Different instrument cables for different sounds?

[Thunderthumbs73]

I used to be a person who thought it was silly to care about cheap vs. expensive cables.
But over the years, I found that I was choosing them according to the occasion.
For example, my Monster cable, with extended high end, sounds too harsh and brittle to me when I play live folk-rock, Americana, blues, etc. I always use a duller, lo-fi cheap cable for that. But I use the Monster cable when recording, to capture that high end (which is good to have "on tape").
Anyone else do this kind of thing?

I do ALL kinds of music, and to the question, NO. I've never done that. I can't imagine I ever will.

If you like your sound better through that process, by all means, do it.

 

[Aledal]

This is likely to attract slander but I could never tell the difference between a $30 and a $100 cable but when in a studio with a noiseless signal chain and ears well and truly 'on', I was given a near $200 cable (Evidence Audio) and heard the difference and immediately sold a few things to acquire some for myself. There is no doubt in my mind that the difference can not be heard in a gig/venue/noisy setting, but once I knew there was a difference it was tough to turn away from it.

 

[MIMike]

The Monster Cables designed for specific instruments or purposes do, in fact , sound different than others. It’s not because they use better components than other cable brands, it’s because they attenuate certain parts of the signal specific to the intended use.
If you want a cable for bass, roll off high end and you perceive “more bass”. Need a cable with extra high end, roll off some bass and you perceive “more treble”.

 

[Normando Neto]

I used to be a person who thought it was silly to care about cheap vs. expensive cables.
But over the years, I found that I was choosing them according to the occasion.
For example, my Monster cable, with extended high end, sounds too harsh and brittle to me when I play live folk-rock, Americana, blues, etc. I always use a duller, lo-fi cheap cable for that. But I use the Monster cable when recording, to capture that high end (which is good to have "on tape").
Anyone else do this kind of thing?

I do hear difference in some cables. Sometimes is really little, other times it makes me change the settings on my amp or pedals to compensate and so I understand you, OP, and make sense to me what you do...

 

[Lo-E]

Speaking only for myself and my own experience, if a cable is extremely poor quality and is microphonic, I can hear that. If a cable is extremely long and attenuates highs, I can hear that.

Outside of those two things I don’t hear any differences between cables. My main concern is durability.

 

[superiorpine]

TLDR; Everything in the signal chain makes a difference. Is the difference enough to be concerned about? Your choice there.

I am a recovering audiophile. I can definitely hear differences between cables. I can hear a difference between instruments, amps and cabinets too.

I did a double blind test with both microphone cables and guitar cables with my band, and they all heard differences, and they are neither audiophiles nor recording engineers. To be fair, the test was with an isolated signal. To me, the bigger questions are how much of a difference can cables make, and under which conditions does the possible difference matter? A recording environment is different than a live band environment. As with everything else, more expensive doesn't always equate to better quality, whether sound or reliability.

To have more fun with this discussion, see also tone woods.

 

[Hypocrite]

Comparing cheap store-brand instrument cables to Mogami cables with Neutrik or Switchcraft plugs, I definitely heard a difference in the top end. Those cables were genuinely terrible though. Would I be able to tell the difference in a full band mix? Maybe, maybe not. Would I deliberately use a cable that acts as an LPF? Hell no.

 

[JRA]

My main concern is durability.

per the discussion: if you use a quality cable (i didn't say "expensive/pricey") = results! good wire + good connectors = quality cable.

i happen to roll my own (good cable + neutrik connectors). i have one 20' that i use exclusively. if/when it breaks, i'll use another just like it. my present cable is probably ~10-years-old. my backups aren't DIY, but they'd get me through the gig if i needed them.

different cables for different sounds? = never heard of it, don't care about it. waste of time in my world.

 

[Pings Bass]

To have more fun with this discussion, see also tone woods.

For brighter tones I only use artisanal copper, hand-twisted and soldered with single origin flux with my maple fingerboard P bass with an anodized pickguard, but when I want a darker tone, I use a rosewood fingerboard P bass with tort and artisanal copper with internal hand-wound loops to add capacitance. I also drink light-roast cold brew coffee, hoppy craft beer and single malt scotch with hand-cut ice, and I have an ironic mustache and listen to LPs because they sound better. Also neo speakers and class D amps lack "heft" and "slam" and "punch" and I prefer butter or bacon grease on my necks to any of those new-fangled finishes. If you don't like any of these things, I'm sorry for your lack of discernment.

 

[Medicine Man]

I could definitely hear a difference with Monster cables when they blew out my barrel jacks.

 

[Super Bass]

I have no comment to make about what an individual likes when it comes to their tone....

 

[Jazzdogg]

I hear a difference, and I'm not crazy.
More high end from my expensive cable, for sure.
Ummmm... "YMMV."

I infer that the OP had a preference for a cable that audibly attenuated the higher frequencies; something that might be considered a defect by others.

My experience has been that the only cables from which I heard an audible difference were either damaged or defective.

Does anyone else recall claims that Monster Cable plugs were oversized and could create challenges when plugged into standard-sized jacks?

 

[Tommy Sparks]

No, haven’t found a different myself . I believe people can hear things others can not.
Kind of on the lines of different instruments and amplifiers and strings.
Some people can hear all the instruments in a song and others just hear the song as a whole.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

I hear a difference, and I'm not crazy.
More high end from my expensive cable, for sure.
Ummmm... "YMMV."

No cable is going to give you more high end. However, a long high-capacitance cable used with a passive bass may give you less. But almost certainly that loss of high end is nothing you couldn't mimic with a slight tweak of the tone controls on either the bass or the amp. So I can't see why on earth anyone would bother with two different cables in the way you're describing. It just adds another element of complication without yielding anything you couldn't get just as easily, if not more easily, another way. Since you did ask, I personally would never do that. But it's your gear, and your ear, so if you're happy, you're happy.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

The Monster Cables designed for specific instruments or purposes do, in fact , sound different than others. It’s not because they use better components than other cable brands, it’s because they attenuate certain parts of the signal specific to the intended use.
If you want a cable for bass, roll off high end and you perceive “more bass”. Need a cable with extra high end, roll off some bass and you perceive “more treble”.

Quite true. But this IMO is bad practice, because, again IMO, a cable should do as little as possible to the signal passing through. The ideal cable would do absolutely nothing to it, or at least nothing that any human could perceive.

 

[FightMilk]

You know those TC pedals you can do a tone print beam through the pickups? You hold your phone speakers up to the pickups and it can change the preset after it speaks alien to your guitar. I discovered a coiled cable removes so much high end it doesn't work!

 

[Rip Van Dan]

I've been playing for 43 years and all I have to say about this is that I like the coily kind.

I too liked them until I started touring with a nightclub group in the early 70's. We played 5-nights a week 50-weeks a year for 3-years and the darned coiled cords just kept dying on my. About 3-months into the first tour I went to straight instead of coiled. I had used coil-cords through high-school and a couple of years of college where they worked well. But they just couldn't hold up doing 250 performances a year. Now days I use a wireless so I don't even worry about cords. I keep a 20-ft. straight cord in my gig back for emergencies where the wireless has drop-outs but I've only used that a couple of times in the last 10-years.

 

[dougjwray]

OP again.
Just to clarify...
I had bought the Monster cable because of the claims of its high quality sound, and I heard those qualities. I'm the kind of person who's very careful with gear, and knowing that, I bought only one (to save money). I did have a cheap cable as a backup.
So, one night at a soundcheck I thought I sounded really harsh and clanky. Passive Precision Bass, going to the house via direct box, pre EQ. So my amp onstage was only a monitor. Not much far-reaching tone shaping help there. I didn't want to send the FOH person a clanky tone. (Him: "Maybe [shrug] that's what he wants.") A Precision Bass tone control is effective, but I didn't want to sacrifice clarity, or find myself twiddling it all through the show. So it stayed at 100%.
I thought, "Hmmm... maybe the other cable?" And the cheap one, lacking the high end, made the sound warmer-- just enough.
I was pleasantly surprised, and it gave me another tool at my disposal for the future.
The Monster sounds better for recording. It's really very noticeable.
That's all.

 

[edwinhurwitz]

I've always been in the camp of use a good quality cable and they will all sound the same with an active bass and maybe slightly different but imperceptibly so at the lengths we use. Science matters. I've been making my own since the 90s (except for a couple of excellent Ray Raydecker cables), because it's cheaper and with Neutrik/Mogami, I know they will meet a minimum standard. I also found that Monster cables often have plugs that are thicker and can stretch the jacks so that other cables won't grip as tightly, so I avoided them. Not sure if that's been the case more recently.

However, ca. 1998, I was playing a gig after a hectic load in and setup while the rest of the band was already ready to go and starting to play. For the whole first set, I was fighting with my sound. At set break, I got to organize my gear and hooked up my Neutrik/Cardas cable that I had been using for a few months instead of the not-terrible generic cable I didn't build that I had grabbed before the first set, and all of a sudden, my sound was back. I firmly believed that it wouldn't have made a difference (the bass had active EMGs), but somehow it did. There was an audible difference in clarity. It made me wish I had bought more of the Cardas cable when it was available (I got it from a blowout sale when Cardas forgot the d in "Grundman Mastering", so Bernie rejected it).

So, since then, I have used my regular Mogami/Neutrik cables and it's been fine, but the Cardas does seem to sound different. The only other one I have had that seemed to sound different was a Bill Lawrence cable from the mid 80s.

 

[bassicmike]

I have all my cables marked so I use them in the same direction every time. The signal runs much smoother yielding a warmer tone over time.


(this is completely made up BS, in case you couldn't tell)