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It's probably a variac---and it probably could make a difference for people playing in a different crappy venue every night.
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Does Cables Matter for a Bass
- Thread starter penguineman
- Start date
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It's probably a variac---and it probably could make a difference for people playing in a different crappy venue every night.
Plenty of people on this forum would pick a Squier over a Ritter even if they could easily afford either.
Price really means very little.
Or the other horse**** about arrows indicating the direction to keep the electrons flowing properly. Monster is not a good value, sorry. They are well made but so are many cables that cost less and have lifetime warranties. And they don't break jacks. And they use lies and distortions of science to sell cables. Skin effect...electrons only flowing one way...lol!
I'll tell you what kind of crap company Monster is...a few years ago, I went to Best Buy to buy a cheap stereo, and the salesman kept relentlessly pushing Monster on me. I kept telling him speaker wire is all the same and I just want the cheap stuff.
So he takes me to some big display Monster put up entitled "Take The Monster Challenge" or some sort of similar slogan. They had two identical setups with speakers...one set was wired with the cheap raw speaker wire Best Buy sells in a spool, the other set was wired with raw Monster speaker cable. The salesman showed it to me, and explained how Monster cables let more frequency response come through because they're made better. Sure enough, the Monster setup sounded better while the other setup sounded like it had a blanket over it. I remarked about the noticeable difference, then asked to see the receivers hidden behind the display.
"Um, the receivers?" he asks?
"Yeah, the receivers powering these speakers."
"Um, why do you want to see them?"
"I want to see if they really are identical."
"Um, OK."
He quickly removes the cover, shows me the matching receivers, then tries to cover it back up quickly. I said, "Wait a second, let me just see something here..." I look at the settings, and sure enough, the treble was turned down in the receiver powering the speakers with cheap cables. I turn it back up, switch between the two, then I say to my wife really loud so everyone around could hear it, "Hey honey, check it out...the treble knob was turned down, and now these cheap cables sound just like the Monster cables!"
Then I lectured the guy about how I was a pro musician and know all the tricks, and I added, "The only thing preventing me from walking out right now is the price of this stereo. So if you really want this sale, you're going to sell me the cheap cables and you're not going to mention Monster again. And don't even mention the extended warranty!"
He says, "Well the extended warranty is a really good..."
"Bye."
"OK, OK!"
Fun day
Jimmy, they ONLY lie at Best Buy. They are trained to do so. I went in to buy a printer, and was going to buy the cheapest one, because I'm poor as hell, and don't do much printing. This guy told me about a $250.00 printer that had "photo quality."
I am a professional photographer.
I said, "you are telling me that this LASER PRINTER has the same quality as SILVER HALIDE photo paper?"
(Silver Halide photos can take upwards of 60 years to begin fading, whereas any and all laser prints begin fading IMMEDIATELY.)
He tried to insist it did, and then he told me the cheap printer I wanted to buy was junk.
I said, (in the same loud voice you used in your example above,) "so what you're telling me is that you guys sell JUNK in your store?"
There is nothing salesmen at Best Buy won't try to foist on poor, hapless consumers. I still have the "junk" printer, about six years later, and it always printed just fine, but when I switched to Windows Vista, it became OBSOLETE, much the same as the other more expensive printer would have.
It now sits on a shelf and taunts me, that they purposely upgrade software so that it will be incompatible with hardware. Nice.
Anyway, I bought the cheapest wireless they had at Guitar Center for around $75.00, and I liked it so much I bought one for my acoustic guitar, and one for my wife's rig. I bought two of the same frequency, and have transmitters on both my basses, so I can just switch from one to the other, as long as I only turn on one at a time. I have been told they are complete pieces of crap, but I have also been told my Fender Jazz (with EMG Select passive pickups) has some of the best tone many players have ever heard.
A fool and his money are soon parted, I guess, but THIS fool really doesn't HAVE any freaking money, so good luck, right?
I stopped talking to the sales people at places like best buy when I realized I knew more about the products they were selling than they did.
I am afraid that I find this statement just a touch silly. I don't think anyone is arguing that "speakers are just speakers" or that "amps are just amps". Those products possess myriad factors determining their respective effect on sound. HOWEVER. IF a cable is well-designed, well-made, and effectively shielded, then they should have minimal effect on bass guitar sound. As stated, capacitance is one factor that DOES effect bass signal, but not to the extent some would have you believe. And, for the most part, well-made cables have relatively similar (LOW) capacitance. Yes, the difference between the absolute crappiest cables made and the best would be significant. BUT, any decent cable should have no problem competing with the "audioFOOL" grade cables. And yes, power conditioners are total snake oil.And NO, nobody is hearing "skin-affect".
I bought a power conditioner, and I'm very happy with it. It means I can plug everything in together, and have one on/off switch, and it has nice lights for seeing the other stuff in my rack. It looks great, and does a great job of everything except for what I THOUGHT it was for when I paid close to a hundred bucks for a power strip.
I really thought it would reduce noise. And then I plugged my unit in at a bar where they make you use the same circuit as their neon lights.
And the rest is history.
wow, I just read through that thread (not the whole thing lol)
So not cool what companies pretend to sell nowadays...
Man, between mellowinman's story and mine, I'm about ready to never shop at Best Buy again! Their only saving grace are their prices and convenience.
It's not that they're a bad chain to buy reasonably priced electronics; it's that their sales staff is TERRIBLE.
Shop at Best Buy.
DO NOT listen to anything they tell you!
If you are still able to shop at Best Buy, they're [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Yeah, a couple or three years ago I bought my HP laptop at BB for 7+ hundred. Just got an equivalent HP model with pretty much the same features (but much more up to date, both hardware and software-wise) a few months ago for less than 6 hundred from Amazon, which would have cost near seven hundred (or more) at Best Buy.
Yeah, I've never bought a lot of new electronics. (And when I did it was most certainly not at retail prices.) I've always known better than to buy cables there (or I have since the first time I showed up looking for RCA cables and they pointed me to the Monster wall---I thought "No, where are the cables for sane/intelligent people." I was 16.) I like the idea of having a brick & mortar store available but I don't think that model is going to last for too long. Of course without that model paying employees everyone (including online vendors) is going to suffer.
The relevant discussion for TB is how this sort of thing will affect/is affecting music stores and eventually GB. The relevant discussion for this thread is "The moral of the story is that if you push $70 Monster HDMI cables you will eventually go out of business because you're an idiot." But thats not fair...lets amend that last part to "...because you treat your customers like they're idiots."
