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#1
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
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#2
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 02:32:50 -0700, Paul wrote:
http://sfguitarworks.com/the-great-cable-myth/ What do you all think? That is an extremely ill-informed article and the tests have been performed wrongly. Cable impedance - they give instead the figure for end-to--end resistance. This has nothing to do with impedance, which is actually the ratio of inductance to capacitance per unit length. Cable resistance is of great importance to speaker cables, but meaningless for guitars. The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. Guitar cables do make a great deal of difference to guitar sound, but not because of their "quality". Their length is what matters. A longer cable has more capacitance, and this will shift the primary resonance of the pickup network a long way. A cable over about 10 feet long will start dulling the sound in much the same way as winding back the tone control. So in short, ignore this article. It is gibberish. d |
#3
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 6/5/2017 5:32 AM, Paul wrote:
http://sfguitarworks.com/the-great-cable-myth/ What do you all think? I couldn't figure out what the "myth" is. Given that this article was inspired by another article on a forum for bass players, I'm guessing that the "myth" is that using a specific cable can cause a boost in the low frequency response. I haven't followed cables for years, not since someone put a sealed lump in a cable and marketed it as one that enhances the sound of the instrument - a guitar, most likely. I speculated that perhaps there was an inductor in that lump which resonated with the cable capacitance, resulting in a boost in a useful frequency range. Or perhaps there's a capacitor in there which would resonate with the pickup inductance in a useful frequency range. But these these gimmicks can only be designed for a specific set of conditions, particularly the inductance and capacitance of the pickup, so they won't work have the same effect for every instrument and every amplifier. There's no "myth" to the fact that a cable between an instrument pickup and an amplifier can, and does affect the frequency response at the amplifier end. But a low capacitance cable of a reasonable length affects the frequency response outside of the range of frequencies produced by the pickup. If you want more bass from your bass, turn up the Bass knob on your amplifier. That'll be more effective than any cable. -- For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com |
#4
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 05/06/2017 10:49, Don Pearce wrote:
So in short, ignore this article. It is gibberish. Once you get below a certain price for the cable, the mechanical construction suffers, too, and the life of a cheap guitar cable on stage can be measured using a single hand in gigs done due to their lack of strain relief and low quality plugs. They also tend to use cable with higher capacitance and less flexible construction, so you get muffled sound and crackles as each strand breaks and reconnects as the cable moves. -- Tciao for Now! John. |
#5
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
In article , Paul wrote:
http://sfguitarworks.com/the-great-cable-myth/ What do you all think? 1. If you have a 1M input impedance and a source impedance that is not just high but also nonlinear, it does not take much shunt capacitance to make a huge change in the frequency response. 2. These tests were clearly not being done with the same impedances you would see in a guitar environment. 3. This isn't testing triboelectric noise either, which is a big deal. If you slap the cable on the floor, does it go thump? Some cables will, some will not. 4. Whoever did this has no idea what "cable impedance" means and they are talking about series resistance when they say "cable impedance." Now, these folks DO make the very good comment that price has nothing to do with quality and that there are a lot of wacky expensive cables on the market that are deliberately reactive and designed to change your sound. But the actual measurements here are likely not valid. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#6
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On Monday, June 5, 2017 at 5:33:19 AM UTC-4, Paul wrote:
http://sfguitarworks.com/the-great-cable-myth/ What do you all think? If electric guitar, people should worry more about the %THD of their amplifiers! Jack |
#7
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. looks like the the 3rd plot did use an actual pickup as the source impedance m |
#8
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
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#9
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Don Pearce wrote:
On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 06:50:24 -0700 (PDT), wrote: The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. looks like the the 3rd plot did use an actual pickup as the source impedance Something like, yes. The other plots though - appear to show rolloff in bass and treble. I'd very much like to know how that is supposed to happen. Let's say we have a typical rubber cord at 60 pF/ft, and it's six feet long, so we can view it as a 360 pF lumped-sum load. Our load impedance is 1 megohm, let's assume the source impedance is 1 meg also (and in reality it'll be worse than that and nonlinear too). So total shunt resistance is 500K ohms. So, best case 3dB corner comes out at 1/(2piRC), 1/ 6.3 * 5E5 * 36E-11 or 880 Hz. So, in this case (and we're neglecting the series L of the cable), you can view the cable+interfaces system as a first order low pass filter whose -6dB point is at 880 Hz. I'd call that a hell of a cable effect... and very different than what they are describing. I wouldn't expect to see _any_ bass rolloff, even with considerable cable series resistance or series inductance. The fact that they are would indicate to me that they're doing something odd. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#11
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 5 Jun 2017 10:31:18 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
Don Pearce wrote: On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 06:50:24 -0700 (PDT), wrote: The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. looks like the the 3rd plot did use an actual pickup as the source impedance Something like, yes. The other plots though - appear to show rolloff in bass and treble. I'd very much like to know how that is supposed to happen. Let's say we have a typical rubber cord at 60 pF/ft, and it's six feet long, so we can view it as a 360 pF lumped-sum load. Our load impedance is 1 megohm, let's assume the source impedance is 1 meg also (and in reality it'll be worse than that and nonlinear too). So total shunt resistance is 500K ohms. So, best case 3dB corner comes out at 1/(2piRC), 1/ 6.3 * 5E5 * 36E-11 or 880 Hz. So, in this case (and we're neglecting the series L of the cable), you can view the cable+interfaces system as a first order low pass filter whose -6dB point is at 880 Hz. I'd call that a hell of a cable effect... and very different than what they are describing. I wouldn't expect to see _any_ bass rolloff, even with considerable cable series resistance or series inductance. The fact that they are would indicate to me that they're doing something odd. --scott Well, a guitar isn't a million miles from that. 500k load, and a source of about 10k ohms in series with several Henries of inductance. d |
#12
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Don Pearce wrote:
On 5 Jun 2017 10:31:18 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote: Don Pearce wrote: On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 06:50:24 -0700 (PDT), wrote: The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. looks like the the 3rd plot did use an actual pickup as the source impedance Something like, yes. The other plots though - appear to show rolloff in bass and treble. I'd very much like to know how that is supposed to happen. Let's say we have a typical rubber cord at 60 pF/ft, and it's six feet long, so we can view it as a 360 pF lumped-sum load. Our load impedance is 1 megohm, let's assume the source impedance is 1 meg also (and in reality it'll be worse than that and nonlinear too). So total shunt resistance is 500K ohms. So, best case 3dB corner comes out at 1/(2piRC), 1/ 6.3 * 5E5 * 36E-11 or 880 Hz. So, in this case (and we're neglecting the series L of the cable), you can view the cable+interfaces system as a first order low pass filter whose -6dB point is at 880 Hz. I'd call that a hell of a cable effect... and very different than what they are describing. I wouldn't expect to see _any_ bass rolloff, even with considerable cable series resistance or series inductance. The fact that they are would indicate to me that they're doing something odd. Well, a guitar isn't a million miles from that. 500k load, and a source of about 10k ohms in series with several Henries of inductance. Right. That's why I picked those numbers. Modelling the source impedance is a problem, though, since it's not only more reactive than resistive but it's not linear. So thinking of it as a 1M source is a pretty hasty generalization but not too far off. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#13
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 5 Jun 2017 11:01:25 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
Don Pearce wrote: On 5 Jun 2017 10:31:18 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote: Don Pearce wrote: On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 06:50:24 -0700 (PDT), wrote: The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. looks like the the 3rd plot did use an actual pickup as the source impedance Something like, yes. The other plots though - appear to show rolloff in bass and treble. I'd very much like to know how that is supposed to happen. Let's say we have a typical rubber cord at 60 pF/ft, and it's six feet long, so we can view it as a 360 pF lumped-sum load. Our load impedance is 1 megohm, let's assume the source impedance is 1 meg also (and in reality it'll be worse than that and nonlinear too). So total shunt resistance is 500K ohms. So, best case 3dB corner comes out at 1/(2piRC), 1/ 6.3 * 5E5 * 36E-11 or 880 Hz. So, in this case (and we're neglecting the series L of the cable), you can view the cable+interfaces system as a first order low pass filter whose -6dB point is at 880 Hz. I'd call that a hell of a cable effect... and very different than what they are describing. I wouldn't expect to see _any_ bass rolloff, even with considerable cable series resistance or series inductance. The fact that they are would indicate to me that they're doing something odd. Well, a guitar isn't a million miles from that. 500k load, and a source of about 10k ohms in series with several Henries of inductance. Right. That's why I picked those numbers. Modelling the source impedance is a problem, though, since it's not only more reactive than resistive but it's not linear. So thinking of it as a 1M source is a pretty hasty generalization but not too far off. --scott You must put the inductance in there, otherwise you get no resonant peak. d |
#14
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Don Pearce wrote:
On 5 Jun 2017 11:01:25 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote: Don Pearce wrote: On 5 Jun 2017 10:31:18 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote: Don Pearce wrote: On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 06:50:24 -0700 (PDT), wrote: The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. looks like the the 3rd plot did use an actual pickup as the source impedance Something like, yes. The other plots though - appear to show rolloff in bass and treble. I'd very much like to know how that is supposed to happen. Let's say we have a typical rubber cord at 60 pF/ft, and it's six feet long, so we can view it as a 360 pF lumped-sum load. Our load impedance is 1 megohm, let's assume the source impedance is 1 meg also (and in reality it'll be worse than that and nonlinear too). So total shunt resistance is 500K ohms. So, best case 3dB corner comes out at 1/(2piRC), 1/ 6.3 * 5E5 * 36E-11 or 880 Hz. So, in this case (and we're neglecting the series L of the cable), you can view the cable+interfaces system as a first order low pass filter whose -6dB point is at 880 Hz. I'd call that a hell of a cable effect... and very different than what they are describing. I wouldn't expect to see _any_ bass rolloff, even with considerable cable series resistance or series inductance. The fact that they are would indicate to me that they're doing something odd. Well, a guitar isn't a million miles from that. 500k load, and a source of about 10k ohms in series with several Henries of inductance. Right. That's why I picked those numbers. Modelling the source impedance is a problem, though, since it's not only more reactive than resistive but it's not linear. So thinking of it as a 1M source is a pretty hasty generalization but not too far off. You must put the inductance in there, otherwise you get no resonant peak. Oh, absolutely. But when you have that massive a rolloff, anything else is just gravy. If your point is to show that there's a substantial cable effect you don't have to go that far. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#15
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Don Pearce wrote: On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 06:50:24 -0700 (PDT), wrote: The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. looks like the the 3rd plot did use an actual pickup as the source impedance Something like, yes. The other plots though - appear to show rolloff in bass and treble. I'd very much like to know how that is supposed to happen. Let's say we have a typical rubber cord at 60 pF/ft, and it's six feet long, so we can view it as a 360 pF lumped-sum load. They vary widely. They may be under 20 pF/foot. I think the 60 pF/ft ones ayou are talking about are down the page quite a bit: ( units are in meters at the link ) http://www.shootoutguitarcables.com/...nce-chart.html That's not a specific, lab-grade set of measurements, just an idea of the range available. It also depends very much on what input you're driving. The ones I use are probably about 30pF per foot for 10 feet and they are fine. I cannot readily tell the difference between a 3ft and a 10 ft cable, even if plugged into a cheap 1 Mohm DI box. Our load impedance is 1 megohm, let's assume the source impedance is 1 meg also (and in reality it'll be worse than that and nonlinear too). So total shunt resistance is 500K ohms. So, best case 3dB corner comes out at 1/(2piRC), 1/ 6.3 * 5E5 * 36E-11 or 880 Hz. So, in this case (and we're neglecting the series L of the cable), you can view the cable+interfaces system as a first order low pass filter whose -6dB point is at 880 Hz. I'd call that a hell of a cable effect... and very different than what they are describing. Yeah, I don't think that's commonplace. From 500 to 2k is critical on electric guitar - people would notice this immediately. I wouldn't expect to see _any_ bass rolloff, even with considerable cable series resistance or series inductance. The fact that they are would indicate to me that they're doing something odd. --scott -- Les Cargill |
#16
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Don Pearce wrote:
------------------ You must put the inductance in there, otherwise you get no resonant peak. ** As I'm sure you already know, magnetic guitar pick ups have a large resonant peak without any additional cable capacitance. Plus, cable capacitance is pretty much isolated from the PU if the volume pot is not turned most or all the way up. One it is, the resonant frequency will drop by maybe an octave or two. BTW: It's simple to add a FET follower preamp to an electric guitar or bass and render cable noise and capacitance moot. Guitar makers must think there is no good reason to do so. ..... Phil |
#17
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On Tue, 6 Jun 2017 01:42:55 -0700 (PDT), Phil Allison
wrote: Don Pearce wrote: ------------------ You must put the inductance in there, otherwise you get no resonant peak. ** As I'm sure you already know, magnetic guitar pick ups have a large resonant peak without any additional cable capacitance. Plus, cable capacitance is pretty much isolated from the PU if the volume pot is not turned most or all the way up. One it is, the resonant frequency will drop by maybe an octave or two. BTW: It's simple to add a FET follower preamp to an electric guitar or bass and render cable noise and capacitance moot. Guitar makers must think there is no good reason to do so. .... Phil Yes, the standard electrical model for a guitar pickup is a voltage source in series with an inductor and a resistor, then a capacitor (representing inter-winding capacitance) in parallel with the lot. The pickup itself usually has a self resonance of about 6kHz for a single coil, and 4kHz for a humbucker. Adding cable capacitance to that shifts the resonance down. Backing off the volume control dulls the effect on the resonance, but makes the sound overall muddier because you get a simple high-cut filter. A small (100pF) capacitor across the top half of the volume control counters this to an extent. But self resonance plus a few yards of cable are part of the signature sound of a guitar, and most makers take that into account when designing. I've tried a FET amp in the guitar, and the sound is a bit more shrill than I liked. Of course there are now also active pickups that contain the amp. They are liked by shredders who kill any tone with brickwall clipping. d |
#18
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 6/6/2017 4:42 AM, Phil Allison wrote:
It's simple to add a FET follower preamp to an electric guitar or bass and render cable noise and capacitance moot. Guitar makers must think there is no good reason to do so. Guitar makers will make whatever guitarists want. Some like the idea, others are suspicious that it affects the tone - and it does. It removes the effect of the cable on the pickup, which may (possibly inadvertently) have been designed for a specific sound with a reasonably nominal cable and amplifier input impedance 500 kOhms. And then there's the issue of power for the preamp. You might find yourself on a gig with a dead battery. And then there's the effect of carving some wood out of the body to make room for the electronics. Finally (for the moment), guitar makers tend to put more than a simple impedance converter into their electronics. I'm not aware of active guitar electronics with a compressor, but frequently the tone controls are active rather than a simple R-C filter to cut the treble. But I think the biggest reason is that guitarists are a suspicious lot. -- For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com |
#19
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 6/06/2017 9:03 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
And then there's the issue of power for the preamp. You might find yourself on a gig with a dead battery. Acoustic guitarists with active pick-ups (many) have been coping with that for years. Changing the battery every few gigs is not that hard. (Although the ones where you have to slacken the strings to get at the battery are a pain in the ass.) I did have one artist tell me he had a passive pick-up when I complained it was clipping. Turns out it had a battery he hadn't changed in years! If you are going to do paid gigs the least you can do is make sure your batteries are OK. :-( Trevor. |
#20
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 6/6/2017 7:29 AM, Trevor wrote:
If you are going to do paid gigs the least you can do is make sure your batteries are OK. Who has a paid gig nowadays? The trouble with battery-powered practically anything these days is that so much of our electronics draws very little current, and batteries have a far longer shelf life, as well as service life, than back in the carbon-zinc days. It's easy to forget that batteries need replacement. A rarely-paid musician probably plays more with his instrument unplugged (practicing or writing at home) and may be faced with the quandary of possibly replacing a battery with plenty of useful life in it. One thing that we all need to remember is that, while yesteryear's batteries would usually go dead before they started leaking corrosive electrolyte, modern batteries that seemingly last forever, particularly in a device that you don't use every day. They can leak before you remember that you haven't used that device in a long time, frequently damaging the device beyond practical repair. Even "button" cells eventually leak - when was the last time you checked the one in your computer? -- For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com |
#21
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Mike Rivers said...news
On 6/6/2017 4:42 AM, Phil Allison wrote: It's simple to add a FET follower preamp to an electric guitar or bass and render cable noise and capacitance moot. Guitar makers must think there is no good reason to do so. Guitar makers will make whatever guitarists want. Some like the idea, others are suspicious that it affects the tone - and it does. It removes the effect of the cable on the pickup, which may (possibly inadvertently) have been designed for a specific sound with a reasonably nominal cable and amplifier input impedance 500 kOhms. And then there's the issue of power for the preamp. You might find yourself on a gig with a dead battery. And then there's the effect of carving some wood out of the body to make room for the electronics. Finally (for the moment), guitar makers tend to put more than a simple impedance converter into their electronics. I'm not aware of active guitar electronics with a compressor, but frequently the tone controls are active rather than a simple R-C filter to cut the treble. But I think the biggest reason is that guitarists are a suspicious lot. Yes, what you said. FWIW, Rickenbacker made a Roger McGuinn model with an active compressor. Early Musicman (active) guitars come to mind and used a low-power programmable opamp to preserve battery power. The Ibanez Musician of the late 70s was a very nice active-electronics guitar (in spite of the 4558s). They were all following Alembic by that point, which IMO started it all. david --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus |
#22
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
david gourley wrote:
FWIW, Rickenbacker made a Roger McGuinn model with an active compressor. Early Musicman (active) guitars come to mind and used a low-power programmable opamp to preserve battery power. The Ibanez Musician of the late 70s was a very nice active-electronics guitar (in spite of the 4558s). They were all following Alembic by that point, which IMO started it all. And on the other end of that scale, there was the Les Paul Recording Pickup System with a 600 ohm balanced cable run between the instrument and the amplifier. Nothing fancy about the pickup, it just had fewer turns and the ground reference point was moved. Very penetrating sound. Rock guys hated it. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#23
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 6/6/2017 9:41 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
And on the other end of that scale, there was the Les Paul Recording Pickup System with a 600 ohm balanced cable run between the instrument and the amplifier. Nothing fancy about the pickup, it just had fewer turns and the ground reference point was moved. I always thought that's how it worked, but every (which I think is two or three) wiring diagram I've seen for that guitar shows standard pickups with conventional tone and volume controls, with transformer between the pickup switch and the XLR jack on the guitar. The pickups weren't low impedance, the transformer made the output low impedance and balanced. The the guitar shipped with an XLR - transformer - 1/4" TS plug at the amplifier end to make the guitar it work with a standard amplifier. Chet Atkins was reported to have made genuine low impedance pickups for a few of his guitars so he could connect them directly to the mic preamps of the day. Could be that with all that haywire in the Les Paul Pro, guitarists who used it through the input transformer and a standard amplifier weren't happy with the sound. There was a matching Les Paul Professional amplifier with an XLR input, but I never saw a diagram of that one so I don't know if it was a conventional tube amplifier with a step-up transformer at the input. -- For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com |
#24
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On Tue, 6 Jun 2017 10:06:13 -0400, Mike Rivers
wrote: On 6/6/2017 9:41 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote: And on the other end of that scale, there was the Les Paul Recording Pickup System with a 600 ohm balanced cable run between the instrument and the amplifier. Nothing fancy about the pickup, it just had fewer turns and the ground reference point was moved. I always thought that's how it worked, but every (which I think is two or three) wiring diagram I've seen for that guitar shows standard pickups with conventional tone and volume controls, with transformer between the pickup switch and the XLR jack on the guitar. The pickups weren't low impedance, the transformer made the output low impedance and balanced. The the guitar shipped with an XLR - transformer - 1/4" TS plug at the amplifier end to make the guitar it work with a standard amplifier. Chet Atkins was reported to have made genuine low impedance pickups for a few of his guitars so he could connect them directly to the mic preamps of the day. Could be that with all that haywire in the Les Paul Pro, guitarists who used it through the input transformer and a standard amplifier weren't happy with the sound. There was a matching Les Paul Professional amplifier with an XLR input, but I never saw a diagram of that one so I don't know if it was a conventional tube amplifier with a step-up transformer at the input. There are still pickups that use a matching transformer. The Lace Alumitone is one. The casing of the pickup is actually a single turn coil which gets stepped up to a more reasonable impedance by a transformer - a bit like a ribbon mic. d |
#25
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On Monday, June 5, 2017 at 3:49:58 AM UTC-6, Don Pearce wrote:
On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 02:32:50 -0700, Paul wrote: http://sfguitarworks.com/the-great-cable-myth/ What do you all think? That is an extremely ill-informed article and the tests have been performed wrongly. Cable impedance - they give instead the figure for end-to--end resistance. This has nothing to do with impedance, which is actually the ratio of inductance to capacitance per unit length. Cable resistance is of great importance to speaker cables, but meaningless for guitars. The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. Guitar cables do make a great deal of difference to guitar sound, but not because of their "quality". Their length is what matters. A longer cable has more capacitance, and this will shift the primary resonance of the pickup network a long way. A cable over about 10 feet long will start dulling the sound in much the same way as winding back the tone control. So in short, ignore this article. It is gibberish. d Ty Ford and I made a comparison between a boutique guitar cable and my favorite guitar cable which is the skinny George L's cable with solderless ends.. Both were in 20 foot lengths. We were using magnetic pickups which were not active. The audio difference is readily apparent. The George L's cable had less loss of high frequency and when I compared the responses through a spectrum analysis program on my computer it verified the difference. Below 250 Hz the responses were identical. Above, the boutique cable rolled off. I realize that this is a limited sample, but the results with my cable and others have been very consistent. I found out the difference is even more audibly apparent on a bass. You don't need spectrum analysis to tell you the difference, just listen. |
#26
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On Tue, 6 Jun 2017 11:37:37 -0700 (PDT), Richard Kuschel
wrote: On Monday, June 5, 2017 at 3:49:58 AM UTC-6, Don Pearce wrote: On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 02:32:50 -0700, Paul wrote: http://sfguitarworks.com/the-great-cable-myth/ What do you all think? That is an extremely ill-informed article and the tests have been performed wrongly. Cable impedance - they give instead the figure for end-to--end resistance. This has nothing to do with impedance, which is actually the ratio of inductance to capacitance per unit length. Cable resistance is of great importance to speaker cables, but meaningless for guitars. The tests have been done with a signal generator. The source should have been a dummy circuit that simulates the complex impedance of a pickup. Guitar cables do make a great deal of difference to guitar sound, but not because of their "quality". Their length is what matters. A longer cable has more capacitance, and this will shift the primary resonance of the pickup network a long way. A cable over about 10 feet long will start dulling the sound in much the same way as winding back the tone control. So in short, ignore this article. It is gibberish. d Ty Ford and I made a comparison between a boutique guitar cable and my favorite guitar cable which is the skinny George L's cable with solderless ends. Both were in 20 foot lengths. We were using magnetic pickups which were not active. The audio difference is readily apparent. The George L's cable had less loss of high frequency and when I compared the responses through a spectrum analysis program on my computer it verified the difference. Below 250 Hz the responses were identical. Above, the boutique cable rolled off. I realize that this is a limited sample, but the results with my cable and others have been very consistent. I found out the difference is even more audibly apparent on a bass. You don't need spectrum analysis to tell you the difference, just listen. Were the boutique cables those ones with a small box of "stuff" at the end? If so, I believe they are actually lowpass filters. d |
#27
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Richard Kuschel wrote:
The audio difference is readily apparent. The George L's cable had less lo= ss of high frequency and when I compared the responses through a spectrum a= nalysis program on my computer it verified the difference. Below 250 Hz the= responses were identical. Above, the boutique cable rolled off.=20 And this brings us to be basic problem: it's very easy to make cables to make things sound different. And often, it's hard to tell if different means better or worse. And in the case of musical instruments, one man's better may be another man's worse. Now, it being established that it's easy to make cables sound different, it should be clear that there is no reason to spend huge amounts of money for this. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#28
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Mike Rivers wrote:
-------------------- Scott Dorsey wrote: And on the other end of that scale, there was the Les Paul Recording Pickup System with a 600 ohm balanced cable run between the instrument and the amplifier. Nothing fancy about the pickup, it just had fewer turns and the ground reference point was moved. I always thought that's how it worked, but every (which I think is two or three) wiring diagram I've seen for that guitar shows standard pickups with conventional tone and volume controls, with transformer between the pickup switch and the XLR jack on the guitar. The pickups weren't low impedance, the transformer made the output low impedance and balanced. The the guitar shipped with an XLR - transformer - 1/4" TS plug at the amplifier end to make the guitar it work with a standard amplifier. ** Fraid you have it all back to front. The Les Paul Recording has LOW impedance, single coil pickups, LOW impedance tone and volume controls and a step UP transformer at the output to give normal guitar levels. The direct out is LOW impedance & unbalanced. It could be connected direct to a balanced mic input on a console. Some examples had a 3 pin male XLR fitted. http://oi5.photobucket.com/albums/y1...er/lprec-1.gif http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...Precording.jpg ...... Phil |
#29
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 6/6/2017 8:32 PM, Phil Allison wrote:
The Les Paul Recording has LOW impedance, single coil pickups, LOW impedance tone and volume controls and a step UP transformer at the output to give normal guitar levels. The direct out is LOW impedance & unbalanced. It could be connected direct to a balanced mic input on a console. Some examples had a 3 pin male XLR fitted. I took another look - you know that every time you do a Google search for the same thing, you get some different results. When I looked at this guitar many years back, I didn't pay much attention to the values of the components, I was just looking for the transformer. Looking at it again, it's pretty clear that the pickups and the associated tone and volume components are a low impedance setup. I didn't dig in very far, but it seems that there were three models in this series, the Les Paul Personal, Professional, and Recording. I believe it was the Recording model that had the XLR output. At least that was the way the only one I ever saw, a brand new one in a music store, was configured. This diagram, which appears to come from a Gibson vault, clearly shows that the transformer is a step-up, rather than a step-down: http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/j...ingdiagram.jpg This on (a page back from the one above) shows two variations of the output section wiring: http://s269.photobucket.com/user/new...gram2.jpg.html In the 1971 version, there appears to be an impedance switch that, in the closed position, appears to connect the primary in parallel to the secondary, thereby hanging the transformer inductance and capacitance across the output. Curious! And here's an interesting article which describes the tone switches: http://jbwid.com/guitar/lpp02.htm So with so many variations, it's no wonder that there were guitarists who hated one or the other. -- For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com |
#30
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
Mike Rivers wrote:
-------------------- Phil Allison wrote: The Les Paul Recording has LOW impedance, single coil pickups, LOW impedance tone and volume controls and a step UP transformer at the output to give normal guitar levels. The direct out is LOW impedance & unbalanced. It could be connected direct to a balanced mic input on a console. Some examples had a 3 pin male XLR fitted. I took another look - you know that every time you do a Google search for the same thing, you get some different results. When I looked at this guitar many years back, I didn't pay much attention to the values of the components, I was just looking for the transformer. Looking at it again, it's pretty clear that the pickups and the associated tone and volume components are a low impedance setup. I didn't dig in very far, but it seems that there were three models in this series, the Les Paul Personal, Professional, and Recording. I believe it was the Recording model that had the XLR output. At least that was the way the only one I ever saw, a brand new one in a music store, was configured. ** Back in the mid 70s,I worked as an amp tech and builder in a music shop. The shop used to also sell second hand guitars on consignment and a few nice ones turned up so I was able to play around with them. I particularly remember a Guild Starfire which sold quickly and a Gibson Recording that didn't. The Gibson had a XLR on the front that may not have been standard. The wiring was like the link I posted. I felt it was a good instrument, but the tone was kinda bland. Any decent Les Paul or SG was much better. ..... Phil |
#31
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On 6/06/2017 10:01 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 6/6/2017 7:29 AM, Trevor wrote: If you are going to do paid gigs the least you can do is make sure your batteries are OK. Who has a paid gig nowadays? The trouble with battery-powered practically anything these days is that so much of our electronics draws very little current, and batteries have a far longer shelf life, as well as service life, than back in the carbon-zinc days. It's easy to forget that batteries need replacement. But a professional knows his instrument does, and replaces the battery regularly, if not before every paid gig. We are not talking about car batteries here that ARE expensive! A rarely-paid musician probably plays more with his instrument unplugged (practicing or writing at home) and may be faced with the quandary of possibly replacing a battery with plenty of useful life in it. And IF he wants to be paid ever again, the cost of replacing a battery before a paid gig is hardly an issue IMO. One thing that we all need to remember is that, while yesteryear's batteries would usually go dead before they started leaking corrosive electrolyte, modern batteries that seemingly last forever, particularly in a device that you don't use every day. They can leak before you remember that you haven't used that device in a long time, frequently damaging the device beyond practical repair. Yep, an issue for devices you rarely use, like that emergency torch perhaps. Wouldn't expect it to apply to a professional musicians instruments though. Even "button" cells eventually leak - when was the last time you checked the one in your computer? CAN leak, absolutely. Can last for a couple of decades in some cases too. However I agree they are ones often overlooked because of that. Trevor. |
#32
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The Great Guitar Cable Myth?
On Monday, June 5, 2017 at 5:33:19 AM UTC-4, Paul wrote:
http://sfguitarworks.com/the-great-cable-myth/ What do you all think? One of the big name guitar gods, Steven Vai maybe, said in an article that he could hear the difference between guitar cables. Probably an Mogami endorsee. So then, your average Joe reader says..."oh yeah, I can hear it too!" you could too if you had the ears of me and Steven Vai. I play golf and it amazes me that I find Titleist Pro V golf balls in a pond right in front of the tee box...$4.00 a ball..and they can't hit it 50 yards. |
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