OK, What's The Real Answer When It Comes To Cables?

[pharmd07]

Oh, and they make my signature cable

https://btpa.com/Fractal-Audio/fas20-xx

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I just bought that cable a few weeks ago. By far the nicest cable I’ve ever owned!

 

[James Nash]

As others have mentioned, the cable directly connected to passive pickups makes the biggest sonic difference. It's worth experimenting and spending a little money here. Cheers!

 

[DallasGlenn2005]

I buy for durability and mechanical properties. Full stop.

I really like Bestronics cables. Not because they sound any particular way, but because I get many, many years out of them. For $40, it's a great ROI. Amortizes to a few dollars a year. Perfectly fine math for me.

https://btpa.com/fas20-xx

That's a nice cable with a pretty jacket that I think looks snazzy that BTPA designed with @Admin M@ IIRC. There's no noise from the cable when you move around with it, even with a high gain setup on the III running into a very loud FOH system. The Neutrik silent plugs are also a nice touch and I like them for the ability to unplug with no pops and to be able to leave the cable dangling without being connected and not have it make noise. I've never had issues with Neutrik silent plugs failing, but some have reported issues with them. YMMV.

But if you buy a $10 cable from Amazon and it works in your application and it sounds fine then it is fine and you're golden. Don't worry about any other cable, you're not missing anything.

I don’t have a great ear, but even I could hear a significant difference when I got the instrument cable mentioned above as compared to my $30 guitar center cable. I was really surprised how much the sound cleared up particularly in the higher frequencies.

 

[DallasGlenn2005]

Oh, and they make my signature cable

https://btpa.com/Fractal-Audio/fas20-xx

View attachment 85328

That’s the one.

 

[MKeditor]

There's a lot of BTPA fans here. I just ordered one. I'll compare it to my Forte and report back.

 

[MKeditor]

The BTPA arrived today. I compared it to my Evidence Audio, The Forte. The BTPA is just as good at at almost 1/3 of the price. I'm a convert. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.

 

[tealtonerick]

Mechanical issues aside, for those who would like to really understand how cables can affect tone, it is important to look at the entire circuit chain from your particular guitar/pickup/control setup (especially passive as mentioned by others here), across the cable, and into an amplifier. In the end, it's all one circuit and thus the very same cable is going to potentially sound different depending upon the guitar and amp input combination that the cable interconnects. Some examples of the gory details for generally how this works is included in the attached worksheet.