Expensive Instrument Cable Snake Oil

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bxlxaxkxe
  • Start date Start date
shortcircuit-brain.webp
 
Smash said:
I am no expert. I have read the crystal lattice angle. I have read the fairy shit. I bought the mogami because of word of mouth about quality and reliability after having problems with the more common stuff. It didnt make my dick any bigger unfortunately

I rewire my cabs and guitars because i do it better than the manufactures that dont care as much as me. I started this with cabs when i had a shitty stereo jack have problems and when i took back off of cab, the wire just snapped.. i started with guitars when i had a pot go bad after 3 months on new guitar and decided to only put high quality parts in to replace the whole electrical system
I rewired my cab with 12 guage because people said it gave more bass or whatever, translated signal. However, at the end of the day, i know that when i do something, it is done right.
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One way to re wire a cab...head down to the hardware store, grab 6-8ft of lamp cord. Pull apart, cut/strip and you have nice 12-14 gauge speaker wire. It does make a difference, from the factory wiring which is probably 20-24 gauge.
 
Racerxrated said:
One way to re wire a cab...head down to the hardware store, grab 6-8ft of lamp cord. Pull apart, cut/strip and you have nice 12-14 gauge speaker wire. It does make a difference, from the factory wiring which is probably 20-24 gauge.
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Yeah. I am all 12 gauge now
 
I have to assume a speaker cable is negligible given they're probably <3ft for a half stack
 
JackBootedThug said:
Why is it better? Thicker gauge? More conductivity? Use cabinet cables? I know some cork sniffers like wiring cabs with old power cords from decades ago...same principle? Not being a smart ass here... cable experts chime in.... Are these things like jumper cables for your car? Thicker the better?
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For SPEAKER/FOOTSWITCH cables, capacitance is not a consideration. You need unshielded 2 conductor wire with quality plugs. Old vacuum cleaner cords make excellent speaker/footswitch cables up to power levels of 700 watts or so. Conductivity is pretty mch the only thing that matters in this applicaiton. Instrument/signal cables are a very different kettle of fish, as we are now talking about coaxial cables, so the tightness of the shielding and the exact distance of the shielding from the center conductor matter interms of high frequency roll-off and noise rejection. The importance of this goes up as the length of the cable increases. Other considerations are the outer insulation - how flexible is it? Resistant to abrasion/compression? Easy to clean? ALso the strain relief - well installed heat shrink can extend the time before the cable breaks down at the wire/plug interface.
 
Bxlxaxkxe said:
I believe speaker cables are a different beast. Capacitance isn’t as important. Capacitance in instrument cables is real, measurable, and can be demonstrated repeatedly. I mean anyone can test this out for themselves. Buy a 50 and a 20 and tell me you don’t hear anything. Then again, I know not everyone’s ears are necessarily sensitive to this sort of thing which is a blessing more than anything. Save time and $
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What you say is true - however, many greats were filmed or photographed in the early 70's connecting their guitar to their amp with a 50 foot coiled cord instrument cable, which should be the absolute WORST for both capcitance AND inductance. Yet somehow they sounded great.

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.ne...Gl7g-ROsTEHpHT0HYyBE_VuHX4UC6Vn_A&oe=67C3F4DB
 
braintheory said:
There's definitely a difference with higher quality cables. One of my friends locally has quite a few various cables he showed me from brands a lot more expensive than Mogami Platinum. I don’t have currently any high end instrument cables actually, will get some later, but some of my friend’s were a higher level in improvement than Mogami platinum IME. Mogami is good IME, but quite a few better brands that my friend has. One of them he did have to assemble himself and still it cost him ~$500, but it was the best sounding one to me of what he showed me

What I do have is a very high end speaker cable and power chord from Audience that I bought from Tim Schroeder. I won’t mention prices since it’ll offend guys here, but I’ll just say the powerchord I got from him has made the biggest difference of any of these types of items I’ve tried so far and as a nice bonus it also slightly lowers the noise floor. When I go back to my other powerchords and speaker cables (some of which are also high end) it’s like the sound is wimpier/less robust and lacks some information. Your loss if you think it’s snake oil
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How does the power get from the electric company generator, to your house wiring? Do you honestly believe that a 10 to 20 foot cable from the outlet to the device has ANY noticable influence on performance compared to the MILES of wire and multiple transformes the elctrons ahve already been pumped through?
 
errrrrl said:
I've been running analysis plus cables for sometime now. The local shop owner here did some comparisons for me and was surprised I heard a difference with their fucking power cable lol. It was subtle but I heard it. He let me take home some analysis plus instrument cables and speaker cables to see if I could hear a difference... as a late night silent recording mofo using headphones mainly for recording I could tell a difference. I don't think most will hear it though nor give a shit lol. But yeah, I have 4 or 5 expensive speaker cables and one of their instrument cables and one of their gold oval power cables too...
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If there is an audible difference, then it should be childs play to demonstrate that with a graph of the signal.

However, the placebo effect wil lnot show up in such a graph.
 
BlackOut8910 said:
What you say is true - however, many greats were filmed or photographed in the early 70's connecting their guitar to their amp with a 50 foot coiled cord instrument cable, which should be the absolute WORST for both capcitance AND inductance. Yet somehow they sounded great.

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.ne...Gl7g-ROsTEHpHT0HYyBE_VuHX4UC6Vn_A&oe=67C3F4DB
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A little high end roll off on a goosed plexi is not a bad thing. But a lot of modern amps just don’t need any more roll off IMO

I also don’t think the high end roll off from capacitance is as apparent to the listener as it is the player. And at the end of the day, it’s all subjective and rig dependent etc etc. Just another tool to be aware of
 
BlackOut8910 said:
How does the power get from the electric company generator, to your house wiring? Do you honestly believe that a 10 to 20 foot cable from the outlet to the device has ANY noticable influence on performance compared to the MILES of wire and multiple transformes the elctrons ahve already been pumped through?
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By using a quality power conditioner, such as the Furman P-1800 PFR which cleans up the AC quite a bit. Then you plug the high end power cable into the Furman, and likewise, the amp will see cleaner power than it would without such devices.
 
thegame said:
By using a quality power conditioner, such as the Furman P-1800 PFR which cleans up the AC quite a bit. Then you plug the high end power cable into the Furman, and likewise, the amp will see cleaner power than it would without such devices.
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I mean I agree with a Power Conditioner like this or a Tripp Lite or Furman as mentioned but I mean an IEC is an IEC is an IEC..... Power Conditioners are great and a must for said reason and just lower noise floor in general tough and I agree there.
 
thegame said:
By using a quality power conditioner, such as the Furman P-1800 PFR which cleans up the AC quite a bit. Then you plug the high end power cable into the Furman, and likewise, the amp will see cleaner power than it would without such devices.
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Either the electrons get there - or they don't. Does the "high end power cable" flow more electrons? If not, by what means is the power cable ALONE improving the performance of the device?
 
BlackOut8910 said:
How does the power get from the electric company generator, to your house wiring? Do you honestly believe that a 10 to 20 foot cable from the outlet to the device has ANY noticable influence on performance compared to the MILES of wire and multiple transformes the elctrons ahve already been pumped through?
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I get where you’re coming from as a few of my friend’s and dad said the same exact thing, but then I showed them with AB tests in several different amps with not only a generic power chord, but several other high end ones and they all heard the difference as clearly as I did get progressively better as I went to better power chords. At first they thought maybe I was cheating or raising my amp’s volume, but I showed them everything with the settings, etc. It was as clear of a difference as the sky is blue. I’m not one that knows how to give technical explanations that others here can. I can only report what I hear in controlled comparison tests. I’d be shocked if you didn’t hear it too. Now whether it’s worth the money or not is a whole other discussion, but I don’t go there. My 2 cents would just be to have a more open mind and try it yourself if it interests you enough
 
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BlackOut8910 said:
Either the electrons get there - or they don't. Does the "high end power cable" flow more electrons? If not, by what means is the power cable ALONE improving the performance of the device?
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Well, that's a fancy way of saying, "No, I've never tried that and won't ever just on textbook principle alone". But seriously, you're looking at it the wrong way. High end cables don't really give you more because they can't. It's that lesser ones definitely give you less and that absolutely applies to power cables too.
 
thegame said:
Well, that's a fancy way of saying, "No, I've never tried that and won't ever just on textbook principle alone". But seriously, you're looking at it the wrong way. High end cables don't really give you more because they can't. It's that lesser ones definitely give you less and that absolutely applies to power cables too.
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This is exactly what I experienced. It's like the other chords were attenuating or sucking out parts of my sound and finally I was hearing something more complete. I will say the cheeper chords had this high end sizzle to it that none of the high end chords had. I guess it could be good or bad depending on scenario, but it did at least lower I think the noise floor slightly too

I think this is the way it should be. Regardless of what one thinks theoretically on paper, just try the damn thing and let your ears decide. When in fact it does break one's on paper logic that's where the real interesting part happens in learning why and making discoveries rather than just being closed off as some more engineer-y people tend to be
 
braintheory said:
I get where you’re coming from as a few of my friend’s and dad said the same exact thing, but then I showed them with AB tests in several different amps with not only a generic power chord, but several other high end ones and they all heard the difference as clearly as I did get progressively better as I went to better power chords. At first they thought maybe I was cheating or raising my amp’s volume, but I showed them everything with the settings, etc. It was as clear of a difference as the sky is blue. I’m not one that knows how to give technical explanations that others here can. I can only report what I hear in controlled comparison tests. I’d be shocked if you didn’t hear it too. Now whether it’s worth the money or not is a whole other discussion, but I don’t go there. My 2 cents would just be to have a more open mind and try it yourself if it interests you enough
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The ONLY thing that "high end power cables" can possibly improve (verses a properly constructed ordinary power cable) is the balance sheet of the company selling the high end power cable. Now, did you perhaps have a faulty cable that you were comparing it to? Maybe. But guess what happens where the power cable connects to the device - the power goes through ordinary wires and printed circuit traces. Guess what happens wherer the power cable plugs into the wall? It goes through miles, and miles, of ordinary wire.
 
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