The sooner a guitarist can accept the fact that, guitar cables do indeed influence (good or bad)  their guitar tone, the sooner they can conquer this battle. It’s a battle you can quickly win.

Here’s a few more things to consider as we move forward in this discussion… you need to use the exact same equipment when testing (same guitar, same amp, same speakers, same A/C power source) this way you can accurately determine what is happening.

Also keep in mind that what might be great for someone else may not be right for you. That’s why it’s very hard for someone to say “The best guitar cables are XYZ” because it’s very subjective to the individual due to their needs and desired results. With that in mind, allow yourself to re-learn what you may have thought you already knew. It’s ok.

What I’m about to say may blow your mind, but it’s my personal honest opinion and I’m telling you this to break down all barriers in your mind of what could limit your cable testing. I’m sure you all have seen those super cheap cables that come free in the case with a new fender guitar…? We’ll in my opinion, I absolutely love the tone from all of my guitars using those little cheap junkers. Yes, it’s true they are cheap and will not last very long before shorting out but, I think they sound GREAT! My point is, don’t only compare price when choosing what cables you will be testing.

In fact, Stevie Ray Vaughan was said to have explored this route in order to emulate aspects of Jimi Hendrix’s tone. The infamous old gray radio shack cord is a favorite in this realm, as well as the good old faithful vintage spring-loaded coiled cable. There’s no doubt that these cables will tame down the harsh high end.

In the earlier days of the Fender and Marshall Amps, this was probably a good thing, in that those amps were a bit harsh in the high-end range. This allowed the cable to sort of balance out the overall tone of the amp.

Obviously this wasn’t a thought out strategy back then because we didn’t the vast amount of high quality cables to choose from then. But now, we’re able to compare all of these factors with a vast array new high quality cables, and it’s very interesting to say the least.

More things to consider when testing cables…

• The length of cables influence your sound. Typically the longer the cable (20 feet or more) will begin to breakdown, or dull your tone slightly. As mentioned in the comments section earlier (Anders) describes how Jerry Garcia used a buffer to battle this problem and that is definitely a solution when using lots of long cables. You can also try an MXR micro amp to boost the signal as well as… etc.

• Your patch cables play into this scenario too. In fact, just one bad patch cable can degrade the rest of the signal chain throughout your rig.

• Don’t over-solder your ends if you’re building your own cables. Too much solder will also affect your tone in a negative way. Always use just enough solder to make the connection, it’s all you’ll ever need.

• The real expensive guitar cables are not always the best sounding guitar cables. You may notice a crisp high-end with greater fidelity over the whole frequency spectrum, but this may be something that you may interpret as too harsh and cold sounding. I hope this drives home the point to test every cable you possibly can.

• Once you’ve decided on the type of guitar cable you’re going to be using, be sure to re-cable your entire rig from top to bottom. Don’t forget to change a single cable or you can create a problem right there in the signal chain.

Solution: I recommend that you get a bulk roll of your favorite cable, and then get a couple dozen high quality quarter inch male jacks, and custom build each and every cable and patch cable needed for your rig. This will be something that you’ll look back on down the road and say to yourself “I’m glad I took the time to do that”.

Your rig will be super quiet, and very signal driven, and most importantly will make your guitar feel alive and responsive. This is when you’ll always be reminded of just how important guitar cables are to achieve great guitar tone.

This is how all the touring pros do it.

I hope this has given you at least one ah-ha moment, and opened a door for new possibilities within your sound.

Please share your comments with everyone… I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

More soon,
Bob

More details here…

Today, we’re going to look at guitar cables and examine what this simple little lifeline is (or isn’t) doing for our core guitar tone…
(Core Guitar Tone or CGT, is your guitar plugged directly into the front of the amp with absolutely nothing else in the signal chain anywhere.)

The first thing we must accept is that a guitar cable does indeed affect the signal and the tone of your sound. One simple single guitar cable can be responsible for good or bad quality immediately. This is exactly why I recommend that you spend some time working with different guitar cables to pin point the one you like best. You’ll only have to do this once, because after the initial time spent to narrow down your choices and finally pick, you’ll want to use that type of cable throughout your entire signal chain to maintain consistency.

So, talking from experience and knowing what helped me to quickly overcome this process of cable comparisons and eliminations, I simply spent a couple days rounding up and locating as many different types of cables as I possibly could. This includes cheap ones and expensive ones and everything in between. I was able to borrow tons of different brands of cables from a local music store I worked at. I also rounded up all the cables I personally owned and ones that my friends personally owned.

This may sound like a crazy thing to do, but it was one of the best things i ever did to educate myself on cables regarding signal loss and tone robbery. I would never have thought to even do something like this if it weren’t for months and months of wondering why my guitar sound would change now and then, when I wasn’t changing any components in the rig. I would notice gain loss, or presence loss and the worst of all saggy bass instead of tight focused bass.

One day, i was swapping out a simple patch cord and noticed a difference immediately in my entire guitar sound. It then dawned on me that the patch cord was affecting my overall guitar tone. That’s when I started experimenting with my cords and realized the huge amount of influence my cables had on my core guitar tone. Keep in mind, i was using all kinds of mixed matched cables at the time. This didn’t help the scenario any.

This is why I spent the time going through tons of different cables to discover what worked best for me. As i mentioned, you’ll only have to do this once if you spend the time gathering as many cables as possible, then do it all in one day.

I advise you to record your audio auditions of each cable and document the brand so when you can play them back, you be able to further analyze each cable. But… odds are you’ll know when your playing through the cable right then and there if it sounds right, and feels right. Yes, you’ll feel it in the guitar as well.

You’ll notice differences in things like

• Frequency drops or frequency harshness
• Loss of gain or enhanced gain
• Loss of clarity or enhanced clarity
• Saggy low end or tightly focused low end
• Big roundness of frequencies or narrow nasal frequencies
• Massive loss of sustain or increased sustain
• Dull responsiveness from the guitar or making the guitar feel Alive
• No- transparent and cloudy or crystal clear with sheen

All of these things are what you’ll will notice when you’re able to rapidly examine at least 20 different types of cables through the same guitar and amp rig in one simple setting.

More on this subject when we dive into part 2.

Be sure to read part 2. of  “Guitar Cables and Tone Manipulation”

Coming Soon…

Please Leave A Comment below and Share Your Thoughts.

More Soon,
Bob

more details here…

Please comment after you’ve watched the video.

Thank You, Robert


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(PART 1 of 2)

Have you ever thought about building your own pedal effects board? Have you
actually built a pedal effects board only to discover that your guitar tone
has changed drastically? Believe me, you are not the first to run across this
problem. In fact the majority of pedal effects boards will change your tone,
and most of the time is it not for the better.

There are many things to consider when designing and building your pedal board.
If you’re careful to address critical issues during this process you’ll end
up with a great guitar tone. If you’re not careful you may end up with a guitar
tone that is less than desirable.

Here’s a few things that will affect your guitar tone when designing your pedal
board.

• Length of Cables
• Types of Cables
• True Bypass
• Buffering
• Unity Gain Structure

There are more things than this to examine in Part 2, but for now this will
get you on the right track to killer guitar tone when designing your effects
pedal board.

1. Length of cables - You should try to keep the length of
   your cables as short as possible. This includes the patch cables in between
   the pedals as well. The reason is that the longer your cables are, the more
   tone loss, gain loss, and high end loss occurs.
2. Types of cables - Just as the length of your cables can
   result in tone loss, so can the type of cables. This is something that is
   sort of a personal preference, but I will say that Mogami and Belden cables
   are always going to be a great choice. Keep in mind that the most important
   cable is the first cable used from your guitar to the first effects pedal.
3. True bypass - This can be good and bad depending on the
   rest of the pedals in the chain. If all of your pedals are true bypass, and
   they’re all turned off, you face the problem of all of your cable lengths
   adding up to one long cable going into the front of your amp. This is really
   bad if you are using vintage pickups with low output and high impedance. You
   should consider some type of buffer to keep the signal steady.
4. Buffering - Buffering the signal can help when using true
   bypass pedals along with vintage pickups, but you’ll have to play around with
   the combinations. You may run into issues of signal spikes and treble spikes
   depending on where the buffers are placed in the chain. Best solution is to
   plug your guitar directly into a fixed high-impedance load that is identical
   to the amp input. Then distribute the signal to the various effects and amps
   by low-impedance buffered feeds. This will give you constant signal level,
   and tone characteristics, which will not change when more effects are added.
5. Unity Gain Structure – This is another critical issue when
   it come to balancing out your sound. Example: if you used
   a chorus pedal and a delay pedal these devices are usually unity gain. When
   you get into pre-amps, equalizers and units with gain control, you’ll need
   to balance all of them out so that one unit is not louder that the other when
   turned on or off.

Hopefully this will give you some great insight when building your personal
guitar effects pedal board. If you carefully design and construct your pedal
board, your pedal effects will sound great every time you plug in for years
and years to come.

Be sure to check out Part 2 of Guitar Tone using Pedal Effects.

Click Here to get more insider information on Guitar Tone and Guitar Instructional Products…

Thanks, Robert Lee Molton