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How to choose the right cables for your rig, and take care of them so they live longer.
Do you have a preferred brand of cable for different uses?
- Dave:
- Mogami — especially like the entry that usually has the gold tips, not sure of the exact type
- Probably Silver?
- Paul:
- I used to not care too much, bought whatever worked or was on sale
- Then had Monster instrument cable that lasted a long time (but big $$)
- Started really looking into this
What do you look for in a cable?
- Dave:
- Connectors that will stand up to being dropped
- Used to look for thicker gauge
- Need a certain length for gigs, so needs to not get twisted up
- Paul:
- Thickness — Especially in amp to speaker cables, remember these carry heavy wattage
- Suppleness
- What people don’t research: capacitance!
- Measured in picofarads/foot — the higher, the more you tend to lose high end brilliance
- Big bucks to get below 100 pf/ft; Mogami 2524 “gold” is 130 pf/ft
- It’s the total over the whole length that matters. So a 10’ cable can sound just as good as a 20’ cable that has half the capacitance
- Tight fitting connectors with stress relief
Extras?
- Cable ties!
- Paul: I love the clip and elastic ties that Planet Waves supplies on their cables, can also get them separately
- Velcro works fine, too
- Ever use hair ties?
- Pushbutton circuit interruption
- But mechanically can break down
- Neutrik noiseless sleeves
Taking care of cables
- Avoid yanking them, obviously
- You can use Velcro ties to hold one end down to a fuzzy amp cabinet
- Or run it through a handle to reduce stress in case of a yank
- At bass side, run cable around your strap and then into jack
- Storage
- Coil in circular loops, and tie firmly
- If possible, store it in a way that keeps other things from smooshing or pinching it
- Get a cable tester!
- Might be hard to believe, but we’ve had two previous episodes about cables — this one about how to run them efficiently on stage, and this one about different cable types!
Photo by Jaroslava Petrášová on Unsplash. Music: Jahzzar, Please Listen Carefully; spinningmerkaba, Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix).