The guitar cable situation

A guitar cable is the primary cable connecting an electric guitar's output to its amplifier's input or to the input on the first effect pedal in the musician's pedalboard. Guitar cables are also used to hook basses to bass amps and keyboards to mixers. The broad category for these types of cables is "instrument". Guitar cables are constructed using single-conductor audio cable (also called coax) with an overall shield, terminated in 1/4" phone plugs.

There is a wide variety of guitar cables because there is a wide variety of guitarists. It is almost impossible to get two guitarists to agree on what a truly great "sound" is. Even if they did, one of them would change his/her mind by midnight.

The primary guitar cable can be the most abused on stage (besides the lead singer's microphone cable). Therefore, it must be built to withstand extreme trauma during performance. For this reason many different guitar cables are made in a wide variety of lengths, each with different standards for reliability, shielding, sonic quality, flexibility, appearance and price.

Although the patch cables used between the effect pedals and between the last effect and the amplifier (or pre amp) need to sound good and be very quiet, the stress on them is not as severe as the stress on the primary cable. Light duty patch cables can be used here without as much fear of failure. Also, because of the placement of the output jack on some guitars, a right angle plug may be needed, especially if your output is on the face of your guitar.

The real world problems with guitar cables Guitar cables have all sorts of potential problems. They are noisy. They are stiff and do not lie flat on stage (this alone is a huge irritant to players). Many guitar cables are unreliable and/or intermittent. One of the biggest problems is when the musician stomps his/her boot heel into the cable 500 times an hour on stage. Cables literally get destroyed through use. Then, when the gig or rehearsal is over, cables get wadded up and stuck in the back of the guitar amplifier because they will not fit in the guitar case. There are ways to wind cables so they stay nice and round. The 55 people on earth who do this correctly have cables that will last a lifetime. This section is for the rest of you.

The solutions

The things that matter most in guitar cable construction are strength, flexibility, sonics, shielding and appearance.

Strength in a guitar cable's wire is derived from the size (gauge) of the center conductor, the type and percentage of coverage of shield, the thickness and material making up the jacket.

Flexibility in a wire is accomplished with the type of shield and its lay (pattern), flexible jacket compounds help, cable geometry helps (the way it all fits together), the thickness of the outer jacket (the bigger the better) and the number of strands in the center conductor.

With good plugs and good wire and good soldering and a good mechanical strain relief, we generally get a good cable. Appearance is in the eye of the beholder and the need for an attractive, or flat-out exotic cable depends on personal preference and the visual aspects of the performance. We think cables should at least look like they were worth what you paid for them.

Guitar cables carry minuscule signals that must be kept away from noisy light dimmers and audio frequency interference that can jump into a cable's signal path at any time. The cable's shield helps to prevent this. Braided shields work better than spiral shields, but they tend to saw themselves in two when you stomp your boot heel into them night after night.

Finally we need to talk about "sonics", how our cable sounds. A beginning guitarist who cannot yet tune his/her guitar on the fly, does not need to have a real good cable. Anything will do, as long as it works and is relatively quiet (lets in little hum, buzz or crackle).