Best Jack Lead For Electric Guitar?

I used to always buy Planet Waves cables because of all the bull**** marketing speak they put on their packaging - stuff about the gold-plated jacks, oxygen-free cable, etc, etc. Buzzwords and the like. A lot of it is techniques tested and proven in the hifi industry which are then blindly transferred to guitar cables in order to justify high prices. It doesn't hold true for guitar cables because of different signal strengths and frequencies and the like.

Also, the Planet Waves cables said they would never break, or you get a replacement. They always broke, through absolutely normal wear and tear! (....And I always lost my receipt, so I couldn't get a replacement :mad:).

In my opinion, it doesn't matter too much. DON'T get the cheapest cable you can, but don't spend silly money on it. I got a Bespeco cable in Music Maker in Dublin for €16 or something, and it plugs my guitar into my pedals just fine. And it's bright green, so I think it looks cool. It does everything I want it to and more. Also, it's one of the cables where the cover around the jack screws off, so if it breaks, you can open it up and have a go at fixing it, or keep the plugs and put them onto some new bulk cable - which is much cheaper. Actually, if you can solder and fancy going to a little extra trouble, you can get much higher-quality cable for much less money. Look at Mogami or Canare cable and Neutrik jacks.

As for "playing rock and metal", I don't think any cable would particularly suit any type of music.

If any of you are following the Audio Warehouse Roadshow thread on the MP board, you will have seen that there is a cable shoot out in the offing. There are a number of candidates of varying prices.

The test will involve reamping a prerecorded guitar signal with the only variation being the cable used between the reamp box and the guitar amp. Otherwise the performance, levels, recording signal chain etc. will be exactly the same. These clips will be posted (hopefully) sometime shortly after.

I could recommend some cables that I have found to be excellent, but which are not at the most pocket friendly prices. Inevitably somebody who has never tried them or indeed any "high end" cable would respond that cables are all the same and that "copper is copper" etc. When the clips are posted you can decide for yourselves.

68 lost souls wrote: »

Surely thats not the leads fault that you cant keep a receipt?

Haha, I don't think I ever said it was, did I? :rolleyes:

But I don't see why a cable company would make that claim when every one of those cables I owned (four) broke through normal use.

not another one of these bloody threads, someone make a sticky lads

Seziertisch wrote: »

Really? So a stummed open G played by a an "average" guitarist and a "great" guitarist through the same rig will sound completely different? And in the event of any tonal shortcomings, the "great" guitarist will somehow be able to alleviate these with their greatness?

The reality is that all the great guitarists I can think of use great gear. There was a recent discussion about who has good tone on here, not one single guitarist got mentioned that didn't have a signature rig. AFAIK, there are very few if any recordings of these guitarists playing just any old gear so to say what percentage is in the fingers is a little tough.

It is also the case that if you ask anyone working in a studio about recording great guitar sounds they will tell you that great gear (not recording gear) is an absolute prerequisite. It might be a good performance or whatever, but if the highs are strident, the bass muddy or the mids closed, no amount of greatness is going to sort this (bar the greatness of extreme eq).

I also think that your response if fairly typical. If someone asked about changing pickups, say, as a way to improve tone, nobody would respond that they shouldn't bother as 90% of their tone is in their fingers. Cables are a different story.

I never said your tone comes from your experience, I said it comes from your fingers. As for your open G string scenario, there are innumerable different ways to strike the string. Close to the bridge/close to the neck, with the plectrum flat, angled toward the bridge, angled toward the neck, pointing slightly downwards, pointing slightly upwards, or you could use your fingers - do you use the fleshy part, or your fingernail? How do you cut your fingernail, and what kind of shape do you cut into it? Do you pull the string straight up or down, or do you pull it out like Bartok pizzicato? etc etc etc. All these decisions would impact your tone a lot more than your cable-buying decision.

You're also assuming that cheap gear always sounds 'bad'. Like when I play through my ten watt solid state practise amp, and I turn it all the way up and put a distortion pedal on so that the amp is way overloaded and it's all one fuzzy horrible mess with no dynamics - who's to say it sounds 'bad' other than me? If it suits the song, it's perfect.

One of my friends was playing my Jazzmaster right after I got it, and his complaint was thathe couldn't get it to sound 'metal' after trying some metallica riffs. I told him to play really aggressively and really dig into the strings and make an angry face and grunt like James Hetfield, and bingo, the guitar sounded a lot more suited to the music. Try this yourself - if you play weak, you sound weak.

And your last point confuses me. You're right, nobody would reply like I did to a pickup question. Pickups play the most important job in the electric guitar - if you pickup the signal badly, you'll have a bad signal regardless how good your cable/pedals/amp are. Cables just carry that signal to the amp. So yes, cables are a different story. What's your point?

El Pr0n wrote: »

I never said your tone comes from your experience, I said it comes from your fingers. As for your open G string scenario, there are innumerable different ways to strike the string. Close to the bridge/close to the neck, with the plectrum flat, angled toward the bridge, angled toward the neck, pointing slightly downwards, pointing slightly upwards, or you could use your fingers - do you use the fleshy part, or your fingernail? How do you cut your fingernail, and what kind of shape do you cut into it? Do you pull the string straight up or down, or do you pull it out like Bartok pizzicato? etc etc etc. All these decisions would impact your tone a lot more than your cable-buying decision.

The same is true for every other piece of gear. For example, Jimi Hendrix's playing would still be recognisable as such regardless of what gear he used. Different pickups, picks, strings, tubes, amps, speakers, guitars even and he would still be him. The same is true of all the other great instrumentalists (in the sense of having a distinct voice). Then there is stuff like My Bloody Valentine and Sigur Ros,which is as much (if not more so) about the sound than the players ability. I have seen a couple of bands attempt the bowed guitar thing without the right gear and it just plain sucked in some cases and even when it went alright it was still fairly underwhelming.

In my experience recording, no amount of altered fingerwork or picking position or whatever will change the fundamental sound of the the signal chain. A guitar cable will (in my experience). I am not saying it is a replacement for the other stuff. Like any piece of gear it won't make somebody a better player. I can understand people being sceptical about this, hence we are doing the cable shoot out.

El Pr0n wrote: »

You're also assuming that cheap gear always sounds 'bad'. Like when I play through my ten watt solid state practise amp, and I turn it all the way up and put a distortion pedal on so that the amp is way overloaded and it's all one fuzzy horrible mess with no dynamics - who's to say it sounds 'bad' other than me? If it suits the song, it's perfect.

Not always, if you want it to sound like it was played on cheap gear then it is perfect. Cheap stuff can be also cool when using as it was not intended (as you said) but is largely uninspiring (in my experience) when trying to achieve more conventional sounds. Great gear on the other hand will sound great no matter what you do with it, whether sending the sound over the edge using a number of fuzz pedals or trying to get a full, pristine detailed clean sound, it will say stop when you say so.

In terms of sounding "bad", you should ask some professional mixers what their experiences have been. It might sound fine and dandy at the time of recording, trying to get it to fit/sit satisfactorily in a mix is a different thing. What makes a lot of extreme/unusual sounding recordings so great is the amount of work that has gone in to get them sounding exactly the way they do. Taking Loveless as an example, what makes the fuzz textures so great is that they are very controlled at the same time as sounding quite out of control. This is not an easy thing to do. They do their thing within a specific range, there is no buzz saw high end or swamping of the frequency ranges intended for other elements. The sounds all occupy their own space. This isn't just down to good mixing, but also good recording and, what I would argue as being not coincidental, using great gear.

El Pr0n wrote: »

One of my friends was playing my Jazzmaster right after I got it, and his complaint was thathe couldn't get it to sound 'metal' after trying some metallica riffs. I told him to play really aggressively and really dig into the strings and make an angry face and grunt like James Hetfield, and bingo, the guitar sounded a lot more suited to the music. Try this yourself - if you play weak, you sound weak.

I don't see how this is of any relevance to what I was saying. I hadn't said or suggest otherwise.

El Pr0n wrote: »

And your last point confuses me. You're right, nobody would reply like I did to a pickup question. Pickups play the most important job in the electric guitar - if you pickup the signal badly, you'll have a bad signal regardless how good your cable/pedals/amp are. Cables just carry that signal to the amp. So yes, cables are a different story. What's your point?

My point is that cables don't just carry the signal to the amp, but have a significant tonal impact. And I think, based on my own experiences with them, this will be obvious when listening to the cable shoot out files. As I said before I have no interest in arguing with anybody before these files are available as informed discussions are so much more productive.

El Pr0n wrote: »

Seziertisch;

You make a lot of interesting points, but we're probably going way off topic.

As for the cables and their tonal impact, I thought a cable should have NO tonal impact? (And here comes my hypocrisy )

As for all the MBV/Sigur Ros stuff, I think it sounds great because it's original. Nobody had heard music like that before Kevin Shields came along, right? Their gear wasn't that great. They played Jazzmasters and Jaguards because they were cheap, and figured out you could do a lot more with the vibrato system in them than was intended by Leo.

As for the 'not always' bit re my cheap practise amp, all of this is opinion! I like how my stuff sounds that way, who else can say otherwise? And all that stuff about MBV using stuff so that frequency ranges don't get muddles and whatnot; That's all about the studio end. Not guitar gear.

My play weak/sound weak bit was just reinforcing the 90%-of-tone-in-fingers point, I wasn't having a go at something you said.

As for MBVs gear, it might have been cheap (as in affordable) at the time second hand, but it most definitely wasn't cheap first day. Nowadays, to replicate their set up of vintage guitars, pedals and amps you would need a fair few quid.

In terms of recording guitars, great guitar gear in whatever guise is an absolute necessity if you are after great sounds. No amount of fancy studio stuff will compensate for deficiencies before the mic. Period.

Anyways, we'll try and get the cable shoot out up asap.

Seziertisch wrote: »

In terms of recording guitars, great guitar gear in whatever guise is an absolute necessity if you are after great sounds. No amount of fancy studio stuff will compensate for deficiencies before the mic. Period.

I know this. It's common sense. Garbage in -> garbage out.

I just think that "great gear" is subjective. An Ibanez Jem might be considered a "great" guitar, but there are things it excels at and things it doesn't, the same goes for every piece of gear, surely.

Seziertisch wrote: »

With great gear, while it might not always be the best in a given situation and might not be the sound you are after, it will always give reasonable, usable results. On the fundamental level of guitar tone, the one thing every mix engineer craves is a solid mid-range presence, after that the tighter the low end and the more controlled the highs the better.

We weren't talking about 'reasonable' or 'usable' results though, you said the only way to get great results was to use great gear. I thought that was far too generalised.

And who cares what mix engineers crave? The studio staff aren't the ones making the music, are they? And I know there are thousands of very sensible and tried-and-true retorts to that point, but I'm not talking about making a record.

El Pr0n wrote: »

We weren't talking about 'reasonable' or 'usable' results though, you said the only way to get great results was to use great gear. I thought that was far too generalised.

And who cares what mix engineers crave? The studio staff aren't the ones making the music, are they? And I know there are thousands of very sensible and tried-and-true retorts to that point, but I'm not talking about making a record.

Great gear won't always be the best in a given situation but it will always deliver. I gave the example of a "metal" guitar delivering the goods in a non-metal situation. Average gear won't. It will only take you so far and then no further.

As for what mix engineers crave, I'm not just talking about studio but also live. I have friends that do quite a bit of live stuff and they do battle with the sound for bands with crappy equipment all the time. They bring up the fader and start doing radical eq boosts to try and fill it out a bit but with not much success because you can't boost what isn't there in the first place.

As for not making a record, that's fine, but in my experience micing up a guitar rig is the acid test of how good it actually sounds. Considering the Fletcher Munson curve and the fact that how we experience sound is quite different from what a mic picks up, in terms of fine tuning a sound micing up an amp is the way to go. On top of that, most peoples ideas of tone come from microphone recordings. The closest most people get to hearing how Xs rig sounds is live and even then that is through a PA.

Unfortunately, the recording of the cable shoot out didn't happen due to time restraints. That said, there was a listening test in the room. I think 4 of those in attendance ending up taking a Vovox Sonorus cable. At least 2 of them were professional musicians/studio owners here in Ireland and one of them was Wolsey White (Hard Fi's producer).

The cables tested were Planet Waves, Cordial, Monster Cable Performer Rock Performer 500, Vovox, Vovox Sonorus and Evidence Audio Lyric HG. The favourite was the Vovox Sonorus with the original Vovox and the Evidence Audio viaing for second place. Next in line was the Planet Waves which sounded alright but paled compared to the top 3. There was no love for either the Monster Cable or the Cordial. All cables were around the 3.5/4 m mark, although a 10 m Vovox Sonorus was also tested and even though it was over twice as long as the Monster Cable, Planet Waves and Cordial it still sounded remarkably better.

The test rig was a PRS and a Hiwatt Custom 50, the main live rig of one of the attendees (who also bought a Vovox Sonorus). He commented that the Sonorus improved the interactivity of the guitar and amp and felt that the clarity and string definition it provided made it easier to play in so far as he could hear what he was doing.

Wolsey White commented that incomparison to the top 3 swapping in the others made it sound as if something was broken on the guitar. He also said that if he hadn't been there to see with his own eyes that there was nothing other than the cable being changed he wouldn't have believed what he was hearing and thought it was some sort of hoax/scam.

Even though the samples didn't happen this time round, I hope to get some done myself very soon.

For anyone who is interested Audio Warehouse is the Vovox dealer in Ireland and provides demos of them as well. So if you are interested you can borrow one from them (no obligation to purchase) and test it in the comfort of your own home/studio/rehearsal space. Should your findings differ from ours or you don't think it is worth the price then you can return it to them.

Seziertisch wrote: »

At least 2 of them were professional musicians/studio owners here in Ireland

I haven't really followed the argument but I just noticed this line and it made me laugh. I've worked in a few of the "professional" studios in this country and found the quality of cables to be absolutely appalling. I mean, we're talking 600 euros a day and this stuff made the cable I use to tie up my curtain at home look good. And that cable doesn't even have ends on it.