Gear-itis: stop obsessing over gear - or not.....

[Cunamara]

I don't like the idea that the audience may need the guitar to be brighter than I'm happy with as a player - that's not a nice thought.

A well known phenomenon in gig acoustics. What sounds great to us on stage next to the amp may be just mud to people 15 feet away. Peter Bernstein says that for the sound to be good for the audience it probably has to be bad for you. I used to set the amp EQ by walking out to the end of my cable and sitting as close to where the audience is as I could get.

[Irishmuso]

i'm certainly committed now to the 'bad' cable - love it

For most gigs, and all jazz gigs, I just use my 355, amp and lead - English for cable - and I've been quite happy. Now I'm going to have to embark on finding just the right 'bad' lead? Oh nooooo...

[guavajelly]

in my case a better cable made things a lot worse

my deal with sound is that i just want one that doesn't annoy me

never had this problem playing classical flute....

I know that problem. I'm getting better at getting the tone I want (I invested some money into amps and time into conversations with technicians that know how to get a good tone). But then something in the context changes. E.g. the organ player plays louder or quieter and the guitar either gets burried in the mix or sticks out in an unpleasing way (way too loud and/or bright) – then in the next song it's different again though these songs were supposed to be in the same dynamic range.
Reminds me that I wanted to talk with the organ player about that. He uses a digital Hammond and maybe he's switching presets that aren't well aligned in terms of volume. I never had the problem when he (or other organ players) use traditional analogue Hammond organs.
He also uses a powered speaker sometimes and directs it to his ears so he hears himself well – but is way too quiet against the drums. I like it way more when he brings a leslie because then I can relax into the beautiful sea of sound he creates. But I understand that bringing a big organ and leslie cabinet is just not feaseable or sensible.

I never experienced that much of a difference in tone from a change of cables. Maybe my cables are all "bad enough"? ;-)
But I'm using the eq in the amp to fit the tone into the context of the room and the band – and also the position of the amp as lows are emphasized when it's near a wall or even worse when it's in a corner. I have a basic setting but alter from there until it feels good. Mostly lowering bass and treble if I use my Vibrolux which doesn't have a mid control. Strong mids seem to be the way to go for jazz guitar tones – to get the warmth and still cut through enough? I'm just using my ears and sometimes the EQ settings look counter intuitive when I'm done. Like bass on 8 and treble on 10 o'clock. Aren't you able to dial in the tones you like with the amp's EQ?

[Groyniad]

very interesting stuff - lots of cool responses

it certainly seems to me that nothing i do with guitar or amp tone controls can generate the same 'mellowing without muddying' effect that the 9m curly cable provides. The guitar feels less over-sensitive as well as sounding mellower and fatter.

for a long time i've preferred to keep guitar volume rolled down and to compensate with higher amp volume settings because it does something similar - decreases the sensitivity and brightness without cutting clarity and definition too much: but again - whilst this trick helps with the short 'high quality' cable, it doesn't get me to where the long curly cable gets me.

[don_oz]

very interesting stuff - lots of cool responses

it certainly seems to me that nothing i do with guitar or amp tone controls can generate the same 'mellowing without muddying' effect that the 9m curly cable provides. The guitar feels less over-sensitive as well as sounding mellower and fatter.

for a long time i've preferred to keep guitar volume rolled down and to compensate with higher amp volume settings because it does something similar - decreases the sensitivity and brightness without cutting clarity and definition too much: but again - whilst this trick helps with the short 'high quality' cable, it doesn't get me to where the long curly cable gets me.

Experiment with picks and string gauges.