Mil spec wire in stompboxes - all hype or not?

Paul Marossy · April 12, 2005, 06:57:02 PM

QuoteThis reminds me of a power cord that was 250 bucks for a guitar amp claiming that it will make your rig sound better...never mind the cheap romex the electricity has to go through to get to that 250 dollar power cord.

Good point.

Now, if we were talking oxygen free mil-spec teflon wire, that would definitely be the stuff that dreams are made of! Yeah, right... :roll:

This is the same kind of nonsense as using solid core silver wire in tube amps. No one is ever going to hear the difference between copper and silver wires in wires that are only 4"-6" long.

puretube · April 12, 2005, 07:18:58 PM

length does matter! : if you listen long enough... you`ll hear the diff`rence

Paul Marossy · April 12, 2005, 07:28:31 PM

Quotelength does matter! : if you listen long enough... you`ll hear the diff`rence

Are you messin' with me? I don't see how a couple inches of wire could make an audible difference, unless of course we were talking about the difference between a circuit oscillating or not. Anyhow, I would buy into fatter gage wire before I would silver wire or "oxygen free" wire.

Sam · April 12, 2005, 07:29:24 PM

I've always been extremely sceptical about the different qualities and sound of different audio cables. We've all seen people in Hi-fi stores trying out different cables to go between their CD and amp and guitar cables that has a marking on one plug which is supposed to always be connect to the same side (guitar or amp).

As long as the wires aren't extremely long, have isolation and isn't damaged in some way and where the leads are made in copper (or some other metal with good electrical leading capabilities) - I can't see how there would be any audiable effects of different wires.

As far as cables - well there is the issue of capacitance and so on... But, I mean, it can't really be that of a difference, can it? There was an interwiev with some bass player in a Swedish magazine who provoced me bu saying that the sound of George L's is more "dry" than the sound of some other cable which was "fatter"... I use the George L's for my pedal board only because they are known to be good cables, not because they sound "dry".

Oh well, maybe some people have "golden ears"...

Paul Perry (Frostwave) · April 12, 2005, 08:10:53 PM

Where teflon wire MIGHT be useful, is in repairs.
I've been told you can push it down thru a via (double layer PCB metal sided hole) for example. The teflon keeps insulating. And it would be nice doing a jumper from one chip leg to another, to not have the insulation shrivel up!!
So keep it in the service kit!
And those $$$$ power cords must have MEGA MOJO to overcome the 1,000+ KM of crusty alumimium & steel cable the power comes from the generator

puretube · April 12, 2005, 08:33:06 PM

Quote from: Paul Marossy
Quotelength does matter! : if you listen long enough... you`ll hear the diff`rence

Are you messin' with me?.

Paul: you oughtta know me well enough to know that was a mo-joke...
(err, I shudda stressed >long<...) :oops: :lol:

Erik · April 13, 2005, 03:27:24 AM

Coming to this post late... If you were to ask this question in a home audio(phile) amp builder forum you will probably start a civil war. It wouldn't so much be about whether the wire is mil spec or not but what dialectic and what the wire content is. I recently build three identical tube amps each with completely different signal and grounding wire types and for the love of El Jeffe I cannot tell the difference. I have been a professional musician for most of my adult life and I think I have a pretty good ear. I would love to think that silver wire has very identifiable sonic characteristics especially against long crystal copper... but when blind tested, I just can't tell them apart. I am just a simple caveman.

puretube · April 13, 2005, 03:32:23 AM

you`ll hear the silver with a full-range-and-over OT thru ribbon-speakers, and after having out-millered the circuit-topology...

:lol: :wink:

Erik · April 13, 2005, 03:53:46 AM

See what I mean... here they come.

puretube · April 13, 2005, 04:01:30 AM

Erik: thanks for reminding me to put in the smileys in above post

!
(don`t over-rate me: "pure-tube" to me stands for "tube-only",
not for: "high-end" or "audio-phile"...). :wink:

Cabezahead · April 13, 2005, 04:54:51 AM

Quote from: SamAs far as cables - well there is the issue of capacitance and so on... But, I mean, it can't really be that of a difference, can it? There was an interwiev with some bass player in a Swedish magazine who provoced me bu saying that the sound of George L's is more "dry" than the sound of some other cable which was "fatter"... I use the George L's for my pedal board only because they are known to be good cables, not because they sound "dry".

Oh well, maybe some people have "golden ears"...

Actually - i've noticed that too... I can definately hear the difference between a 15' George L and a 15' Canare. (I like Canare's better.) But - those are much longer than two-inch cable hookups.

Actually - when it comes to the difference in cables and transistors and diodes and blabbity blab blab blab... I can generally FEEL the difference under my fingers before I can hear it... Like with the cables - I wouldn't be able to tell the difference if it were someone else playing - but I CAN tell the difference when I play through it.

It's probably all in my head, actually... I like to think I at least have silver ears, though...

-CH

Mike Burgundy · April 13, 2005, 07:12:47 AM

...and some stuff is not mojo for instruments, but is for HiFi. Constructing CD-player casings out of tone-wood grade rosewood to "improve resonance and sonic quality" of your cd-player comes to mind

That stuff is *brilliant* as far as humour is concerned.

Cabezahead: I use Neutrik, GeorgeL, Monacor and some other cables, both in the studio and in the band. I have NEVER come across a good-quality cable that made an audible difference, and I firmly believe that measurements will back this up. I do not believe it is possible to hear things that we cannot measure (assuming you're measuring the correct parameter!). There have been several good threads on this, if you're interested do a search.
I HAVE heard cables have an audible impact, but these were invariably crappy cables, measurably faulty, and were thrown out.
A double-blind test would definitely be interesting here. You wouldn't believe how often I *really* heard something that I subsequently couldn't pick out in a DB test.... And I would have sworn to being able to distinguish....Psychoacoustics are very, very powerful...

Wait a minute... I have a High-Z input on my amp, an active bass and I usually run a MOSboost as first thing on the pedalboard, too. With high-impedance pickups, LONG lines and not-too-high inputZ's on your amp, maybe you actually could get into audible audio, or affect the pickups resonance.... I think that was tackled as well in those threads, complete with math. Probably RG, come to think of it

I would be surprised, though - the effects are either above audio, or too small to notice.
It does bring up the issue that it *appears* to be possible to hear ABOVE 20k! Hmm.
GeorgeL is nice and compact, isn't it? Great for a pedalboard.

Paul Marossy · April 13, 2005, 10:23:05 AM

I thought you were messin' with me tube-only, uh I mean puretube. :wink:

I think a lot of this stuff is in the realm of physcoacoustics. I think a true test would be to have non-musician non-audiofool types do a listening test between identical circuits with various wire types and cables. If they can't hear anything then I question if the average musician can, either. Especially if they play loud music a lot - usually the first thing to go in your hearing is the high frequencies...

puretube · April 13, 2005, 10:34:49 AM

I love psycho-acoustical phenomena - but most of that mojo stuff to me is "para-psycho-acoustics"

(have you sharpied the rims of your CDs lately?

)

Paul Marossy · April 13, 2005, 11:06:43 AM

"para-psycho-acoustics"
A new word has been coined!! :lol:

Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth in that one little word. I guess some people will believe anything.

petemoore · April 13, 2005, 02:31:52 PM

" invariably crappy cables, measurably faulty,"
What is your method for testing for faulty cables ?

bwanasonic · April 13, 2005, 08:36:23 PM

Quote from: Mike Burgundy
A double-blind test would definitely be interesting here. You wouldn't believe how often I *really* heard something that I subsequently couldn't pick out in a DB test.... And I would have sworn to being able to distinguish....Psychoacoustics are very, very powerful...

I would certainly believe it. I recently built a dual bypass box, and have found that the effects I heard when *manually* bypassing a box by unplugging it from my chain, are nowhere near as pronounced when I do a sort of DB test with a 3PDT.

Kerry M

PS. Maybe I should have used mil spec wire for my bypass box! :wink:

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Mil spec wire in stompboxes - all hype or not?