Personally, I like Mogami 2524 for instrument cables. I get my cables and connectors from www.redco.com
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Does anyone solder their own instrument cables?
- Thread starter 98mtd
- Start date
I also teach high school, and accumulated a graveyard of dead cables. My dad is great at soldering, so I had him inspect all the cables. We had about 50 Frankenstein cables, as a result.
I also have experience touring, and had him custom make a cable with a silencer. I've been in amphitheaters, and unplug a regular cable, and a huge thundering sound went though the venue with the sound men blaming me. The silencer is a savior. I've used Switchcraft, but am starting to use the Neutrik silencer. Neutrik looks good. What are your experiences with the silencer?
Love Best-Tronics (in Tinley Park, IL) they are simply awesome!
Had them make up three 5 pin Alembic cables of different lengths for my bass a couple years ago and (recently) purchase their D hole rack mount patch panels and build/wire them up at home, (they also build custom pre wired to your specs rack panels and pedalboard interfaces).
Definitely a big shout out to them from a very satisfied Consumer Customer!
Eight bucks for a pair of right-angle Switchcraft 226’s, 11$ for 20 ft. of Canare L-2T2S, so under $25 with shipping. Markertek sells a similar cable with Canare G6 stock and different connectors for $90. (As I noted, I think using the mic cable has the potential to be more reliable).
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
Administrator, Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Tobias Club #133
Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Basses
Pedulla Club #45
20 feet Mogami cable @ 0.95 per foot
2 top quality plugs ~ $3.50 ea.
2" rosin core solder (15/lb) ~ 0.5¢
2" shrink tubing ~ 10¢
10 minutes assembly & test
($20/hr) $3.50 rounded.
$19.00 cable
$ 7.00 plugs
$ 0.01 solder
$ 0.10 shrink tube
$ 3.50 time
$29.61 total ($26.11 if you ignore your time)
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Quick scan of prices online:
18' Mogami Gold $59.95
18' Mogami Silver $39.95
18' Mogami Platinum $164.95
21' Monster $39.95
20' LiveWire Elite $42.99
20' Planet Waves $29.99
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You'd likely also have higher capacitance with that extra conductor, so wouldn't there be more attenuation of highs using mic cable? I'd also suspect the cable would be stiffer, bulkier, and heavier than standard shielded audio cable.
Good job, guys! Looks like a little bit of time and effort will save a good chunk of money...
I also started out (10-years ago) buying & making Canare cables of various colors. But, like member 'PCR', I've been exclusive with Mogami for about 2-years now. You just can't go wrong with that Japanese-made product. The extra copper strands in the 'hot' (signal) and the braided shield are really outstanding. This particular cable stock goes very well with Neutrik connectors especially. I just made an 18' instrument cable for myself recently using Mogami stock.
. .
Bass guitar only extends out to 3-4 kHz. Any high-freq attenuation, if present at all, will be octaves higher than that. Some may argue that harmonics and overtones will extend up that high. Anyone who can actually hear the difference in an A/B test obviously needs to use a different cable.
Not necessarily, that wholly depends on the cable. I’ve seen plenty of stiff single-conductor guitar cable. The L-2T2S is as supple as it gets. By contrast, some Mogami W2549 mic cable I tried was much stiffer and wouldn’t as readily lay out on the ground.
Ditto with bulk – entirely the cable build. For example, Canare’s L-2E5 mic cable is substantially thinner than the L-2T2S. It’s accomplished by using smaller-gauge wire and thinner insulation on the individual conductors and outer jacket itself.
Canare L-2T2S (top) vs. L-2E5 (bottom)
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
Administrator, Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Tobias Club #133
Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Basses
Pedulla Club #45
Bass guitar only extends out to 3-4 kHz. Any high-freq attenuation, if present at all, will be octaves higher than that. Some may argue that harmonics and overtones will extend up that high. Anyone who can actually hear the difference in an A/B test obviously needs to use a different cable.
Not necessarily, that wholly depends on the cable. I’ve seen plenty of stiff single-conductor guitar cable. The L-2T2S is as supple as it gets. By contrast, some Mogami W2549 mic cable I tried was much stiffer and wouldn’t as readily lay out on the ground.
Ditto with bulk – entirely the cable build. For example, Canare’s L-2E5 mic cable is substantially thinner than the L-2T2S. It’s accomplished by using smaller-gauge wire and thinner insulation on the individual conductors and outer jacket itself.
Canare L-2T2S (top) vs. L-2E5 (bottom)
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
Administrator, Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Tobias Club #133
Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Basses
Pedulla Club #45
Fair enough!
Have to give it a try then. I need to build a few more cables shortly. I'm still a little skeptical the additional copper won't add sufficiently extra capacitance and affect the sound in some of the more mid forward basses I own with the way I play them. But a real world tryout is worth ten thousand words of speculation based on theory sometimes. And I'm all for keeping an open mind until personal experience informs me otherwise.
Thx for the info. I'll have to give it a try.
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I've bought some long cables, then later on (as the need arose) I chopped some of them into different lengths for pedals etc.. Bought some new ends and soldered them up. Not hard to do, just have to solder the correct direction so the sleeve fits over the wire, it's often a snug fit as it is. Also repaired the end of one of my long cables. I don't keep it plugged into the bass anymore.
I agree with Wayne. The high quality instrument cable I buy through parts express is thicker than mic cable. In addition to a thicker casing, the shielding is braided and very high quality. The shielding on mic cable is often spiral wound, not braided which can make it a bit thinner and more flexible than high quality instrument cable. My guess is that spiral-shielded mic cable does not shield quite as well as braided instrument cable, but since mics use a balanced signal, the shielding probably doesn't have to be as good to be as quiet.
Having that said, I have use mic cable for short runs where high quality instrument cable was just a bit too thick for the application. It sounds fine. I haven't noticed any signal degradation due to capacitance.
