let's discuss ideas about guitar cable diy.

[brian wenz]

Hello Hello--
     The two cables I've used for the past  20 + years are skinny Belden [don't know the #] with those old screw-on ends [no solder].  I really don't trust the "no solder" ends, but these two cables have never failed!  I also have an old white coil cord from the 60's that I drag out every now-and-then.  Had to re-solder that one every few years!  [Sounds good with a  Strat-through-a-Marshall !]
Brian.

[earlytime1982]

Not necessary, since the ground is allready around the signal wire you're doing things twice. It's not necessary to actually shield the ground/live wire, the ground wire does that itself All my "pro" cables use this method and they're hum free.

The thing is to have equal conditions for the 'hot' and 'cold' lug. Therefor you'll need a stereo cable with two seperate lugs. And the shield is only connected at one side to avoid ground loops.

I make my own cable this way, too. recently, I found out Gotham Audio microphone cable make 3 conductor microphone cable(hot, cold, ground, and shield) with same reason. Some guitar technician I spoke to that he told me it is important to have good quality wire in both hot and ground because both carry audio signals.

I have been using Belden 8412 for about 10 years. it's great sounding guitar cable especially low end. I made some of them for bass players and they loved it. For guitar, it gives good fat sounding Jazz clean tone without getting muddy. By the way, this 8412 diy cable was very common in Japan so that they started sell this cable in many music shop in Japan.

I also have Bill Lawrence (Wilde) low capacitance guitar cable(1 conductor which is hot and shield) which has totally different character. it's clear high and tight low that sound great in funk rock or blues. I think this cable's concept is the original of what George L's have.

In conclusion, if you are clean tone guitar player, you might enjoy choosing different sounding cables to tune up your guitar sound. its not same as turning the EQ nobs. I have tried many different guitar cables but those 2 works good for me with reasonable price.

I understand that I'm pretty much sick about cables.lol I change the wire from input jack to circuit board in my guitar amp and effects, too. Just wanted to see how its affect. (I couldn't hear any difference..lol)

The another way preserving the quality of guitar signal by poor quality cable, simply use buffer amp as close as possible to the guitar pick ups, like built in buffer amp in the guitar body. once guitar signal is amplified, cable doesn't affect the guitar tone not much. but the sound quality would be depended on transistor or opamp.

[amptramp]

It should be possible to have a jack at the guitar end of the cable with some empty space in it to accommodate:

http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/

You have a choice of building it into the guitar or building it into the head of the cable.  The output impedance is about 6000 ohms, so you can run long cables and not lose much signal, even the high-frequency harmonics of the guitar output.  I am waiting for someone to do a guitar-to-fibre-optic cable so there is no ground loop hum, no extraneous interference and no possibility of getting shocked on stage by bad grounding.  And the cables will be light and flexible so you can roll it up in a tight circle and not have to maintain as small a minimum bend radius as with copper cable.

[Jorge_S]

Sorry if my question sounds too noobish, but what would be a simple/effective way of measuring the capacitance of a cable?

[mmaatt25]

Not much to discuss, really.  Don't use curly cable, and look for the lowest cable capacitance per line foot.  

Whats wrong with curly cables?? I love mine, saves me getting tangled up!!

Matt

[DavenPaget]

Not much to discuss, really.  Don't use curly cable, and look for the lowest cable capacitance per line foot.  

Whats wrong with curly cables?? I love mine, saves me getting tangled up!!

Matt

Well curly cables do get stuck in each other , and only if your cable is that thin , then will it get tangled up . But anyway , curly cables use more cable length then a equivalent straight cable and therefore higher LCR .

[SteveG]

The following method has always worked for me:

1/ Buy a guitar lead in a shop.
2/ Move on.



Steve

[mmaatt25]

Not much to discuss, really.  Don't use curly cable, and look for the lowest cable capacitance per line foot.  

Whats wrong with curly cables?? I love mine, saves me getting tangled up!!

Matt

Well curly cables do get stuck in each other , and only if your cable is that thin , then will it get tangled up . But anyway , curly cables use more cable length then a equivalent straight cable and therefore higher LCR .

I just A/B'd my coily cable and a Klotz AC110 (3M I think) and I could hear a difference. I now have a coily cable forsale.
Sometimes mathematically/scientifically you can prove something affects tone but in the real world the audible difference is not noticeable.

For me the biggest example of this is preamp tubes, 12ax7's to be exact. You here so many people saying this NOS tube in V1 was better than a new production one etc. Using a 5F1 circuit amp I built (you can't get much simpler) I A/B'd some 12ax7 I had, JJ's, Mazda, Groove Tube and some Chinese ones from my Vox. To my ear the differences were negligible.

Conclusion either I have bad hearing or there's alot of snake oil when it comes to tubes.

Matt   

[Seljer]

I recently bought some nice Neutrik right angle connectors and some of that Mogami cable to redo my pedalboard. A WORLD of difference compared to the cheapo rubberized patch cables I was using, they didn't even have a shield, only two conductors. Now everythings nice and quiet, even with pedals with a lot of gain.

[GGBB]

I've always built my own cables using Canare GS-6 and Neutrik pro connectors.  I've never had any noise or tone loss problems and am still using some cables that are 20+ years old.

[geertjacobs]

I've made my own cables using neutrik plugs and Cordial CGK175 low-capacitance cable.
In a comparison between old cable and new cable I can hear more sparkle.

However a friend of mine (Jimi-fan with Strat-Marshall) puts a cap in the neutrik plug of his cable to simulate a curly cord.

[SteveG]

"However a friend of mine (Jimi-fan with Strat-Marshall) puts a cap in the neutrik plug of his cable to simulate a curly cord."

This highlights the concept that taking a holistic view, lower capacitance doesn't necessarily equate to 'better' sound. Some have accused buffers of sounding 'harsh' or 'clinical', probably because they cancel the effect of cable capacitance.

Some of the best guitar sounds of the sixties would have been done with weedy high-cap. cables.

Hence my deliberately flippant reply above - I just don't worry about it. I do, however 'worry' about cables being durable. Switchcraft jacks take a lot of beating, and look fashionably retro into the bargain.

On a related note, has anyone else tried 'silent jacks'. I use one in the workshop, where it stops me being driven mad by the racket emitted each time I plug or unplug a guitar or effect (ie about twenty times a day).

Steve

[Gus]

A good link to understand what is happening with cables.
http://terrydownsmusic.com/technotes/guitarcables/guitarcables.htm

Cable capacitance, how well the plugs connect to the cable, handling noise and how well the covering and plugs hold up are what counts with guitar cables.  The interaction shows more when the volume control is at max(no brighten up circuit on the volume control)

LT Spice or other sim programs are good way to learn how the cable interacts with the guitar/bass and what it is connected to, it also can help you tune the brighten up circuit on the volume control if you use one.

[ashcat_lt]

And the shield is only connected at one side to avoid ground loops.

How's that then?  First, it's impossible to have a ground loop between a guitar and it's amplifier because the guitar has no other path to earth ground except via the amp.  Second, if you're connecting to unbalanced powered devices, and have one inner conductor connected to tip on each end and one to sleeve on each end it's still connecting the chassis of the devices no matter how many ends the shield braid is connected to. 

Unless you're implying that the ground loop would be from the difference between the shield braid and the inner conductor if both were connected at both ends.  That sort of makes sense, but I honestly don't believe you could measure, let alone hear, the effect.

Lifting one end of the shield can help in certain situations when two devices have other ways of connecting their chassis (like through the 3rd prong on the AC power cable), but there are usually better ways to deal with the issue.

[DavenPaget]

I just A/B'd my coily cable and a Klotz AC110 (3M I think) and I could hear a difference. I now have a coily cable forsale.
Sometimes mathematically/scientifically you can prove something affects tone but in the real world the audible difference is not noticeable.

For me the biggest example of this is preamp tubes, 12ax7's to be exact. You here so many people saying this NOS tube in V1 was better than a new production one etc. Using a 5F1 circuit amp I built (you can't get much simpler) I A/B'd some 12ax7 I had, JJ's, Mazda, Groove Tube and some Chinese ones from my Vox. To my ear the differences were negligible.

Conclusion either I have bad hearing or there's alot of snake oil when it comes to tubes.

Matt   

OOPS i was trying to say that straight cables can't curl up unless it's like rubberised AWG34 sort of cable ( I don't know how thin headphone wires are )
All my cables are mostly non-rubberized but there's two cheap cables i only use from pedal to amp , of course i am afraid to use them between my (possibly naked) guitar and my amp .
The cheap cables are the ones that can bend and form a curve , ( as in U-turn ) . Other then that i have bought PROEL patch cables and honestly , why proel ? It's for a freaking patch cable , why bother ?
But i have those ALOT THICKER then normal proel cables i got for free from a jam room that had that cable with moulded jacks that lost it's contactors ... so i took it for free ( it's the Die Hard series that doesn't seem to exist anymore ) I have thus ordered RS Components's 2 Core Lapped Screened Cable from them ( i have a dilemma for 100m or 25m as 100m is half the price of buying 25m*4 )
And i also have some federal mic cables that i occasionally use from guitar to pedal but mostly from amp's line out to my computer for recording .

[WGTP]

Yes, the cable is part of the circuit just like the pickup and the pots in the guitar.

I find that most of my cables get messed up when I stand on the chord right next to the amp.  Those little springy things after the jack that make the cable stand out a bit keep that from happening so much.

That or cables that move when your about to step on them.

[CodeMonk]

I bought 100 feet of Mogami W2524 and mostly Radioshack Pancake jacks.
Gave me enough for all my patch cables plus the Guitar > Pedalboard and Pedalboard > Amp.

Nice a quite.

[DavenPaget]

I bought 100 feet of Mogami W2524 and mostly Radioshack Pancake jacks.
Gave me enough for all my patch cables plus the Guitar > Pedalboard and Pedalboard > Amp.

Nice a quite.

Ratshack jacks and mogami ? Nah , not reasonable .
I ordered Tayda pancake jacks .
And i still have many shiny straight full metal jacks in my storage 

[iccaros]

It should be possible to have a jack at the guitar end of the cable with some empty space in it to accommodate:

http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/

You have a choice of building it into the guitar or building it into the head of the cable.  The output impedance is about 6000 ohms, so you can run long cables and not lose much signal, even the high-frequency harmonics of the guitar output.  I am waiting for someone to do a guitar-to-fibre-optic cable so there is no ground loop hum, no extraneous interference and no possibility of getting shocked on stage by bad grounding.  And the cables will be light and flexible so you can roll it up in a tight circle and not have to maintain as small a minimum bend radius as with copper cable.

This is what wireless systems are for, all of this and a bag of Chips..

[Beo]

Ratshack jacks and mogami ? Nah , not reasonable .
I ordered Tayda pancake jacks .
And i still have many shiny straight full metal jacks in my storage 

Argg... I wish I could be convinced that Tayda or Futurlec would do. I'm not sure my soldering skills are good enough to wire these jacks without melting the hell out of the plastic innards.