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Say no to cheap ass cables....

M

Mike Caldwell

Feb 27, 2006
1,934
2,945
Mid West Ohio
www.mikecaldwellaudioproductions.com
#1
Just pitched a couple Monoprice mic cables that were dropped off for me to fix.
Cables being noisy was the issue........
Fist thing I noticed was both the male and female ends had pin 1 tied to the outer shell, 80% ish of the time that will not cause an issue 20% of time you will get grounding noise issues, I've seen many knock off cables with pin 1 tied to the shell, open the connector and it's an easy fix to snip the jumper.
One of the cables also showed pin 2 shorted to ground pin 1, the issue was not at the connectors, though the connectors are crap and don't really fit legit connectors in being a little too tight. The cable showed the short being in the cable, the outer jacket show no damage at all, I start cutting back the cable about a foot at a time till I found the section that was bad, the insulation on the pin 2 wire had a small open section that was shorting out to the shield, the insulation was hard and brittle in that area and just crumble off the wire.



I made them some mic cables that will last.
 
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#7
Mike Caldwell said:
Just pitched a couple Monoprice mic cables that were dropped off for me to fix.
Cables being noisy was the issue........
[...]


I made them some mic cables that will last.
Click to expand...
Yet again the Vimes Boot Theory shows itself to be true:

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms, 1993.
 
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#8
Avigdor said:
Yet again the Vimes Boot Theory shows itself to be true:

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms, 1993.
Click to expand...
The difference between frugal and cheap is that a frugal person will pay a higher price to get greater value in the utility of any given product or service. A cheap person will seek only to save money and accept lower quality, generally to his/her own detriment.

A cheap person will try to save money on his own parachute.
 
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#9
I've generally had pretty good luck with instrument cables. Mic cables, not as much.

So I'll play...

How is a layperson supposed to know a well-made cable from a "cheap-ass" one? Because none of them cheap, monetarily speaking, when you're st the point of sale, what is it you look for? I usually buy at least 20' lengths, from the local pro audio shop. I get a couple every time, so when one inevitably fails there isn't a panicked scramble...

*here's where I get 90% of my gear from, and the mic cables page:Mic Cables Archives - Stage Sound
 
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#12
When I was outfitting my home studio (1/2” 8 track Otari) about 20 rears ago I made 10 mic cables from canare star quad w/neutrik ends and 2 headphone extension cables.

All of these cables are still working and first off the cable hanger for tracking.

Every cheap headphone ext has broken very quickly and about 50% of the “get a mic and 5 cables for $100” cables have broken under moderate use.

The soldering skills I gained back then have paid off time and again, at the same level as knowing how to setup instruments!
 
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#13
IMG_9483.jpegIMG_9482.jpegGot these raw parts from sweetwater and made a good 10 foot practice cable. Wonderful cable i can tell it sounds as good as my monster and mogami platinum cables. For under 20 bucks.
 
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#14
EdwardofHuncote said:
[...]

How is a layperson supposed to know a well-made cable from a "cheap-ass" one? Because none of them cheap, monetarily speaking, when you're st the point of sale, what is it you look for? [...]
Click to expand...
My personal approach: First I look for good quality connectors with good strain relief. Then I work on the assumption that good cables have sufficient girth so I can be confident that the shielding and all relevant insulation layers are present and of sufficient thickness that they don't shear through the moment they get trapped anywhere. That also often translates into a larger bending radius. Again, good strain relief helps in the area where cables like to fail first.

None of these allow you too look under the hood, but they are my personal indicators of quality. Then I keep a list of cables I will or will not not buy again.
 
#15
dalahorse said:
...While I agree that cheap cables are often poorly constructed, don't let a higher price tag fool you into thinking you're getting something well made.
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This is a VERY important point to remember ^

Having worked in retail tech sales for years before settling into IT, I can tell you this with first-hand experience. Cables in general were/are absurdly overpriced. When I worked at Best Buy (circa 2009), that $70 "good quality" HDMI cable was $9 with our employee discount (5% over cost). Your "premium" cables with silver-plated connectors were in the higher end of 3-figure territory. Pretty much anything else that was a cable (or printer ink) had insane markup in general.

Now digital cables do have to meet certain functionality standards (HDMI, DisplayPort, etc have to transfer data at a certain bandwidth to qualify), but that along with the insane margins makes me incredibly skeptical of high-priced cables being anything more than marketing BS. Like cables that know what genre you're playing, or massively oversized power cables that somehow affect your tone while delivering the same amount of power to your amp. :roflmao:

That to say, it can be hard to tell what is or is not "quality", especially over the internet, until you have glaring problems. I've had bad instrument cables that lasted a year, priced at $70-80 before I knew any better. Consequently, I've got Monoprice instrument cables I've had no issues with for years, but Mogamis that give me trouble if the jack is turned the wrong way...I'm about to start making my own cables too :meh:
 
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#19
Looking back through my amazon history under "XLR", I've bought various 5 and 10 packs of XLR cables a handful of times over the past dozen years ranging from something less than $10 per to one 5 pack that was $79 (so $15.80 per) from such stellar no-names as MCS Pro Audio and GLS Audio, so I suppose these are "cheap ass" cables. I have a vague recollection of one apparently acting up and being set aside but that's foggy...the issue may or may not have been the cable (don't know or care at this point). The only real attrition I've had was due to cables being left somewhere or "walking" off. If I did have an issue with one of these cheap ass cables that I couldn't deal with easily, I certainly wouldn't take it to someone to have it fixed. They've served me well and other than those lost are working fine. I velcro and always loosly wrap with twist n loop coils...maybe if I did the tangled snake nest thing or wrapped them around my fist or garden-hosed them hand and elbow, they'd have fared worse.
 
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