bass cables!!!

[john keates]

I have a fender "Bass" cable. I bought it because it has an angled jack at one end and it was about the right length, but mostly because I can say to people "Hands off my cable, you can't use it! Look at the end, it says "Bass". If you use that with your guitar, your amp will explode!"

I am worrying though that it might roll off the top end... I hope not. I will have to have a good listen.

 

[MtManiac]

Any instrument specific cable is a hoax. Period. What they typically do is attenuate the *other* frequencies, giving the impression that you are getting more of what you paid for. It's a sad, sad joke.

Get Bayou Cables. Butch is a TB'er, and is a great guy who is not going to try and scam you like many others. Just because he's not high-priced does NOT mean he's low quality. He uses the industry standard in cable: Mogami and Canare, and uses G&H and Neutrik connectors.

I second (or third or fourth, or whatever) Bayou Cables. I understand making your own is not exactly an art so long as you know how to solder, but I can't be bothered. In 25 years, when my three or four cheap-a$$ music store instrument cables die, I will buy my next ones from Butch. I bought a Speakon from him for my amp and it has served me very well, and didn't cost much at all.

Instrument cables certainly do not keep me up at night though - no moving parts, they do a simple job that's easy to engineer - I've only ever had one or maybe two fail, and that was because the soldering job was crap. They could have been easily fixed, but like I said, I can't be bothered - that's what back up cables are for.

 

[3rdBass]

Without venturing too far into the technical aspects and, at the risk of over-simplifying, I adhere to to the philosohphy that 10% of your entire EQ investment should be in cabling. My basic rig and main 3 players are valued @ approx. $3k so I have no problem spending $300 in cabling for them.

That said, I've quit buying the inexpensive brands & models in favor of lifetime warranty ones: TaraLabs, Monsters, Bayou's, Planet Waves & Mogami's. I've (subjectively) found a difference in sound quality as well as the obvious warranty factor.
Just my 2 cents......

 

[Richard Lindsey]

It pretty much nullifies this concept, at least from pro reviewers. When a reviewer states that an expensive cable has a harsh top end, and they prefer something else, that disproves the placebo effect .

Actually, it doesn't disprove the placebo effect, or expectation bias, at all. It could just mean that that reviewer has a different set of expectations. Maybe the reviewer actually has a bias against expensive cables, as many folks seem to do. That could skew the results just as much as having a bias in favor of expensive cables.

That double-blind test you cited was pretty interesting. The fact that the results were so exactly split is is particularly intriguing. It's always good to have some actual data. I don't think it's the last word, however, nor am I saying you suggested that.

One way in which the study could have been better, I think, is that as far as I can see, the players all knew that there was supposed to be a change in gear when they flipped the switch. They didn't know which position was which, but they did know that one position was one thing and the other position was the other thing. The fact that they knew that the two positions involved different hardware is a possible source of bias, in that it could encourage people to believe there was supposed to be an audible difference when they actually didn't hear one. The fact that the preferences were so evenly split would be consistent with this possibility, though it does not prove it by any means.

An even better test--and I admit I'm not entirely sure how it would best be rigged up--would be to set up a situation where in some cases nothing changed when the switch was flipped. If the player still hears a difference in that situation, you know that expectation bias is at work. This possibility wasn't sufficiently ruled out in the study.

Another improvement would have been for the players not to have known when or in what direction the switch was being moved. I'm not sure how that would have best been done either, but it would have helped rule out the possibility of expecting a tone change when the switch was flipped.

In any case, a test of this sort generally provides more useful data than subjective nonblinded comparisons.

 

[Hoover]

Did you read my post? It pretty much nullifies this concept, at least from pro reviewers. When a reviewer states that an expensive cable has a harsh top end, and they prefer something else, that disproves the placebo effect (which is not what this is anyway).

Good try though.

BZZZT! I'm sorry, thank you for playing, next contestant please...

You can't "disprove" a scientific phenomenon with an opinion. You can only intimate that what is important to you is the subjective experience, rather than objective data.

...Which is something that folks on both sides of the arguement often fail to realize: It doesn't matter whether or not cables "really" have an affect on your sound if you're only interested in what sounds best to you; it only matters if you're trying to convince other people that cables sound different without giving them the benefit of a fair evaluation.

 

[Honk'n_down-low]

There's also a difference in gain. The PJB cable clips are louder than the regular cable clips with more distortion. This is not a cable phenomenon unless there was something drastically wrong with the regular cable. He should have also played the same lick for both. I'm not certain that the playing field was level here. I remain skeptical, but as always, I will stop short of condemning it because I haven't had the chance to audition the PJB cables myself.

Watch the video and listen again - there is a difference it is plainly apparent regardless of what lick he played.

He is reviewing the product and noted the sound differences as well - is he not being Truthful? Sounded different to me with Phil Jones Cable.

 

[BassieMike]

Belden wire and Switchcraft ends... No matter the brand, works fine, lasts a long time.

-mike

 

[Mark Reccord]

Watch the video and listen again - there is a difference it is plainly apparent regardless of what lick he played.

He is reviewing the product and noted the sound differences as well - is he not being Truthful? Sounded different to me with Phil Jones Cable.

Did I say that it didn't sound different?

The PJB clips are clearly louder (and much more distorted) than the other clips, which suggests to me that the conditions for the test with that cable were not the same as the conditions for the test with the regular cable, which renders any judgement on whether there is a difference in tone attributable to the cable null and void.

I'm not accusing the reviewer of anything. He may well have actually heard a difference, or he may have thought he heard a difference that isn't actually there. I don't know because I haven't tested that particular cable myself.

What I do know is that the ear is not infallible and that people are very suggestible. I've seen plenty evidence of that firsthand with audiophiles who have heard great differences between "swapped" components that were actually the same component in each listening trial.

 

[Honk'n_down-low]

Did I say that it didn't sound different?

The PJB clips are clearly louder (and much more distorted) than the other clips, which suggests to me that the conditions for the test with that cable were not the same as the conditions for the test with the regular cable, which renders any judgement on whether there is a difference in tone attributable to the cable null and void.

Or it could be the cable that is responsible for the sound difference as there is nothing evident in the review that the conditions were different. Not saying it is not possible - the premise of the review is that the only thing changing is the cable. And when the cable changes - so does the sound. Therefore, given the info presented - changing the cable is having effect on the sound.

Neither of us will really know - until we tried it for ourselves - but I am not buying that cable differences can't effect the sound.

If I was such a pessimist I would not have heeded the reviews here of the Little Mark. Even though they were glowing - I went and played through one - and I bought it. Finding out for myself that is was a great sounding Amp.

All I am saying is from that video - it appears as though the cable change is changing the sound. You can refute anything unless you witness it yourself and even then you can be fooled as you stated with some audiophile testing.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree - until we can validate what is presented in the review (and I am not spending $80 on any cable -regardless of how it sounds)

 

[Ívar Þórólfsson]

Also closing this one since it has gone into the same path as the other one.