What brand of cords do the professionals use?

[vaisatsteen]

Ive tried all kinds of different cords from Guitar center, Carvin, The electronics shop near my house and I just cant seem to find a cord that doesnt short out or is just junk to begin with. I always end up having to cut it, buy a couple plugs and solder them on. What brand do the Pros use?

[bam]

they say, Monster cables.

I say, DIY cables

Read this :

[cband7]

I've used a brand called Hosa for years (a few, anyway) and they seem very rugged for the price, almost always metal shells, heavy duty rubber covered cables, etc. Most online music stores seem to sell 'em.

www.hosatech.com

[vaisatsteen]

They look pretty good and the solder joints have heat shrink and If I want to make my own it looks like they sell bulk cord. Thanks for the links.

[pollyshero]

"GEORGE L'S"

[Ripper]

I use Planet Waves cable.

[jester700]

"The pros" have as many different opinions as the rest of us. But I'll vote for George L's - very tough.

[UnklMickey]

being an occasional weekender, i can't say authoritatively.

if i had to speculate, i'd guess most of the "touring" pros use cables hand made with switchcraft ends and a good quality cable (belden or similar) that their techs make to the exact length needed for the particular application.

[vaisatsteen]

George L`s and Hosa look pretty well made. I will probably give each a try. Theyve got to be better than what Guitar Center sells. Thanks.

[johan]

I'm always in for a counter quote from César Diaz about SRV:

"When we were doing the In Step album with Stevie, I had an endorsement with
Monster Cables. They would send me all of this free stuff and
I was very excited because I could manage these things for a
guy like Stevie, who really didn’t even know how to wash
dishes. All he knew how to do was play the guitar, but God
bless him for that, because he really did something with what
he knew. Anyway, I took these cables we got to Stevie and he
said, “I hate these things.” I asked him, “Why, man, they’re
the best cables in the world?” He said, “They pass to much
electricity.” Those were his exact words, and I’ll never forget
it as long as I live. “They pass too much electricity.”

TQR: They were too efficient…

Yeah, so he sent me out to the local Radio Shack and told me
to buy every gray coil cord they had – not the black ones,
only the gray ones. And I thought, “Hhmm, this freakin’ hick
from Dallas is telling me this?” I got them and ran them
through my capacitance meter and found out that they added
like almost .05 mfd to the signal chain. That made it sound
solid – it was like having a tone control, and the brightness
and harshness that the Marshalls had was eliminated. There
isn’t a single picture of Hendrix…back then they already had
high-end cables, but there isn’t a single picture of Hendrix
where you see him playing with a straight cable. Why? This
is something I brought up to Eric Johnson – whether he heard
me or not I don’t know, but it could be the second comin of the coil cables."

www.tonequest.com/pdf_pubs/samples/TQRDiaz.pdf

Tone Request is certainly worth reading and there a a whole deal of freebie pdfs.

[Trey]

I sencond, or is it third now, George L's. Custom length and a breeze to fix on the fly in the rare chance that they do go do. And the couple times I've had a problem, the problems turned out to be my shoddy construction. Never put together electronic while under the influence...

[JohnH]

I went shopping for a short cable recently, and could not find what I wanted, so asked to buy the raw cable and jack plugs so I could make it up myself. Very kindly, the shop offered to do it for me for free, and I was happy to let them.

A few weeks later, while chasing down some anomalies on a new rewiring build, I arrived at the cable and tested its resistance. There was a partial connection of about 70k between the hot and the ground wires, within the cable assembly. This is very unusual, normally bad cables are either short circuit or open circuit. This was not enough to stop the cable working, but was sucking a lot of tone out of my guitar. I redid one end and it was OK.

So my lesson for the future is that I will always test a new cable, both for continuity end-to-end of each of the ground and hot wires, and also lack of continuity between the two, using high and low resistance settings.

John

[ChrisK]

RF, 'cuz this ain't low voltage.

[billyluthier]

brand of cables are for make believe wannabe. as long as your pickup are powerful enough and cables are wired correctly, the brand only help improves 3% or less. cable always come as 3.2 inner core.1 coxial cage. do not solder the 2 inner as plus minus. only solder coxial as minus only 1 inner as plus. you be ok. if u need longer cable,consider samson wireless.

[tucsonbassplayer]

Mogami for me. If it doesn't cost $50.00 minimum I won't touch it ever again. They sound just fine and they don't let you down. Band members teased me when I bought the first one and after them spending $17.00 at a time and putting up with crap the math finally makes sense. Spend it once and your done!




tucsonbassplayer.blogspot.com