Instrument cable bad?

It's called a speaker cable, and it's specially made to handle the much larger power passing out of your amplifier and heading towards your speakers.

 

Using an instrument cable to hook up speakers is like using your walkman headphone cable to replace the power cord on your hair dryer.

Speaker cables transmit real serious power to the speaker. They need to be able to handle the power without melting down, without enough conductor inside to handle the power, an instrument cable actually wastes some of the power coming out of the amp, it never reaches the speaker. Kind of frustrating/counterproductive to bother to get a 500W amp that can only squeeze 400W out of the far end of that tiny instrument cable.

Randy

 

After buying and making many types of speaker cables, I've found the best investment in the ProCo FatMax cables. Some people think that it's overkill for the short lengths us bassists use but I disagree. They use four 11-guage conductors to form the 8-guage cable and the terminations are ultrasonically welded, using no solder. I have already had them for a few years now and I haven't had to tighten the barrels once yet! I had the complete opposite experience with Monster and DiMarzio.

Anyway, here's a link to Direct Pro Audio, a trusted retailer. If you look in the first paragraph about the FatMax cable, they have a link to another helpful page titled "how to choose the right speaker cable". You may want to give it a look. If, for some reason, you can't find it I've included it here. Have fun!

-Brad

 

Speaker cables are like ice cubes. Learn the simple recipe and you can choose to make your own or buy them ready-made, but you never have to pay an arm and a leg.

 

Thanks for the info on Direct pro....great website. I am going to pick up a set of Pro Max speaker cable 8ga. and Pro instrument cable. I have a question though...I need a shorter cable to go from my Sadowsky preamp to my SWR Base 750 head. Direct Pro doesn't make one that's less than 10' of the same quality as the their top of the line instrument cable. There's a lesser quality patch cable, but what's the sense in that...No?

Vern

 

yeah my school broke a minty new head unit cause the teacher was ******** and said use this extra cable i have(i wasnt ppaying attention, it wasnt my stuff so i wasnt too worried i just needed to get the job done) and then after that it was blowing fuses like crazy, and needed a boatload of repair. thank god it was under warantee. o sorry forgot to say that it was an instrument cable. so yeah.. use speaker cables

 

I have two. They are 3ft and are 8 guage. They are so thick they hardly bend. They sound or don't sound great. Yes I can hear the difference between them and a 14 guage 3ft. of undetermined origin. Well made.