WBC Cables - yes, you can hear the difference

[coyote-1]

Never bought a premium cable til now. I cannot imagine spending $120 for a cable.

But $36? With easy return ability for a month? Worth a try. So I got this one, 12 feet:



I tried it with two amps, the Princeton Reverb 2 and the instrument input of the Ibanez Wholetone. By comparison to a few 10 foot braided cables I got last year, there is definitely more clarity and slightly more high end volume. It sounds better. The difference is subtle, but it’s there. Comes with a ten year warranty. I’ll be keeping it, and using it specifically with the Eastman archtop.

[Jabberwocky]

Borrow a yellow Analysis Plus Oval cable.

[GuyBoden]

Purple Curley guitar cables sound best.

Yellow are ok.

[skykomishone]

JW, those are pretty rich cables, at over $9,000 each. You'd need to put down a deposit to borrow them.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

JW, those are pretty rich cables, at over $9,000 each. You'd need to put down a deposit to borrow them.

???

[Gustavo Eiriz]

Without a proper blind test it is likely you want to hear the difference.
Beside... i dint think anyone needs clarity for jazz guitar after rollimg back treble to 5.

[skykomishone]

Gold Oval Instrument Cable - Analysis Plus

[rpjazzguitar]

What quality makes it sound better?

The only thing I'm aware of is capacitance. Some cables have less. And, if you're playing twangy music on a Tele through a long cable and the tone control maxxed, I imagine that most people could hear the difference.

But, if you're adding capacitance with the tone control on the guitar then the only difference might be a minute change in the tone pot's position.

If it's not capacitance, then what?

I am reminded of the comparison between expensive speaker wire and twisted wire coat hangers.

[twtunes]

As for hi-fi interconnects, when they have some capacitance leakage to ground the tone is darker and one compensates by increasing gain. The result is more bass, but not because it carries more low end.

The challenge in hi-fi is opposite to the supposed result. One should use short cables to preserve treble and signal-to-noise.

[coyote-1]

All I can say is: it comes from Amazon. So it’s very easy to return for free if you don’t experience a difference, or don’t find the difference worth the cost difference… and it’s far less $$$ than most of the other premium cables. You basically get a month to try it for free.

Not trying to sell anyone on it. Merely conveying my experience.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Without a proper blind test it is likely you want to hear the difference.
Beside... i dint think anyone needs clarity for jazz guitar after rollimg back treble to 5.

There's definitely a difference in high frequency response between cables of different capacitance. This is neither hype nor fantasy, and it's clearly audible. A cable's resistance and capacitance combine with the inductance, capacitance and resistance of the pickup's coil(s) and the wiring to form an RLC (resistance - inductance - capacitance) filter. The way guitars are wired and connected to amplifier inputs, it's a low pass filter that starts reducing the signal energy at a frequency determined by mathematical equations we don't need to know. What we do need to know is that the signal drops off at 12 dB per octave above the filter's cutoff frequency, and that the frequency for most guitars is typically somewhere between 5 kHz and 15 kHz depending on the various values in the instrument and cable.

This is why the values of the guitar's pots and tone caps matter. Changing the resistance of a volume or tone pot in most wiring schemes will change the characteristics of the filter formed by the components in the harness (including the pickup(s). This changes tone. Changing the tone cap from 0.022 to 0.047 uF will make an audible difference in tone that you don't have to strain to hear. Go back to the simple "capacitor trick" described in numerous threads about the Quilter SuperBock US to see how adding capacitance between the signal path and ground (which is what the cable does) affects tone. Here's my thread with sound clips using various cap values, and here's the thread that inspired it.

Here's a simple 3 minute video that shows the effect of cable length (from 5" to 50') on tone. Listen to this with good speakers or headphones and you'll hear the difference unless your high frequency hearing is really impaired:

OTOH, whether the tone is better or worse is a matter of opinion and personal taste. That's why you can buy ultra low capacitance cables or use regular high capacitance cables as you prefer. It's why wireless systems like the Boss WL-20 come in standard and low capacitance models to duplicate the tone you prefer from your cable. There is a difference in guitar tone using cables with ultra low capacitance or the generally less expensive "standard" cables most of us use. If you play a carved archtop with a classic woody, airy tone, a cheap 20' cable with high capacitance will tame that character - and you'll hear it. If you're playing a heavy laminated box with the tone / treble pots rolled back, you won't notice a thing because there's virtually no sonic energy in your tone above 4 kHz anyway.

The other thing to understand is that cable capacitance has no effect on your signal if your guitar has a low impedance output. So flattops with a piezo and an onboard preamp are not affected. Active pickups are not affected. If there's a buffered output in any of your pedals or other effects, the signal will not be affected by cable capacitance.

I don't personally hear any difference at all in tone quality of any of my guitars through cheap ordinary cables or the expensive fancy cables I've tried when others brought them to the gig, if their capacitance is the same and they're well shielded. There's not enough difference in resistance of guitar cables per foot to audibly affect tone. But there's definitely a difference based on cable capacitance, and it's well worth exploring unless you're playing a 175 with flat wounds through a Bassman with all tone controls rolled off. Pat Martino didn't need low cap cables - with his preferred tone, they wouldn't have made a difference. Johnny Smith preferred the thin high capacitance cables that came with his signature model Gibsons. To me, the tone from an original GJS is audibly different / brighter when modern low capacitance cables and connectors are substituted for the stock ones that came with it.

I think the hype over 3 figure cables is silly. You can buy excellent low cap cables for little more than the generic ones we all used to buy from our local music stores (and now get for $10 from Amazon). For me, those 10' WBC Pro cables for $40 are probably worth it to preserve as much of the character of my carved (810CE7, El Rey) and best laminated (Bravo) guitars as possible. With the tweeter in my Blu 6, the difference is clearly audible. Only the fact that I use my wireless rig pretty much everywhere keeps me from trying one of those WBCs.

But, if you're adding capacitance with the tone control on the guitar then the only difference might be a minute change in the tone pot's position.

That's not exactly correct. The filter formed by the pots and tone cap is a first order filter (RC), so its cutoff slope is 6 dB per octave above the cutoff frequency. The filter formed by the inductance, capacitance, and resistance of the pickup / pot / cap / wiring system is a second order filter (RLC), which attenuates the frequency response at 12 dB per octave above the cutoff. The frequency response curves are different enough to be audible. Whether you prefer one to the other is a different matter. But adding capacitance with a cable does not affect tone the same way cable capacitance does.

[339 in june]

To me that makes sense ONLY if you have pio capacitors in your guitar(s) AND your amp(s)
But that's just me

[Spook410]

Just use a shorter cable. 10ft works fine. If for some reason you simply can't, use an inexpensive buffer and a balanced (XLR) cable. Or connect using a wireless setup. Not that you should use cheap POS cable with poor connections and/or bad shielding which is a different sort of issue. I do pay for very good jacks and high quality wire. I don't pay for testimonials, unsubstantiated promises, and snake oil. Cable capacitance is way down on the list of things impacting tone. Very expensive cables, stereo or guitar, are demonstrably a waste of money. Demonstrable because of all the times someone has hooked up a spectrum analyzer and checked. Spend the cash on better strings and picks if you want to hear your investment producing better guitar tones.

Side note: the capacitor in the tone circuit of your guitar is a filter tied to ground at the guitar. Not really part of the cable discussion where a high capacitance cable can roll off highs independently. But only if someone insists on running silly cable lengths and has an aversion to balanced cable runs.

[DanielleOM]

I have used the WBC cables before when I have wanted quick delivery.

I do find you have to be careful when ordering them to make sure you get the cable and connectors that you want.

First order I got them with Neutrik connectors and Canare cable. (Still my favorite)

Second time they were out of stock on the previous configuration, and they came with Amphenol connectors and Gotham cable.

Now I see they are offering the cable assemblies with cable marked with their own label.

Danielle

[Spook410]

In addition to guitar frequencies noted in Nevershoudhave's post: A guitar speaker rolls off around 5Khz. So anything the cable takes off the high end above that isn't going to make much difference.

[John A.]

I know that cable capacitance can make a difference to a guitar's tone, but I choose to ignore that parameter. There are enough rabbit holes in life, and there are tone controls on my guitar and amp.
How to get the ideal guitar sound: Randomly select cable from the pile on the floor or other place where they are stored indiscriminately. Plug in guitar. Turn on amp. Turn knobs until sound is pleasing (or at least not actively annoying). Play.

[garybaldy]

Purple Curley guitar cables sound best.

Yellow are ok.

Especially the ones I used in the 60s.

[coyote-1]

There's definitely a difference in high frequency response between cables of different capacitance. This is neither hype nor fantasy, and it's clearly audible. A cable's resistance and capacitance combine with the inductance, capacitance and resistance of the pickup's coil(s) and the wiring to form an RLC (resistance - inductance - capacitance) filter. The way guitars are wired and connected to amplifier inputs, it's a low pass filter that starts reducing the signal energy at a frequency determined by mathematical equations we don't need to know. SNIP

Ok. After reading this I went back and played my Eastman into the instrument input on the Wholetone amp. I love that Eastman, with one exception: the (hidden) tone wheel has always functioned like a treble on/off switch. There was either complete roll off, or throughout most of the wheel’s travel there was a uniform treble. When rolled off completely it sounds somewhat like a cocked wah. I was even exploring getting different caps and/or a different tone wheel to try to solve the issue.

Guess what? Yes, the cable solves it. Not completely; when the control is completely rolled off, it still sounds slightly like a cocked wah. But less than before… and there is smooth variation now in the entire wheel travel. So position zero = slightly cocked wah; position 1 thru 10 = proper tone control.

I can live with that.

And with that range of tone control, the instrument input on the Wholetone amp becomes very usable! It sounds like I’d hoped it would sound, and like it sounded when I first tried it.

So it could be that the cables I’ve been using just aren’t that good, and that’s what was causing the tone issues. In any event, I’m liking what I’m hearing.

[twtunes]

Audio-taper tone pots will seem ineffective at the top of the range, unless the sound is very trebly to begin with.

i get different response in my Gretsch-emulation instrument, with extra master volume. The distributed capacitance leakage means my tone pot acts almost like a volume control, unless both main and master volumes are wide open. I can see how a cable with more capacitance leakage might affect your tone pot response.

The goal is find what works for you, and that is sufficient.

[Cunamara]

The capacitance of the cable interacts with the capacitance internally within the pickup, in the electronic wiring in the guitar, the tone cap, etc. So you might find that a lower capacitance cable changes the taper of the tone pot (and a higher capacitance cable would change the taper of the tone pot in the other direction). This is the result of the choice decades ago to use high impedance systems in guitars; Low impedence circuits are much less affected by high-end signal loss over the course of the cable run.

Remember that the output of a guitar pick up is millivolts, unless you have a buffer in line like the Alembic Stratoblaster, the Demeter Fat Control, whatever Fender calls theirs, the EMG pickup circuits, etc.

[Herbie]

I know that cable capacitance can make a difference to a guitar's tone, but I choose to ignore that parameter. There are enough rabbit holes in life, and there are tone controls on my guitar and amp.
How to get the ideal guitar sound: Randomly select cable from the pile on the floor or other place where they are stored indiscriminately. Plug in guitar. Turn on amp. Turn knobs until sound is pleasing (or at least not actively annoying). Play.

Play, indeed, it is the most important!

For me the 2-3 months in the rabbit hole of cable capacitance about 15 years ago have saved a lot of money and effort in a) pickup rabbit holes, b) amp & tube rabbit holes and c) speaker rabbit hole, because I can trust that the cable is good for my ears and gear. Bad cable don’t take just the highs of Your sound, they flatten Your dynamics too.

I tested almost 10 different cheapish cables with low capacitance and finally reached a point of too bright. Backed a bit and found that Klotz La Grange is perfect for my Les Pauls and Sommer Session II is perfect for my ES-175s. Then I ordered a long piece of the Klotz stock cable, cut it fitting lengths and soldered Neutriks to the ends.

But of course I envy all the cats who don’t care about these details and just play – usually better than me!

[coyote-1]

SNIP Beside... i dint think anyone needs clarity for jazz guitar after rollimg back treble to 5.

One of the things that’s occurring is a presence thing. All other settings being equal, notes played up around frets 10 to 16 ‘pop’ just a bit more with the new cable than with the others. It’s not a treble sharpness, not a twang; it’s that the entire note just comes more to the fore, as it were. And that’s across all six strings, but most prominent on B and high E.

Not so prominent in the instrument input of the Wholetone amp. But it makes a real difference in the Princeton Reverb 2. Almost like this is what that amp was voiced to do. It’s odd… I got the Wholetone to be my ‘jazz’ amp. And it seems my jazz amp is instead gravitating toward being a Rivera-designed gain-stacking amp, left on Clean.

[sgosnell]

I make my own cables. I buy bulk George L cable, Neutrik plugs, and make cables to whatever length I need. I mostly use 10' lengths for instrument cable, but patch cables can be anything, from 6" or less on up. I have an assortment. For instrument cables, I like to use braided cover material over them, just for protection. It's cheap, and it works, and suppresses kinking. There is definitely a difference in sound depending on capacitance and length, and George L cable has an acceptable compromise between low capacitance and price. It's the best I've found for a reasonable price.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

I make my own cables. I buy bulk George L cable.

George L cable has extremely low capacitance - 67 pF / meter IIRC. This is lower than almost every other available cable - here's a chart of popular cable capacitances. It has the performance characteristics of pretty much every fancy, exotic, expensive or otherwise hoity-toity cable out there. All the highs that emerge from yur guitar come right out the other end. I've been using it for years. Both sizes are identical in materials, construction, and performance. They make the larger diameter for those who prefer a bigger, heavier cable - it just has a thicker core.

It occurs to me that most don't really know how to connect info like cable capacitance with real world guitar performance. So I just ran a comparison through a standard RLC filter calculator to show you that this really does make a difference. Let's use a typical PAF as an example. The ballpark inductance is about 4.5 H, internal capacitance is about 200 pF, and internal resistance is about 8 k. The RLC calculator says that the cutoff point of the low pass filter formed by this set of values is 5,305 Hz and the Q (i.e. the sharpness of the curve along which the drop-off descends) is 18.75.



Discounting the pots, tone cap, and wiring (which don't change the principle), I just added an extra 100 pF to represent the capacitance of an ultra low capacitance 10' cable connecting the example PAF directly to an amp. Now you get a cutoff frequency of 4,332 Hz and a Q of 15.3 (i.e. a less dramatic slope) for less attenuation at any frequency above the cutoff point.



Add 400 pF for a typical coiled 10' cord (most of which are actually 14' linear high capacitance cables when you stretch out the coils) and you drop the cutoff point to 3,063 Hz and the Q to 10.8.



Even with the pots, tone cap, and wiring added in, cable capacitance has a significant and clearly audible effect on the frequency response of the pickup to the strings (as seen by the amplifier at the input). For sure, there's a lot of snake oil on the market that sells for no other reason than that the buyers feel better with it than without it. But cable capacitance is not snake oil - it has a clearly audible effect on many of our guitars in real life use. Thunkers need not apply, but many archtop owners will be surprised at how much of a difference it can make. Even a few dB below 5 kHz will change the tone of most guitars through most amplifiers. It may be barely audible, but it's audible.

[rpjazzguitar]

Can you comment on the difference between adding the capacitance with a cheap cable, vs adding the capacitance with the tone control.
I got, from your earlier post, that it isn't the same thing electronically, but can that be heard?