redo mine with zip cord. (Just waiting for the next hardware store trip to pick some up.)  BTW, zip cord reportedly works real well for tube heaters too.

Doug

[casey]

For a guitar, use something like Whirlwind.
For a speaker system, use mains wire.
Or if you want speaker wire that runs under a carpet, use ribbon cable & connect odd and evens at each end, this gives a very low inductance & capacitance, compared to anything else (including MONSTER A$$HOLE cables).

i toured heavily on the road for about 7 years, and i NEVER had to work on a whirlwind.....but boy was i always repairing horizon cables.....

im really sold on whirlwind, especially mic cables...

[sir_modulus]

I really like these whirlwind cables...but...where do you get em? (online/in canada)

Cheers,

Nish

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Doug, I'm all for zip cord (as you can imagine!) but for valve heaters, maybe you want something easier to twist, if you are going to do the twisted cord thing to minimise electromagnetic radiation of mains hum (disclaimer: I'm not a tube guy, so I don't know how important this is... and if you were using zip wire tht wasn't unzipped, I guess there wouldn't be much radiation possible.)

[gez]

i toured heavily on the road for about 7 years, and i NEVER had to work on a whirlwind.....but boy was i always repairing horizon cables.....

im really sold on whirlwind, especially mic cables...

My Whirlwind lead just crapped out on me a few months ago, but then it was 17 years old and had seen a lot of action!!  Didn't have to take the iron to it once.

Just bought two more (though they're getting hard to find in the UK) so that's me done until I claim my pension...

[Doug_H]

Doug, I'm all for zip cord (as you can imagine!) but for valve heaters, maybe you want something easier to twist, if you are going to do the twisted cord thing to minimise electromagnetic radiation of mains hum (disclaimer: I'm not a tube guy, so I don't know how important this is... and if you were using zip wire tht wasn't unzipped, I guess there wouldn't be much radiation possible.)

Yeah, the point is you don't need to twist the wires if you use zip cord. Ea wire is maintained equidistant from ea other without twisting.

Doug

[aaronkessman]

yeah, if i ever build another amp, sure as hell i'm using zipcord!

[Mark Hammer]

Tone-wise, here's a good cable comparison article:

http://lavacable.com/myweb/CableSummit4.pdf

Thanks for the link.  I was just about to recommend a good article I had seen in Vintage Guitar last year, but I think this was that very article.  Certainly it is very close in terms of analysis approach and measurements.

One of the things that too often gets neglected during spats of "audiophile taliban-ism" is that the returns on investments in cable quality will depend on where in the signal chain it is being used, as will the point of diminishing returns.  For instance, if one is using a standard passive single-coil equipped guitar, the first cable up to your pedal board needs to be of decent quality.  Once everything gets all buffered, what leaves your pedalboard can likely tolerate something of lesser quality on the way to the amp, unless you are intent on travelling very long distances.  As well, I think that what you need to use for a through-the-pedal-into-the-digital-board may merit higher standards, and perhaps emphasis on different specs and characteristics than what you need to use for humbuckers-into-fuzz-wah-into-my-dimed-Marshall-into-a-noisy-bar-with-bad-acoustics.

In the case of patch cords for a pedal board, the inter-pedal distances are so short as to make many of the measurable electronic characteristics moot, with the possile exception of shielding.  In the case of amp-to-speaker cables, that's another thing again.  The impedance of the speakers is so low as to make every milliohm in the connecting cable matter, perhaps much moreso than cable differences between pedalboard and amp.

I am certainly open to demonstrations of sonic differences between cables, but I think the point that what matters depends on where it is bears up pretty well.

[cd]

I really like these whirlwind cables...but...where do you get em? (online/in canada)

Your local Long  & McQuade should be able to hook you up.

[formerMember1]

just wanna say my monster cable($50) just Konked out on me.  I have been getting intermittent signal and thought it was my old amp,(tubes or something) then i thought it was my RM i built,(cuz sometimes when i used to tip the box around the signal would die out and i couldn't figure out where it was grounding out) but that is just the thing, it wasn't grounding out,  My Monster cable had a loose or broken wire joint at one of the ends.  I usually fix my cables, but this cable has a hard plastic clear stuff covering so that you can't get to it.  I talked to Guitar center and they said they will replace it after they check their inventory or something.  They said cuz i am around the tenth guy to call in the last few weeks about my monster cable konking out.  I guess the batch they had were defaulty or just coinceidence(i gotta learn how to spell  :oops: )

it still outlasted my junk cables, and is cheaper in the long end since i paid a flat fee of $50.00 and normally i would have gone through two or three cheapies at 20$ each, and also had a cheaper sound. :lol:

just my opinion though.... :wink:

PS:Might i add that i my cords get a lot of brutal use,

[bwanasonic]

I usually fix my cables, but this cable has a hard plastic clear stuff covering so that you can't get to it.

That's one of the main reasons I wouldn't buy one those. So far I'm happy with the Bullet *Silver Bullet* cable:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--BULSBS

The casing seems pretty tough, and it looks cool too   I'm skeptical of any claims of audio superiorty from a cable, but it certainly does the job well enough.

Kerry M

PS - The link is just for illustration purposes. I bought mine from my local independent music store.

[formerMember1]

yeah, I think i am just gonna end up going to radio shack and get the cheap curly cords.  I wonder where i could get a "cheap" curly cord that will last.? I know bullet cables makes one, but theirs doesn't reduce any treble.  I want one like stevie ray and Jimi's.  I wonder where he got his?

[object88]

I've been reading Kevin O'Connor's TUT Vol 3, and one thing that he's repeated several times is this: don't buy into mojo parts unless it makes you feel good.  (His emphasis, not mine.)  I find this interesting and practical, because there will always be folks who are "into" mojo, plain and simple.  I'm not terribly into it, but I do have to recognize that it just makes some people happy.  And hey, why the heck are we doing this if it doesn't make us happy.  

Not that this necessarily has much to do with Monster Cables...