studio guitar leads

mshilarious said:
Well this is like part #47 in my series of rants on why guitar electronics are horrible. No system should be designed where you have to worry about cables, unless we are talking RF systems where transmission line effects must be considered.

But down in AF, it really ought to be simple. But guitars aren't properly engineered, so you have to tell guitarists things like don't use a cable longer than say 30ft.

Audibility. That is elusive, but generally if we define the audible band as up to 20kHz, and we want to ensure a flat system response, we want no more than 0.1dB deviation across that band. Now, transducers can't really do that, that's a mean test. So we lighten up on our transducers and love them as they are.

But when we aren't talking transducers, we ought to be strict. What is the #1 "complaint" against digital audio? OK, there are like 47 too . . . let's take HF attenuation at 44.1kHz. Due to filter behavior, there is always going to be some. Lavry defines an ideal in his well-known white paper, it's more than 0.1dB but a lot less than 3dB.

OK, so people gripe about that loss but should be willing to accept a 3dB loss at 8kHz? I don't get that. If we can't hear 3dB at 8kHz, we really ought to hang it up. I think 8kHz matters for electric guitar . . . maybe not everybody agrees.

But I was being nice when I described output impedance at 10K. That's only true if we don't touch our volume knob. Let's think about the completely preposterous concept of a "treble bypass cap". Let's say we have a 500K volume pot and a 250K tone pot, and we rolloff 6dB on the volume knob. We now have output impedance at high frequencies of (260K||250K||250K), let's be lazy and call that 85K. That 30pF/ft is now a huge problem.

Instead of fixing that problem, what does the treble bypass cap do? It breaks the system equally at all settings rather than having the system work at some frequencies and break at others.

And that's with a standard quality cable, nothing to be done about it. So you see people shopping for super-low capacitance cables? Insane!

How about . . . lowering the output impedance with a transformer (or an active buffer, that works too but I like guitars to be fully passive)? I mean, does the gain control on an amp not work, or something?
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msh, with the greatest possible respect you are off on one here. The guy wants to know what cable to get and if it matters that he pays "monstor" dollar.

You might want to hear or explain away a difference but there isn't one.
 
This conversation is really at the limits of my understanding, which means I really should keep my mouth shut and not try to contribute. :p


But... One observation I can't help making is there's already a LOT of inefficiencies in a guitar and amplifier circuit - I forgot the specs, but even singlecoils start to roll off over 8-9khz and I want to say 'huckers are attenuated in the 4-5khz range; guitar speakers are pretty inefficient too, don't produce much below 100hz and I don't know exactly where they start to roll off, but there's definite treble attenuation happening there too, and while I really can't speak intelligently about what happens inside an amplifier circuit, it's widely accepted that tubes are way less efficient than diodes, yet some of those "inefficiencies" are what make amps sound the way they do, and are very appealing to guitarists.

So, maybe it's true that guitar electronics are almost criminally poorly designed. I really couldn't say one way or another. But, it's a sound based on a whole cascading stack of ineffciencies that over the past, oh, 60 years we've all gotten used to and kind of fallen in love with. Jimi can play the Star Spangled Banner, and what we're hearing is inefficient, inaccurate pickups taking a signal, running it through an inefficient transfer device that further degrades the signal on the way to the amp, which in turn is driven way outside of its designed operating tolerances to the point where it, god forbid, begins to clip, through a very inaccurate speaker cabinet, all operating at such a volume that it even begins feeding back on itself, something that no cleanly designed circuit should do. In short, it's a mess.

Yet, I don't know about you, but I get weak in the knees whenever I hear that sound. For better or for worse, that's rock guitar. We might be able to do it better, but would we lose that romance that drew us all to the instrument?
 
Some of the really expensive cables have what appear to be very robust jacks but I'm not convinced that that's worth the price of admission.

There is some company that advertises in Guitar Player - might be Allessandro, I'm not sure - that has a tag line that reads, "If you can't hear the difference, you don't need one."

OK, that's good enough for me! :D
 
Zaphod B said:
Some of the really expensive cables have what appear to be very robust jacks but I'm not convinced that that's worth the price of admission.

There is some company that advertises in Guitar Player - might be Allessandro, I'm not sure - that has a tag line that reads, "If you can't hear the difference, you don't need one."

OK, that's good enough for me! :D
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Yep.......

// thread
 
Zaphod B said:
And modelers are trying their best to imitate that mess, and failing. :D :D :D
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Completely agreed. :D One of the things that I really dug about the Tech-21 Trademark 30 I picked up is there's something a little funky about the way the "Brit" mode responds in "clean" with the gain cranked and your volume back a bit on the guitar. I have no idea why, but it really feels like an old amp that's gotten a little unpredictable. I don't know if it's just mine and something's wrong (or, right :D) with it, but it's cool as hell. :D

Anyway, the thing I like about George Ls, aside from the fact they're pretty affordable for "good" cables, is that they're solderless - they clamp together. Theoretically, if you're gigging and your cable craps out, you can fix it yourself in less than a minute with a screwdriver and a wire cutter just by clipping off a cm or so from the end of the bare cable.
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
But... One observation I can't help making is there's already a LOT of inefficiencies in a guitar and amplifier circuit - I forgot the specs, but even singlecoils start to roll off over 8-9khz and I want to say 'huckers are attenuated in the 4-5khz range; guitar speakers are pretty inefficient too, don't produce much below 100hz and I don't know exactly where they start to roll off, but there's definite treble attenuation happening there too
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Close enough, and that's why I said we have to love our transducers for what they are.

That said, it's possible to use a PA cab instead of a guitar woofer and eliminate that problem, and guitar pickups generate more HF than most people might imagine. Less so after they run the gauntlet of typical guitar circuitry.

Yet, I don't know about you, but I get weak in the knees whenever I hear that sound. For better or for worse, that's rock guitar. We might be able to do it better, but would we lose that romance that drew us all to the instrument?
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I might rephrase that 300 years ago as "We already have the harpsichord, why invent the piano?" And I really like harpsichord . . . but it would be silly for me to say it has the dynamic range of a piano.

If we fix guitar circuitry so it works, it's actually quite easy to break if we so choose. But it might be nice to have the choice.

mutt: going back to thread topic, there was some comment that somebody bought an appropriate cable and it sounded better. You said that was impossible, but you don't know what the older cable was. It's possible the old cable was an inappropriate cable, therefore there could have been an audible difference. Or maybe it's as simple as the previous cable being longer. That's all. Things like that shouldn't happen, but because of the low quality of guitar electronic design, they can. Has nothing to do with high-end vs. reasonable quality bulk cable. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some high-end cable had excess capacitance just so it would sound different.

We know that instrument cable characteristics must be considered because of the high output impedance of guitars. We know we can't use a 100ft cable and claim it sounds the same as a 10ft cable. A 100ft guitar cable is the equivalent of a mic cable that is over a mile long.
 
mshilarious said:
If we fix guitar circuitry so it works, it's actually quite easy to break if we so choose. But it might be nice to have the choice.
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To be fair, I agree with this - I've got nothing against hearing the alternative, but I won't automatically correlate improved electrical engineering with improved sound.

If you ever get a "pure" signal chain going, I'll be all ears. :D
 
mshilarious said:
...........

mutt: going back to thread topic, there was some comment that somebody bought an appropriate cable and it sounded better. You said that was impossible, but you don't know what the older cable was. It's possible the old cable was an inappropriate cable, therefore there could have been an audible difference. Or maybe it's as simple as the previous cable being longer. That's all....................... .
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I really don't think thats likely and as a practical and scientific man it's best to ask for clarification before proceeding with the investigation I'm sure you'd agree. Much good work has been wasted over stupid assumptions.

Lets ask the guy if he had a < 50 foot 100microf guitar cable by accident just to clear it up.:p

Seriously I'm done with this, in 999999 case in that million nobody is going to hear a difference if they get a decent cable with decent connectors. No need to read the flash tags or over promises and spend that extra $50 it ain't happening and you know it.
 
axeman_ukl said:
so i take it were going for van damme instrument cable and neutrik conections:)
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PM me dude. I'm in the uk and can point you to the neutriks that I've used for years. They are also the ones used at the uni I used to teach at and they get abuse there and need to be rock solid.
 
Can I still use my little esoteric audiophile granite cones to isolate cheapo Live-Wire cables from the floor???

:D
 
c7sus said:
Can I still use my little esoteric audiophile granite cones to isolate cheapo Live-Wire cables from the floor???

:D
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Those only work when you also use the $400 audiophile-grade 3' AC power extension cord, and replace all the bakelite knobs on your amp with special vibration-reducing wood knobs with oxygen-free brass inserts.
 
It's funny the cable thing still has legs after all these years.

When I lived in OC back in the late 80's there were a couple guys on KPFK that debunked all the hype about audiophile cables and concluded you could get the same performance from a piece of #12AWG THHN wire.

Any of you guys ever get caught up in using the green marking pens on your cd's to reduce laser reflections???

That was a big one back then too.
 
c7sus said:
When I lived in OC back in the late 80's there were a couple guys on KPFK that debunked all the hype about audiophile cables and concluded you could get the same performance from a piece of #12AWG THHN wire.
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I read a thread on some audiophile forum about a guy that set up a blind listening test for two friends who were having a friendly dispute about two brands of high-end speaker cable.

What they didn't know was that for one set of cables he substituted coat hanger wire, and they could not tell the difference. Talk about pwnage! :D
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
If you ever get a "pure" signal chain going, I'll be all ears. :D
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Hmm, I lost a long post here earlier :confused:

Oh well, I'll summarize:

"Pure" chain: 1' lead, DI, mic preamp into acoustic amp or PA cab

Passive DI will work into a regular guitar amp if you can cope with the ~24dB signal loss. Otherwise, try a 1:4 mic input transformer wired as step-down, that only costs 12dB and gets most of the way there.

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Power amps have incredibly low output impedance so the only relevant criterion for speaker cables is resistance, which isn't that critical unless you're really pushing a lot of power.
 
I swear I learn more when Muttley and mshilarious are having a barney about something than from reading all the other current posts combined...

We should set you both up in a corner somewhere and just chuck a topic at you! :)
 
mshilarious said:
Hmm, I lost a long post here earlier :confused:

Oh well, I'll summarize:

"Pure" chain: 1' lead, DI, mic preamp into acoustic amp or PA cab

Passive DI will work into a regular guitar amp if you can cope with the ~24dB signal loss. Otherwise, try a 1:4 mic input transformer wired as step-down, that only costs 12dB and gets most of the way there.

.
.
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Power amps have incredibly low output impedance so the only relevant criterion for speaker cables is resistance, which isn't that critical unless you're really pushing a lot of power.
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Doesn't that still cause you trouble, with the guitar's internal witing? Tone pots, pickups, etc?
 
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