(SOT) guitar cable vs speaker cable

[remmelt]

what is the difference between guitar cable (from guitar to amp) and speaker cable (from head to cab)?

i see people throwing fits when there's a guitar cable connected between head & cab... why is this? i tried google but after 100 pages of GET YOUR SPEAKER CABLE HERE CHEAP i gave up.

[Peter Snowberg]

Guitar cable = small guage, shielded, made for tiny signals.

Speaker cable = LARGE guage, unshielded, made to carry CURRENT.

You can literally melt a cheap guitar cable is you connect it between a big amp and a cabinet.

[petemoore]

continuity from amp output to speaker is a good thing to have...very important.
 If you want to find the 'weak spot' in your amp, use crummy cables, jacks, plugs, to the speaker connections...I've seen people blow amps this way...works great !!!
 "I'll use this 20' guitar cable that I don't like for input because it's scritchy, on the speaker"...."NOOOO"

[Mark Hammer]

Your amp, or any amp for that matter, produces wattage by dumping large amounts of current into the very low impedance loads provided by speakers.  At impedances that low, ANY amount of additional resistance in series with the speaker changes the amp's behaviour.  It may look like wire to you, bu to the speakers and amp, it's another resistor.  Consequently, the wire connecting the speakers needs to be a nice thick gauge to present such a low series resistance.  As well, if it is too thin, it behaves like fine wire in a high current situation normally does: it acts like a fuse and burns up from the heat.

Having said that, length is always an important player when it comes to the behaviour of wire, since the electronic properties of wire are always a function not only of its gauge/width, but of its length too.  I'm confident very few of us would expect to find 18-gauge zip cord or "monster cable" inside our clock radios, TVs, or desktop computer speakers. In many of these instances, the power/current-handling requirements of the wire are minimal, and the length so short as to minimize electronic differences between heavier and thinner wire.  It is not uncommon to find the identical shielded cable used to connect a radio speaker as found connecting an input or line output jack.  With lengths of 8" and less, the actual additional resistance imposed by finer wire is negligible for low to medium-fi applications.  Moreover, the power levels are low enough that current-handling capabilities ("anti-fuse properties) are non-critical.  As the fidelity-levels aimed at move from AM-radio to "golden ears" recording quality, the type of wire starts to make a difference, and as power-handling requirements go up, so does gauge.

At the instrument signal level, shielding is always important to having a clean interference-free sound.  There WILL be circumstances in which you actually could use a short dual phone-plug speaker cable to plug your instrument into your amp and it would sound okay, but those circumstances are pretty narrowly circumscribed.  You'd need to make sure that there were no potential sources of EMI and RFI.  Given that the amp itself has a transformer, and that you'd want to use a short cable to minimize risk of picking up stuff "over the wire", you'd need some darn good transformer shielding at the least.

In sum, each type of wire is designed for a particular electronic context and does its job well and reliably when used in that context.  Right tool for the job, my friend, right tool for the job.  On the other hand, butter knives CAN make decent screwdrivers. :wink:

[Auke Haarsma]

...(I know this topic is very old)...

Searching this board, before posting my question, really pays off. I had exactly this question on my mind, and these (old) replies give me a perfect answer!

Thanks