The music/audiophile equipment business has been selling snake oil to a gullible portion of the public for at least since Emile Berliner began making 5-inch “gramophone” recordings of chamber orchestras. Connectors and conductors are one of the biggest scams perpetrated on the gullible and wealthy “customers.” Lots of people have spent more energy than I on dispelling the myths and bullshit and I think this paper does it as well as anyone, Mission Engineering’s “Measuring Guitar Cables.” I’ve also spent some energy in my past career and more recent articles on some of this stuff, but I’d old, tired, and more amused than outraged these days. In fact, for the most part I’m now totally on the side of the con artists. The past 40 years of watching the incredibly stupid folks who call the rest of us “libtards” has convinced me that there is nothing unethical about scalping people who want to be scalped.
A few nights ago, I was hanging out with a couple of local musicians and one of them began to explain why his $250 guitar cable was better than a regular cable. He is an electrician, by trade, and I’ve found that those guys are typically strong on the NEC and weak on electrical theory and this guy was no exception. He first started off by tossing out a word, “hysteresis,” that he clearly did not understand as some kind of quality connected to electrical conductors. Then, he went on to try and tag the “skin effect” to how he imagined that his new, grossly over-priced cable could make a passive electric bass guitar sound like one of his active instruments.
Pause here while I explain why I am not rich: I am slow-witted. When people say stuff that either blows me away with insight or astounds me in their stupidity I am equally stumped for an unacceptably long time. Sometimes days will pass before I come up with a relevant question or a snappy comeback. As disappointing as I am in print, I am way slower and dumber in person.
A day later, I realized I could have made some serious money that night. I am not a gambling man (at least not with my money), but this wasn’t a gamble. The next time this comes up in conversation I hope to be ready to bet $1,000 that I can easily setup a test that will prove this dude can’t tell the difference from a $10 Chinese-made cord and his grossly over-priced spread. All it will take is an agreement on what would be “proof” in the test (at least a 75% success rate), a blindfold, a pen and paper, a quiet unbiased witness or two, the two test cables, an instrument (especially a bass), an amplifier, and a dozen cable-swaps and about 15 minutes and I’ll be $1,000 richer.
In case you care, the ONLY things that matter in guitar cables are reliability and shielding quality. Reliability is directly connected to the size and quality of the connectors, the ability of the inner conductors to “slip” inside the outer sheath (either with slippery insulation materials or paper/plastic wrapping), and the care the manufacturer takes in assembly. Most shielding, either braided or double-wrapped, provides 100% shielding and, contrary to your high school football coach’s bullshit, 100% is as good as it gets. Avoid aluminum foil shielding because it will become noisy when it is flexed. Long cables are less reliable and more likely to become noisy. Noise is a relative thing with guitars, though. Since they are unbalanced and high impedance, your pickups are likely to be a bigger noise issue than your cables.