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Phil Jones speaker cables - worth it?

I guess this is more of a general question about speaker cables. I just ordered a Phil Jones BP800, and I'm going to run it through a couple of Bag End S15X-D 115 cabs. Right now I've got a couple of generic Speakon to 1/4" speaker cables to wire them in parallel.

The BP800 manual says:
"We recommend that you use PJB high current speaker cables; which are dedicated high-current, low-resistance cables. Using inferior cables will greatly impair the performance of your system, even more so if you are running a 4 ohm speaker load."

How accurate is this statement? I get that cheap cables can break or be unreliable, and long cables can suck tone, but can a perfectly functional but generic Speakon cable really "impair the performance" of the system?
If you buy that, I have a power cable you need to go with...
Victor Wooten Power Cord Guitar Bass Amp Audio Power Cable | Essential Sound Products


:)
 
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Boy howdy do I have a bridge in London to sell you...
SX23B1G9.jpg


:)
 
The BP800 manual says:
"We recommend that you use PJB high current speaker cables; which are dedicated high-current, low-resistance cables. Using inferior cables will greatly impair the performance of your system, even more so if you are running a 4 ohm speaker load."

How accurate is this statement? I get that cheap cables can break or be unreliable, and long cables can suck tone, but can a perfectly functional but generic Speakon cable really "impair the performance" of the system?

There's a catch here...

His manual never says that a good cable, generic or different brand will "impair the performance of your system". It simply says that using inferior cables will, which is true...

The power of marketing.
 
It's a hypothetical in the description of the cable on their website (quoted below) so I'm leaning towards questionable. :D

"Just think, if you have a 4-ohm speaker and a 0.5-ohm speaker cable, you could be losing at certain frequencies 11% of your amp power through the cable!

For every 100 watts your amp is believed to be given out, it may only be 89 watts! Obviously, it pays to use high current cables if you are running low impedance speakers with your amp. Unless, you can afford to burn those watts away just to heat up your cables!"
I'd love to see a 0.5 ohm speaker cable... it would take a LOT of work to make speaker wire have resistance anywhere near that LoL :-)
 
it's EASY to build a quality speaker cable. The connector quality matters. The gauge of wire matters. The knowledge behind the requirements for a good speaker cable were known many many many decades ago. Resistance is NOT the problem (I mean, it is if you buy a $5 speaker cable, maybe, but not anything competitive that any of us would use with our amps). The quality of the connections in it is the problem, and the connector itself. And all of that, too, has been done perfectly fine by dozens of companies for many many many many years now. The costs, retail, should not be more than a pack of strings. The actual manufacturing cost should be a small fraction of that.
 
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it's EASY to build a quality speaker cable. The connector quality matters. The gauge of wire matters. The knowledge behind the requirements for a good speaker cable were known many many many decades ago. Restistance is NOT the problem The quality of the connections in it is the problem, and the connector itself. And all of that, too, has been done perfectly fine by dozens of companies for many many many many years now. The costs, retail, should not be more than a pack of strings. The actual manufacturing cost should be a small fraction of that.
resistance-is-futile.jpg
 
No .. NONE of his stuff is worth it. STAY AWAY FROM PHIL JONES!!
I would not say that, at all.

He's the only guy doing what he's doing... his cabs, at least, are brilliant, and utilize physics to an extreme with a very successful result. It costs a lot to design and create his speaker systems, so the money actually goes towards R&D in that case, and therefore the value is in the eye of the consumer and what they require in a cab (size, specifically).

Speaker cables though? ZERO research required there, lies about resistance (since, again, nobody making a half decent speaker cable is using wire thin enough to cause notable resistance), and the connector, how it's attached to the wire, and CHOICE of wire are what matter. Nothing else. HE does not make his own speaker wires... I absolutely guarantee it. The actual wires in the cables are not built by him. He chooses them, and the connectors, and has them built into assemblies for resale.

So for speaker cables, the money is going into his pocket.... which really disturbs me. Snake oil is something I thought Jones was better than.
 
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There's a catch here...

His manual never says that a good cable, generic or different brand will "impair the performance of your system". It simply says that using inferior cables will, which is true...

The power of marketing.
exactly!

I bet any speaker cable I could by at my local pro music store would measure and perform perfectly. I would only question reliability, and also that it was wired correctly in the first place, but again those are things that EVERY quality manufacturer takes care of for you, at 1/3 the price of these puppies.
 
Hypothetically, if you were to send me $100, it might make my morning coffee taste better and make me less grumpy... I'd be happy to test this out if you were to send me $100 (hypothetically of course) ;)
It's a competitive landscape. I will enjoy my morning coffee for only $50. DM me, I accept PayPal and Venmo.
 
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...


So, about this.... long instrument cables can degrade tone, but not speaker cables.
Ohm’s law always wins. Kircoff’s voltage law always wins.
There is always a voltage drop across a conduct. The resistance of the conductor always limits current flow.
The only question is how much.
Sometimes enough to make a difference, sometimes not.
 
PJB gear is not cheap. Relative to the cost of the rig, is $139 really that much? It's like making sure you have a genuine Apple USB cable.

Plus, cheap cables can in extreme circumstances fail, kill your amp, and overload the local sub-station creating a negative inverse feedback loop causing quantum instability and ultimately resulting in hyperluminal proton expulsion at the subatomic level and nuclear catastrophe.
Once the amp is dead, nothing else happens upstream. It’s a matter of smoke release
 
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Very long, undersized for the application speaker cables can in fact degrade the performance.

Won't disagree with this, but the OP mentioned tone. To me, he is suggesting that speaker cable will alter spectral response which I don't think it will do in a meaningful way. At least not in a real world application. When was the last time you looked at speaker cable and wondered if it was going to cut response above 10khz?

I think the OP was mistakenly referring to instrument cables which can alter spectral response if they get too long. That's how I took it, anyway.
 
No. This is flat out BS. They mention 0.5Ω of resistance in a speaker cable robbing 11% of your power and there are two things wrong with this: First, any speaker cable that exhibits 0.5Ω of resistance is broken. Seriously, for a 4' speaker cable to have 0.5Ω of resistance, you'd need to make it with 28AWG wire. Even 18AWG, which I'd consider pretty light for speaker cables is only 6.4Ω per 1000(!) feet. That would give you 0.05Ω for a 4' cable (8 feet of wire). I mean you could get into trouble not properly attaching connectors, but that goes back to my "broken" statement. Any properly made, appropriate gauge speaker cable will have much less than 0.5Ω of resistance. :D

Second, 11% of power is like 0.5dB difference in SPL which is insignificant anyway.

Also, $139 for a 4' cable? FOH with that nonsense. :laugh:
End of thread.
 
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