Does cable thickness matter?

[Monsum]

Is there a correlation between thickness of instrument cables and their sound quality?
Are the thicker ones better? More durable?
Or it depends more on a cable brand?

Do you use rather stiff instrument cables or flexible ones?

[shufflebeat]

Cables tend to come in one of several economic design models:

* Built to a price - these can be very thin or quite thick but that tends to be an economic decision rather than an engineering one.
* "Decent" - designed and built by engineers with regard to performance and longevity. This usually precludes very thin and avoids very thick because they are well constructed.
* "Premium" - like "decent" but put through a separate process at the marketing department where special incantations are chanted and magic multiples are applied to the selling price.

Cheap cables will normally work perfectly well, just not for long before they go crackly, microphonic or intermittently silent.

How you treat your cables will have a big impact. Well made Klotz (usually my choice), Mogami, Sommer, etc. make it very easy to treat them well because they coil and uncoil predictably. Good coiling technique is a useful thing to perfect.

Good leads usually have recognisable plugs on them. I always look for Neutrik (not Rean, their cheapo range).

[jseth]

It's the quality of the wire that makes a great cable, not necessarily the thickness of the thing... using good connectors is also important for the longevity.

The way you treat your cables is VERY important! If you walk on them, stand on them, crimp them in ANY way, I don't care how good they are, they're going to break down on you!

I favor Mogami wire and Switchcraft connectors, but my current cables are custom-made from an internet outfit in NJ (can't remember the name). I specified Mogami wire, but did not go for the ultra high-end version. I also did not go for Switchcraft plugs, wanting to save a few bucks and knowing that I would not be putting stress on these cables, as they are 6 footers that simply run from my guitars or mic to a mixer that sits on my mic stand.

The current cables I have are about a decade old, but I have several that are far older than that, and all are still in perfect shape.

When I did a stint in film/video production, I learned how to coil cables. It was taught to me that, if a cable is carrying SIGNAL, that it "wants" to be coiled in the over/under method, whereas if a cable is carrying AC, it should be coiled one direction, normally.

I have no idea of how to convey the over/under method, but I bet You Tube has videos on it! If you aren't already using this method, I'd suggest you switch to it. It takes a little getting used to, but becomes automatic in a very short time.

[shufflebeat]

Originally Posted by jseth

I have no idea of how to convey the over/under method, but I bet You Tube has videos on it! If you aren't already using this method, I'd suggest you switch to it. It takes a little getting used to, but becomes automatic in a very short time.

This guy has it about right. He looks a bit clumsy but illustrates the process reasonably well. I'm sure he flies through them when he does it in anger:

Man Coils Cable vid

One word of warning - keep your ends hanging down much longer than in the video. If either end falls through the centre of the loop it will really spoil your evening when you come to unroll it.

[varmonter]

I have a mogami cable ..its quite thin.
I bought 25 feet of it 12 yrs ago.
I bought some neutrik ends as well.
I like 1 90 and one straight on my cables.
I still have 18 feet left and the one I made
Is still quiet and clean sounding.
I've also used monster cable..paid
28 bucks for one with a lifetime warnt..
I've cashed in on that one 5 or six times
In the last 20 yrs...they are quite thick..

[rmp]

thickness, maybe not

quality of the cable, the jacks and how they were "put together"? yes..

[Jamolay]

In the high end audiophile world, people worry a lot about the capacitance and inductance of cables as well as even the surface effects of wire.
In theory, coiling a cable effects these things as well as construction.
I reality, unless the cable wire is remarkably thin or/and long, these effects should not be inside the range of human hearing. So they certainly don’t matter for a guitar, and probably don’t really matter for audiophiles either, but can be fun to think about.
I suppose in a large venue concert with super long cables there is a point where it will matter. More importantly would be interference, picking up signals that are unwanted.

I would think the thickness of the overall cable construction has something to do with durability, although quality of construction is going to be far more important than just size.

At least that is what I tell myself. Quality is more important than size…[emoji848]

[SpruceTop]

I just coil my cables to look the same way they looked when packaged by Mogami. What am I doing wrong?

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Monsum

Is there a correlation between thickness of instrument cables and their sound quality?
Are the thicker ones better? More durable?
Or it depends more on a cable brand?

Do you use rather stiff instrument cables or flexible ones?

Hi Monsum
I like thin cables, and have been using GeorgeL cables for nearly 20 years now.

They are professional grade, properly shielded cables. They are like Boutique cables compared to the bargain rack at the music store (usually close the strings, tuners, and straps).

We don't buy nor rate guitar/keyboard/instrument cables by the pound.

My stereo (TRS) cables were always from major manufacturers and heavier duty, with metal ends, and in 20 years of running dual source pickup rigs, I never had one go bad.

I paid more for both these options…and the reliability was worth it.

Electrical power supply cables we plug into the wall to supply power to our rigs, the heavier cable the better.

Hope this adds to the discussion…

[wweiss]

When I bought my FocalTwin 6 very $$$ monitors, I had custom XLR cables made which were over $100. Looking back, I hear no difference from good quality $20 Amazon cables!

[rmp]

Originally Posted by wweiss

When I bought my FocalTwin 6 very $$$ monitors, I had custom XLR cables made which were over $100. Looking back, I hear no difference from good quality $20 Amazon cables!

think about the lost souls that paid $2k for all those Allesandro cables when all this BS first started to the next holy grail of tone about 20 years ago

I Pity da fools...

[fazool]

I actually work in this field, so I can answer your question accurately.

For our purposes, there are two main characteristics of a wire that will affect the tone:

The conductor's resistance - In it's simplest form high resistance will lower the signal strength and degrade the signal-to-noise ratio, so you will get a weaker and noisier signal.

and the capacitance which is the amount of electrical charge the material builds up and stores. This naturally bleeds off but a reversed current (like a signal that goes back and forth) will draw it out. The issue with capacitance is that combined with resistance it creates a frequency filter that cuts off higher frequencies. This his how the crossover in your speakers works.


You want minimum resistance and minimum capacitance in your wire.

Now, typically you will get lower resistance with larger wire, but you will get a slightly increased capacitance (so its a trade-off), but the resistance goes down faster than the capacitance goes up so GENERALLY speaking, larger wire is always better.

You also have to consider the quality of the conductor, the quality of the shielding, even the quality of the insulator (and any tribological effects which can induce noise, along with insulation resistance).

And very importantly, all this is for naught if you don't have excellent connectors that are ideally installed.

There really is a specific science behind good signal cables. The wire size effects are usually greatly overshadowed by those other factors I listed. So an excellent made 18 gauge wire can have a better signal than a terribly made 14 gauge wire of the same length.

But the simple (actually over-simple) answer is "yes, size matters"

[shufflebeat]

Originally Posted by fazool

I actually work in this field, so I can answer your question accurately.

The theoretical basis for your answer is correct but the question is about instrument cables. In this very specific case the qualities of reliability and longevity take priority and the signal to noise ratio has so much headroom in most instances as to be insignificant in cabling terms.

[Monsum]

Thank you for all replies. Interesting stuff. Also the theoretical part.
But practically, for a typical 10 feet instrument cable, the quality and reputation of a brand is a better indicator of a good cable than the wire diameter, right?

[YamahaGuy]

Originally Posted by Monsum

Thank you for all replies. Interesting stuff. Also the theoretical part.
But practically, for a typical 10 feet instrument cable, the quality and reputation of a brand is a better indicator of a good cable than the wire diameter, right?

I just bought a Mogami/Neutrik gold cable that was $60. It's 6 ft and relatively thin.

The worst cable I've ever used in my life was a super thick Fender cable with heatshrink wrapped ends. The ends broke and I replaced them with Neutrik connectors. The cable failed. And it was thick as a sharpie. Terrible shielding.