Long humbuster cable runs and signal loss?

brokenvail

brokenvail

Fractal Fanatic
I was wondering. Usually a 1/4 cable starts suffering tone loss above 18' some ppl say even less. Is this true of humbuster cables too since they are balanced?
 
Humbuster cables are not balanced, and their hum-sensing function does nothing for signal loss.

Danny W.
 
brokenvail said:
A humbuster cable is constructed using a balanced cable
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A cable is not "balanced". It is how the signal is sent/received that makes it balanced, or not.

The tone loss you're referring to only applies to high z signals, e.g. from a passive guitar pickup.
 
Trazan said:
A cable is not "balanced". It is how the signal is sent/received that makes it balanced, or not.

The tone loss you're referring to only applies to high z signals, e.g. from a passive guitar pickup.
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So if I have a passive pickup with a humbuster cable that's 20' long, I will get tone loss?
 
pjrake said:
So if I have a passive pickup with a humbuster cable that's 20' long, I will get tone loss?
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  • There's no way for Humbuster to work from guitar to Axe input.


  • How much tone loss you get depends on the length of the cable and the cable's parasitic capacitance. 50 feet of one guitar cable will cause more high-end loss than 50 feet of a lower-capacitance cable.


  • Tone loss over long cables only happens with high-impedance sources such as passive guitar pickups. There is no cable-induced tone loss with line-level signals, unless you're running many hundreds of feet.


  • There is nothing magical about 18 feet of cable. That's an arbitrary length, probably chosen by a cable company's marketing department, and the myth is now widely accepted. You won't hear any difference between an 18-foot cable and a 20-footer.
 
Are you planning to run 18+ feet from the axe output to the input of a guitar amp? I think that's all the humbuster is used for.
 
I meant Axe out to powered wedge with a 20 foot cable, but happened to use a guitar with passive pickups.

Since passive pickups were mentioned I thought it had something to do with the overall tone loss.
 
i see, it was phrased weird so i didn't understand the question. and i wasn't sure what passive pickups have to do with the output of the axe after all processing is done.

i personally have experienced no benefit of humbuster when used with anything but the input of an amp and it's effects loop with the 4-cable method. i use XLR usually from axe to powered speaker anyway.
 
pjrake said:
I meant Axe out to powered wedge with a 20 foot cable, but happened to use a guitar with passive pickups.

Since passive pickups were mentioned I thought it had something to do with the overall tone loss.
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Now I get it.

Passive pickups only came up because they're high-impedance, so they're more susceptible to tone loss from less-than-perfect cables. But that only matters for the cable plugged into your guitar. Low-impedance signal sources, like active pickups or line-level equipment outputs, don't care.
 
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