Are expensive cords better than inexpensive cords ?

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Diary of a Axeman

Diary of a Axeman

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Last week end I organized the back of my rack case's wirey mess with zip ties . I had many Monster, Planet Wave and some Mogami cords.

Before that I found a container with tons of older cables from the late 1970's to old 1980's Whirlwind cables.
I took out the more recent expensive cables, put in the older mid to high quality cables from yester year and I didn't notice any difference in sound quality , at all .
 
Most cables I’ve used either worked or they didn’t. They didn’t really have a sound. But I bought some foo foo cable from one the booteek cable manufacturers and it definitely had a tone. It was horrible and had me wondering wtf happened to my rig for a short time. So I sold it and stick to regular, cheap cables. If it fails I either repair or replace.
 
There are many, many threads about this topic already. Expensive ones could have better shielding and reliability. As far as impacting your tone, it’s about the cable capacitance which is different for various cables and not directly associated with price.
 
Depends on how revealing your amp is, how sensitive your hearing is and how close minded one may be.
 
Having a bunch of different cables I try different ones maybe once a year or so. They do make a difference but only you can determine if it benefits your tone or hinders it. With my set up's the Mogami sound the best across the board. I just recently purchased the new Mogami Overdrive cables both guitar cable and amp to cab speaker cable's. Pricey but being a Mogami fan I had to try. The speaker cable is a must! Everyone who has come to listen and do a A/B comparison instantly came to the same conclusion and went away making a speaker cable purchase of their own. The guitar cables are another story. They sound great in modern style high gain set up's but in my Marshall's they are too much. They took away too much of that great vintage feel and tone. I use the Overdrive speaker cable on all of my 1/2 stacks but only use the Overdrive guitar cables on the modern high gain set up's. In the end it's what ever works best for your set up and ears but usually higher end cable, to some degree have either better shielding and or better end connections and are usually a little more sturdy and reliable because of it.
 
Do an A/B

Get a A/B Pedal and plug in both a cheap and expensive cable. Then use the stereo /dual-mono option on the back of a cab and put them in with your eyes closed so you don't know which is which. Play and swap between A and B. If you can't hear a difference, it doesn't matter :rock:
 
Most of the mid-level cords are good now as far as sound quality goes. The issue I have is how long they're going to last
 
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Don't worry about price. Worry about capacitance. Buy low capacitance cables. Capacitance matters more when the cable is longer, less when the cable is short. Low capacitance cables will sound more clear and not suck out the highs.

Get cables from Best-Tronics. Low prices/Low capacitance
 
There's definitely a difference in cables in regards to capacitance(tone or brightness), and of course construction/durability. I thought it was snake oil shit for years and was happy with Monster and whatever off the shelf cables until I decided to experiment for myself. If you don't notice a difference in your setup, don't sweat it at all. It wasn't until I was going with a bare bones straight into amp input setup that I bothered to check. Your tone is a sum of all parts, and using higher or lower capacitance cables on one part of a rig that has many cables isn't going to matter at all. However, if the only two cables you use are into the amp, and then into the cab, then the "sound" of those cables is going go have a larger impact.
 
The capacitance is only going to matter if the output impedance of your device is high. So from (unbuffered) guitar to the next thing in the chain. With any active device (so probably anything in your rack), it really shouldn't matter.

Personally I've never heard a difference in speaker cables. But there are some that swear that they do, the same way they swear a hand-wired amp sounds different than a PTP one. (I've heard a theory or two about why it might matter, but I can't say I've heard a difference.)
 
Been round and round on this one many times - blown a lot of cash too.
Since about 10 years ago I've just been buying Dunlop stuff and it does the job just fine.
 
Capacitance isn’t all that matters. George L‘s (19 pf/ft) and Mogami 3368 (21.4 pf/ft) cables sound, feel and react completely different from each other. A 2.5 pf/ft difference in capacitance over the span of a 10 - 15 ft run cannot account for the mammoth difference. Someone please explain…
 
thegame said:
Capacitance isn’t all that matters. George L‘s (19 pf/ft) and Mogami 3368 (21.4 pf/ft) cables sound, feel and react completely different from each other. A 2.5 pf/ft difference in capacitance over the span of a 10 - 15 ft run cannot account for the mammoth difference. Someone please explain…
Click to expand...

Worth a read.
https://dreamvibesmusic.com/pages/cables-101-2-capacitance-the-biggest-tone-changing-factor

I would imagine it depends a lot on how good your hearing is in the high end.
I recently got tested and around 2.5K and above mine starts taking a steep nosedive.
 
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