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Dave Merrill said:
I'd be interested in hearing some comparison clips, well controlled, so the only difference is cable direction.

I'd also like to understand the scientific basis for the difference, the physics that makes that difference happen.

It also seems unlikely that the audio and instrument worlds would have missed this all these years, with all the attention that gets paid to cultivating awesome tones.
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Just added to my comment:

There is a theory that the direction of the winds in the shielding of the cable can have an effect on the capacitance of the cable, and some will talk about the direction in which the wire was drawn before it was twisted together.
No one can convince anyone. You will have to try it yourself.
 
rlennyr said:
Just added to my comment:

There is a theory that the direction of the winds in the shielding of the cable can have an effect on the capacitance of the cable, and some will talk about the direction in which the wire was drawn before it was twisted together.
No one can convince anyone. You will have to try it yourself.
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IMO, if it's not audible in well controlled comparison recordings, it's too subtle to spend time on.
 
Dave Merrill said:
IMO, if it's not audible in well controlled comparison recordings, it's too subtle to spend time on.
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Agree it's relative. If there isn't much of a difference it's a good thing.

But if changing directions did make a difference, why not.

Just last week I had real bad results in a live gig situation where my tone was harsh and lacked body on overdriven tones. I just changed the direction of my patch cables and it solved the problem.
 
This is some voodoo stuff. Kind of like those high dollar power cables in the audiophile world. Whatever makes you happy is cool with me. But that can’t change how electricity works. The cable and its connections are components in the signal chain and have their own electrical characteristics. And the laws of electricity define how those characteristics will affect the signal chain. Variances can happen anywhere in the chain, particularly at connection points. I have worked on equipment for a living all of my adult life, since 1979. There have been many times I have fixed things by simply reseating connections. More times than I can count. Your case was probably one of those kind of things. The shielding thing might have something to it but capacitance in typical guitar cables is very low. Any effect would be subtle, but there have been times where I could hear a difference between long and short cables. Be happy with what you have and if the direction of your cable makes a difference to you then keep doing that. But you’re not going to convince a lot of people that it’s real. I would be curious to hear @FractalAudio opinion on this.
 
skolacki said:
This is some voodoo stuff. Kind of like those high dollar power cables in the audiophile world. Whatever makes you happy is cool with me. But that can’t change how electricity works. The cable and its connections are components in the signal chain and have their own electrical characteristics. And the laws of electricity define how those characteristics will affect the signal chain. Variances can happen anywhere in the chain, particularly at connection points. I have worked on equipment for a living all of my adult life, since 1979. There have been many times I have fixed things by simply reseating connections. More times than I can count. Your case was probably one of those kind of things. The shielding thing might have something to it but capacitance in typical guitar cables is very low. Any effect would be subtle, but there have been times where I could hear a difference between long and short cables. Be happy with what you have and if the direction of your cable makes a difference to you then keep doing that. But you’re not going to convince a lot of people that it’s real. I would be curious to hear @FractalAudio opinion on this.
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That’s why I said a few times. One has to try it themselves. No one can convince anyone.

The link that I posted earlier has many people on both sides of the fence. But for those who are not getting the results they want it is definitely worth a try which takes only a minute compared to spending money and time on something else.
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
Common guitar amp inputs are high impedance, usually 1M ohms....
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Effect loops aren't typically high impedance.
And it's the guitar pickups that make it high impedance.
So if you have low impedance pickups -active. This issue gets diminished greatly.
 
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Joe Bfstplk said:
I can actually hear the difference when I plug in my Planet Waves cable (it was a gift) the wrong way. It has a telescoping shield from the amp end, surrounding hot and ground signal wires. The idea is that your guitar gound doesn't ride down the shield braid and pick up noise, which injects itself into the guitar's sound via the ground connection's resistance. It is a little less noisy in noise-prone environments when used properly. In a less noisy environment it makes far less difference.
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That's what I said above.
But most cables aren't like this.
 
rlennyr said:
Just last week I had real bad results in a live gig situation where my tone was harsh and lacked body on overdriven tones. I just changed the direction of my patch cables and it solved the problem.
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I’d be more inclined to believe that one of the 1/4” connections had a little bit of corrosion or contamination or just wasn’t making good contact.

Back when companies like Whirlwind started making stronger cables, they’d use machined brass mil-spec and old telephone switchboard connectors, which would tarnish over time and we’d occasionally get lousy connections and noise. I’d rub them on my Levi’s and unplug and replug them several times to try to clean the connections enough to make it through the night, and then later use some really fine steel wool on the ends to make the tip and ring bright again.

I haven’t seen any companies use brass for a long time, but I still have some of the original George L cords that used machined brass 1/4” plugs and they’ll do it too.
 
Tonedeaf said:
Usually, When I have a problem with not getting a signal, it turn out to be a cable problem.... my senile ass forgets to plug in my guitar.
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I do that with my wireless shit. Plug it in, go to play. Nothing. Dick around for 45 minutes and then remember to turn the transmitter (or receiver) on. I'll check one but not both for some reason. By then I'm stressing and need a toke or two. Around the time that kicks in, I've lost all ambition.
 
Tonedeaf said:
Usually, When I have a problem with not getting a signal, it turns out to be a cable problem.... my senile ass forgets to plug in my guitar.
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Just gone through a series of comedy-of-error troubleshooting before realising that my senile ass was wearing the wrong headphones. Note - not so senile that I was actually placing any headphones, nor have I yet, upon my buttocks. That day may still be yet to come though.
 
yeah, logical fault finding and that moment when it deserts you...
Coincidentally when I turned my PC on (connected to AxeFX by default) I assumed I'd got some "new weird USB tremolo bug" when the signal started gating on and off in a weird uncontrollable way. So after dicking around in Device Mangler for a bit I shutdown the PC thinking I'll just play my guitar anyway... it continues. Oh no, my AxeFX is broken... the f' it is - the battery on the wireless transmitter is going flat. So remarkably obvious. (I blame the industrial strength painkillers but I guess it happens to us all).
 
FractalAudio said:
If you are one of those who refuses to read manuals or search for information at least read this:

99% OF THE TIME THE PROBLEM IS A CABLE OR CONNECTOR.

I used to have this on a sign in my office at my old job. Whenever a salesman or tech would come into my office all panicked I would point to the sign.

One day a sales technician came into my office and said "The System 5000 down at NOAA has failed. You gotta fly down there and fix it". I pointed to the sign. He says "No, they checked all the cables and connectors and they're sure something failed. They're getting telemetry errors". I pointed to the sign again.

A couple hours he comes back all sheepish and says "Uh, yeah, turns out someone ran over the deck cable with a forklift and didn't tell anyone. They replaced the cable and it's working fine now".
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I've worked as a live sound tech for 30 + years and that has been my mantra forever. Check the cables first.
 
I have never heard of the cable draw affecting capacitance before. It would be very hard to convince me of this especially since some wire manufacturing reverses direction of every other wire some may not but how they heck do we know every wire is drawn and bundled so the draw is the same direction or some set variable of reverse direction before twisting? Hey whatever if it works for you go for it. I suppose you could place a capacitor in series or parallel to the cable and see what happens same if the shielding of a cable. I have no desire to do so but I have heard of guys doing this, and swearing by the results.
 
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A local community venue I sometimes do sound for had their foldback just stop working a couple of weeks ago. Traced this, checked that, and finally figured out that in the tangle of connections, someone had unplugged the foldback outs from the desk. Should have checked that first.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
I’d be more inclined to believe that one of the 1/4” connections had a little bit of corrosion or contamination or just wasn’t making good contact.

...
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Along these lines I wonder if a poor or cold solder joint or even frayed/stray wire(s) on the connectors' wiring prongs would be capable of causing the sound to be "different" when reversing the cable's plugged-in direction. Like when you inspect your cable and find only a solitary strand of your wire still connected.
 
playmusic said:
Along these lines I wonder if a poor or cold solder joint or even frayed/stray wire(s) on the connectors' wiring prongs would be capable of causing the sound to be "different" when reversing the cable's plugged-in direction.
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The way I look at it, reversing a working cable shouldn't make any difference; The wires are handling sine-waves/alternating current when passing audio, and copper isn't magnetic enough to matter, so the cable shouldn't retain any polarity or have any memory of what passed through it that would survive reversing the cable.

A bad joint or contamination on the plug or jack might cause one end to not make a good connection, but that still should not make the cable uni-directional, it should still affect the tone whichever end is plugged in.

Frayed/stray wires can short out the signal but, again, that would happen no matter which end was plugged in.

That all assumes it's a TS <->TS 1/4" cable. TRS <-> TS can cause balanced or Humbuster circuitry to act differently and that can affect sound, but that's because we're abusing their design and purpose, and we should know better than to do that.

Buying good quality cables and maintaining them sidesteps the issues.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
The way I look at it, reversing a working cable shouldn't make any difference; ...
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Same thought occurred to me, but maybe it is possible to get a difference in the tone depending on whether the degradation of the signal via a defective cable occurs, for example, initially on the side of the cable plugged into the guitar, versus the side plugged into an amp.
 
playmusic said:
Same thought occurred to me, but maybe it is possible to get a difference in the tone depending on whether the degradation of the signal via a defective cable occurs, for example, initially on the side of the cable plugged into the guitar, versus the side plugged into an amp.
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You might get a difference in tone from jostling a loose connection while you’re reversing the cable, but not from which end is tied to which side. The cable and any of its imperfections still present the same impedance in both directions.
 
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