Live: Cabs but no heads?

bouldersoundguy said:
As Lt. Bob says, speaker cables don't need to be shielded because they are carrying high voltage (relative to any hum that may get in) that won't be getting amplified. And driving speaker loads through shielded cables can be bad for amps.

For hum to be audible it has to get into a low level signal and be amplified.
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To be clear, sometimes it's necessary to have my head close by, while the cab is on the other side of the room/stage, in which case I use any random 20' cable that happens to be lying around. Usually an instrument cable.

If an instrument cable is different from a speaker cable, I was unaware of it. Is that bad for gear?
 
theD1CKENS said:
To be clear, sometimes it's necessary to have my head close by, while the cab is on the other side of the room/stage, in which case I use any random 20' cable that happens to be lying around. Usually an instrument cable.

If an instrument cable is different from a speaker cable, I was unaware of it. Is that bad for gear?
Click to expand...

Yes. Don't use instrument cables on speaker or speaker cables on instruments. A speaker cable used on an instrument will pick up lots of noise which will then be amplified. An instrument cable used on a speaker can be hard on the amp. The may look the same on the outside but the wire inside the jacket is different.

This is a good reason to use different connectors.
 
Knowing 1/4"-connector speaker cables from instrument cables drives me nuts. Only some have what they are printed on the jacket, the ones that don't, you gotta unscrew one of the ends and peer at the wiring- even then, it can be darn hard to tell them apart. And don't EVEN get me started about ones with shrink tubing at the connections.

I try to color-code them- blue SOMETHING (velcro wrap, shrink tubing, ANYTHING- means "speaker cable," but I can't always stay ahead of it.
 
theD1CKENS said:
Good to know. Hope I haven't screwed anything up yet
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the specific reason a shielded cable shouldn't be used as a speaker cable is that the inner conductor is small and surrounded by the shielding which doesn't let heat escape.
The combination of a smallish conductor plus the outer layer holding in the heat can lead to melting the insulation of the inner conductor which results in a direct short!

If your amp is fine then that hasn't happened so you're good.
Also ..... you'd need to put significant wattage thru it to cause that ..... if you're just playing at soft volumes it genrally wouldn't hurt anything to use an instrument cable for speakers but get much louder and it could.
So it's best to get into the habit of not doing it.
 
I was just about to pipe in and tell you what both Trace from Voodoo and Jerry from FJA told me about instrument cable as speaker cable:

Don't do it. :)

It has the potential to murder your tube amp.

And understanding the differences in cables is easy:

Guitar: Think of a coax cable like the old school shit that went into your TV, you had the center wire and the surrounding mesh wires that went around it with a insulating sleeve around the center wire.

Speaker: Just think of 2 twisted insulated wires. Some are bigger than others. :)

XLR/TRS: Think of a combination of a speaker cable and a guitar cable, you either have 1 twisted pair of wires that are insulated surrounded by the same kind of wire mesh shielding that surrounds it. Some mic cable have 2 twisted pairs (for a total of 4 insulated wires surrounded by that mesh wire).
 
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