Guitar Patch Cable To Usb

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Fender Guitar Patch Cable 2 Pack. $54.98Save: $47.99 (87%)$6.99.

more.. Gear • Cables • Pickups & Accessories

If you’re like most guitarists and bassists,you probably started hoarding guitarcables pretty early on in your playing career.For decades now—probably since the dawnof electric guitar—many a basement jamhas ended in cable-spaghetti chaos. Back inthe day, you’d get home from the jam andlater realize that the 10-foot Switchcraftyou’d bought last month had somehowshape-shifted into an old Kordex AudiblePurity, or vice versa. Like guitar picks,cables tended to change hands pretty easilybecause none of us really gave any considerationto how they sounded—all that matteredwas that they worked. And the moreyou had, the better.

Back in the ’80s, we carried aroundknapsacks full of them—thick ones, thinones, molded ones, coiled ones, long ones,short ones, and even the cheap Radio Shackknockoffs that at times seemed like theymight have been more useful as shoelaces.Every once in a while, someone wouldsplurge for a high-end professional modeland prattle on for hours about how muchcooler and deeper it made everything sound.The poor sap would bring it to rehearsal,plug in his Strat, crank it up and shout,“Hear that?” We’d just look at each otherand shrug, knowing that eventually, thatvery same cable would make the knapsackrounds, too.

Slowly but surely though, over the lastcouple of decades, these attitudes havechanged. Some attribute it to the adventof digital recording: As software grew moreadept at delivering pristine, high-resolutionaudio, weak links in the signal chainbegan to stand out, creating a demand forinstrument cables that were better at suppressingtriboelectric noise (aka “handlingnoise”—clicks and pops, mostly) but thatalso didn’t EQ the sound of the guitar (aphenomenon that basically comes down toa cable’s capacitance, which we’ll get intoin a minute). Meanwhile, as competitionamong cable manufacturers picked up andnew companies joined the fray, design engineersstarted to dig more into research andanalysis, all in a concerted effort to “build abetter cable.”

As Jim D’Addario recalls, after D’Addario& Co. acquired the Planet Waves line in1998, the focus was on problem solving—specifically, signal loss and degradation,handling noise, and connection failures.“We started measuring everything, becausewe wanted to find out what was there,” hesays. “And we really didn’t play into EQ-ingthe tone of your guitar before it hits yourfirst pedal or your amplifier. If you’ve gotgreat-sounding strings with a good pickupand a good cable, the signal should be pureand not doctored-up by pieces of equipmentin the chain. When you get to your effectsand your amplifier, that’s where you tailoryour sound.”

These days, it no longer makes sense toconsider your guitar cables as mere accessories.Materials, manufacturing processes, anddesign specs have evolved to such a degreethat many seasoned axe-slingers swear theycan hear—or at the very least detect—noticeabledifferences in signal response, transientharmonics, and dynamic range. Elite playershave always endorsed specific brands becausethey heard something that appealed to them,but now more than ever, companies rely onconstant feedback from their endorsees—andof course, their regular customers—in aneffort to stand out in an increasingly competitivemarket.

For bassists and guitarists, it’s a greattime to shop and experiment. The bignames like Whirlwind, Planet Waves,George L’s, Hosa Technology (and its subsidiary,Zaolla Silverline), Mogami, andmore have rolled out new cable lines orintroduced significant upgrades in the pastyear, while young companies and recentmergers like Lava Cable, RapcoHorizon,and the Austin-based upstart Asteropecontinue to keep the big boys on their toes.We’d need a book-length study to get intoan exhaustive roundup of what’s out there,but there are some key characteristics tolook and listen for when choosing a solidand dependable cable in today’s market.

1. George L’s .225 Prepackaged10' Cables ($38 street).2. Mogami Platinum 12' Cable($110 street).3. Lava Cable Ultramafi c 12'Cable ($92 street)

The Capacitance Wars andthe “Sweet Spot”
Capacitance, measured in picofarads (pF),began emerging as a buzzword in the late’90s, and rightly so. It’s probably the singlemost influential property that affects thesound of a cable. Bill Lawrence—whobegan designing pickups and guitarsfor the likes of Fender, Gibson, Peavey,and others in the 1950s, and who pioneeredsolderless cables—explains why.“The higher the capacitance of a cable,the less highs reach the amplifier. High-capacitancecables shift the resonancetowards the lower frequencies, whichdramatically alters tone. For example, JimiHendrix used a coiled cord with 3,000pF [of capacitance]. This was the secret ofJimi’s tone: Shifting the resonance frequencybelow 2,000 Hz on his Strats has a similareffect to a midrange boost. When herecorded and needed a typical Strat soundfor some tracks, Jimi switched to a short,low-capacitance cable.” (This also brings upa valuable corollary: The longer the cable,the greater the capacitance—which is whyshorter cables always sound brighter.)

Among most manufacturers today, theconsensus “sweet spot” for capacitance isbetween 20 and 30 pF per foot—a fractionof what Hendrix and his contemporarieshad to wrangle. The reasoning comesfrom years of measurement, customerfeedback, and plain old trial-and-error. “AsI’ve designed my own cables, I’ve foundthat it’s really a balancing act,” says LavaCable founder and CEO Mark Stoddard.“If you think of your guitar cable as apipe—the lower the capacitance, the biggerthe pipe—two things happen if you gotoo low: Your highs are out there longer,so the note won’t drop off in time and theguitar will sound shrill to most people.The other risk—and I learned this the hardway—is that the cable tends to be moremicrophonic. That’s literally because youcan hear more.”

Hitachi hard disk driver. George Lewis, who founded GeorgeL’s in the ’70s and is widely credited withbringing the first low-cap, high-end guitarcables to market, apparently favored thelower (and thus brighter-sounding) endof the sweet spot. The company’s mostprominent endorsee is Eric Johnson,whose crystalline clean tone seems naturallygeared for the upper-mid accent that’sa signature of, for example, the GeorgeL’s .225 line of cable—a slightly heftiercable, in terms of weight and thickness,than the .155, which is sold as part of thecompany’s custom effects kit. (With solderlessconnections growing in popularity,it’s easier than ever for players to cut andassemble their own patch cables.) GeorgeL’s also sells bulk cable by the foot—another innovation that more companiesare adopting.

Hosa Technology’s Elite Series modelhovers around 21 pF, which theoreticallyplaces it in the sonic ballpark of George L’s.The same holds true for Mogami’s PlatinumSeries, but as Mogami cable is sometimesconsidered the Cadillac (or perhaps moreaptly, the Lexus LFA) of premium guitarcables, similarities start to diverge with thepF rating. Hosa’s Elite can claim equalreductions in handling noise and evensimilar connectors made by Neutrik, butMogami’s large-diameter cable is madewith Neutrik’s Silent Plug, which cutsthe signal out completely when changinginstruments. There’s a clear aura of luxuryto any Mogami product. However, attwice the price of some of its competitors,whether the high-end engineering andadd-ons translate to noticeable differencesin sound (more on this below) is in theear of the beholder.

4. Planet Waves AmericanStageInstrumentCable 10’ ($19 street).5. Whirlwind Leader StandardL18R ($28 street).6. Hosa Elite Guitar Cable($44–$85 list).

Further up the capacitance ladder,the affordable Planet Waves AmericanStage cable targets a very specific 28 pFrange. As a matter of philosophy, JimD’Addario doesn’t see the need to gooverboard with vastly different sonicflavors. “If you look back at the historyof some of our competitors, they mighthave had a ‘lead guitar’ model and a ‘jazz’model and whatever else, and essentiallyall they did was doctor the EQ by buildingdifferent levels of capacitance intothe cable and attenuating the highs. Doyou really need to buy two $60 cableswith different sounds when you can justchange the tone on your amp? That’ssomething we wanted to address right fromthe beginning.”

Over at Lava Cable, Stoddard agrees inprinciple with this approach, at least as faras capacitance is concerned. To that end,Lava Ultramafic premium cable is rated at25 pF and made with a silver-plated copperconductor at a slightly larger-than-normal18 gauge, which Stoddard discovered givesthe cable a “punchier” sound. But he’s alsokeenly aware that customer tastes can bewide-ranging and eclectic, and he tries toaccommodate them whenever feasible. The metal lathe gingery pdf free pdf.

“One guy may not like what another guythinks is the bomb,” he explains, “but youstill can recommend things. For example,coils are great for Fender amps, becauseFenders are bright, and a 20-foot coil isequivalent to about a 30-foot cable in termsof accumulated capacitance, which makesthe amp sound a little darker and moremusical. Greg Koch has been using ourcoils for quite some time, and [Nashvillewhiz kid] Daniel Donato loves them.”

7. RapcoHorizon G5S Professional 20' ($29 street).8. Asterope 15' ($149 street)

Along those lines, RapcoHorizon G5SProfessional cable is an affordable 18-gaugemodel rated at 45 pF, so it falls into thedarker end of the sonic spectrum. That said,the prevailing school of thought about higher-capacitance cables, as Bill Lawrence notesin his Hendrix example, is that they’re bettersuited for the rigors of live performance.This is especially true when considering theusual noisy ambience of a crowded venue,where the sonic nuances of low-capacitancepremium cables tends to get lost.

In fact, this is exactly what Whirlwind’sAl Keltz told PG in 2008, but not becausehe believed such low-cap cables necessarilymerited their premium price. “I agreethat cables can and do have some effecton frequency response,” he said, partly indefense of the company’s stalwart Leaderseries, which to this day is a staple of ruggeddependability on the road, “but unlessthe cable capacitance is extremely high, theeffect will be subtle. These differences alsobecome much less noticeable when you fireup the whole band and all sorts of soundsstart interacting with each other onstage dueto room resonances and comb filtering.”

This throws open the floor to all sortsof opinions about whether incrementalchanges in capacitance really can beheard—a discussion that gets even morepotentially delicious when a new companylike Asterope steps to the fore with what itmaintains is a disruptive technology. “Wewant to create emotional experiences forartists and listeners,” says president andCEO Dariush Rad, “and help them deliversignals that are providing obvious and clearadvances in harmonics and sonic characteristics—bandwidth, transient response,spectral balance—all these things that arevery real and at the critical heart of makingmusic. We know there are skeptics, but youcan hear it and literally feel it with this technology.That’s what I want to share withevery player I know.”

A respected record producer and engineerhimself, Rad waxes almost poetic inhis commitment to Asterope’s premiumPro Artist line, for example. Thus far, thecompany has kept its design specs very closeto the vest, but the glowing praise fromguitarists who endorse the cable—includingDavid Grissom, Lance Keltner, andKenny Vaughan (each a musician’s musicianamong Austin and Nashville cognoscenti)—suggests perhaps Asterope really is on tosomething different.

Materially Speaking
Once you get past capacitance, opinionsbegin to deviate wildly about other aspectsof a cable’s design that might affect a guitar’ssignal characteristics. Some insist thepure conductivity of the metals used tomake the 1/4' connectors plays a role in thesound. Others get into a soldered vs. solderlessstandoff, where a cold weld or a gas-tightcrimp might be the only acceptablealternative to a good old-fashioned solder.And still others would rather hang from aledge by their fingernails than admit that astandard cable sounds the same no matterwhich end you plug into the guitar.

One thing we can be sure about:Whether a cable is made with oxygen-freecopper (OFC) or electrolytic-tough-pitch(ETP) “common” copper, it won’t helpyou sound like Eddie Van Halen. But acase can be made for high-quality materialshaving some influence on the sound, howeverminute, especially when consideringconductivity.

“Whenever you increase the conductivityof the cable and lower its resistance, ittypically sounds a little bit better,” Lava’sStoddard asserts. “It’s not a whole lot, butit’s there.” He points to his Ultramaficcable, which is made with custom-shoppedplugs from G&H (one of the mainsuppliers of parts, along with Neutrik,to American cable manufacturers). “Theplugs have a silver core,” he explains, “sowe literally replace about four inches ofbrass with silver, which is higher in conductivityand lower in resistance.”

Hosa Technology vouches for its premiumZaolla Silverline cables with asimilar assertion, albeit with more detail.“While it is true that silver is superior tocopper as a pure conductor of electricity,this is not to say that silver alone issuitable for every application. If it wasthat easy, we could simply replace copperwith silver and be done with it! Low-levelanalog audio signals benefit fromthe MF [midrange frequency] boost, or‘warmth,’ associated with copper. Thus,all Zaolla Silverline instrument cablesfeature a solid-silver center conductorand an enamel-coated, stranded-copperancillary conductor in a unique hybridconfiguration for the best of bothworlds.” To some players, that complexexplanation might sound a bit hard toprove, but then again that’s not exactlya new situation in guitardom. As witheverything else in “the relentless pursuitof tone,” the only way to know for certainwhether certain bits of minutia willmake a difference in your sound is totest-drive a product yourself.

Of course, let’s not forget that qualityparts and craftsmanship should alsoextend the life of the cable—and addresslong-standing design flaws wheneverpossible. Jim D’Addario points to onesmall innovation with the AmericanStage cable that was engineered as asolution to the wide variation in instrumentjacks that often results in looseconnections. “The tip of the plug is calleda GeoTip, because the geometry of it iscompletely different,” he says. Basically,thanks to a slightly flattened bulb and anelongated shield, the newly designed tipenables a more secure connection withthe positive flange of just about any jack,old or new. “It’s the kind of detail thatlooks like nothing, but we put hundredsof hours into designing and testing thatsucker so we can cover enough of all thevariations, and come up with a better connectionfor everybody. It’s very similar toputting a seat belt on [laughs]. When youhere that clunk, it just goes in and youknow it’s gonna stay there.”

In the End, Trust Your Ears
With so many choices at your disposal, it’seasy to get overwhelmed when looking for1/4' instrument and patch cables. But themain thing to keep in mind is that a cable isan integral part of your signal path, and that—just with everything else in the chain fromyour instrument to your amp—you shouldfollow what you hear. No matter what yourphilosophy about cables—if you like them flatand uncolored, or with enough accumulatedcapacitance to coil a python—just keep yourears open, and you’ll find one that fits yoursound, your playing style, and your budget.“To strip it down to the basics, signalmatters,” Rad says. “You’re spending alifetime honing your craft, and you’respending thousands of dollars on your rig,so don’t underestimate how critical yoursignal path is. We should be cradling thatlike a baby, because that’s where all thedata is, y’know?”

And once you’ve got a handle on thedata, feel free to take that baby out for astroll. “Guitar players have freaky ears,”Stoddard quips. “We’re constantly tweakingsound, whether it’s a pedal or an amp or aguitar, and I think most of us have a soundin our head that we’re after. Everyone’s gotsomething that they like, and your cableis an integral part of that. There are tonefreaks out there who will take a brand newcable, no matter what kind it is, and they’llplug it in back and forth, in two differentdirections over and over again, until theyfind the direction they think sounds best,and then they’ll mark it!

“What I still believe to this day, though,is if you find the cable you really like andthat works in your rig, it opens up moretonal range in your amp and gives youmore depth to work with. That’s the keylesson I’ve learned. If you do your researchand play with a few cables and find thatone you like, you literally have more room.I’m not a shredder, but I’m a digger, and ifI’m digging in, I want to feel that note. Iwant to hear it freakin’ scream! A good cablecan make a difference. It can help that notesustain better, and that’s not snake oil.”

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Fender Guitar Patch Cable 2 Pack. $54.98Save: $47.99 (87%)$6.99.
more.. Gear • Cables • Pickups & Accessories
If you’re like most guitarists and bassists,you probably started hoarding guitarcables pretty early on in your playing career.For decades now—probably since the dawnof electric guitar—many a basement jamhas ended in cable-spaghetti chaos. Back inthe day, you’d get home from the jam andlater realize that the 10-foot Switchcraftyou’d bought last month had somehowshape-shifted into an old Kordex AudiblePurity, or vice versa. Like guitar picks,cables tended to change hands pretty easilybecause none of us really gave any considerationto how they sounded—all that matteredwas that they worked. And the moreyou had, the better.
Back in the ’80s, we carried aroundknapsacks full of them—thick ones, thinones, molded ones, coiled ones, long ones,short ones, and even the cheap Radio Shackknockoffs that at times seemed like theymight have been more useful as shoelaces.Every once in a while, someone wouldsplurge for a high-end professional modeland prattle on for hours about how muchcooler and deeper it made everything sound.The poor sap would bring it to rehearsal,plug in his Strat, crank it up and shout,“Hear that?” We’d just look at each otherand shrug, knowing that eventually, thatvery same cable would make the knapsackrounds, too.
Slowly but surely though, over the lastcouple of decades, these attitudes havechanged. Some attribute it to the adventof digital recording: As software grew moreadept at delivering pristine, high-resolutionaudio, weak links in the signal chainbegan to stand out, creating a demand forinstrument cables that were better at suppressingtriboelectric noise (aka “handlingnoise”—clicks and pops, mostly) but thatalso didn’t EQ the sound of the guitar (aphenomenon that basically comes down toa cable’s capacitance, which we’ll get intoin a minute). Meanwhile, as competitionamong cable manufacturers picked up andnew companies joined the fray, design engineersstarted to dig more into research andanalysis, all in a concerted effort to “build abetter cable.”
As Jim D’Addario recalls, after D’Addario& Co. acquired the Planet Waves line in1998, the focus was on problem solving—specifically, signal loss and degradation,handling noise, and connection failures.“We started measuring everything, becausewe wanted to find out what was there,” hesays. “And we really didn’t play into EQ-ingthe tone of your guitar before it hits yourfirst pedal or your amplifier. If you’ve gotgreat-sounding strings with a good pickupand a good cable, the signal should be pureand not doctored-up by pieces of equipmentin the chain. When you get to your effectsand your amplifier, that’s where you tailoryour sound.”
These days, it no longer makes sense toconsider your guitar cables as mere accessories.Materials, manufacturing processes, anddesign specs have evolved to such a degreethat many seasoned axe-slingers swear theycan hear—or at the very least detect—noticeabledifferences in signal response, transientharmonics, and dynamic range. Elite playershave always endorsed specific brands becausethey heard something that appealed to them,but now more than ever, companies rely onconstant feedback from their endorsees—andof course, their regular customers—in aneffort to stand out in an increasingly competitivemarket.
For bassists and guitarists, it’s a greattime to shop and experiment. The bignames like Whirlwind, Planet Waves,George L’s, Hosa Technology (and its subsidiary,Zaolla Silverline), Mogami, andmore have rolled out new cable lines orintroduced significant upgrades in the pastyear, while young companies and recentmergers like Lava Cable, RapcoHorizon,and the Austin-based upstart Asteropecontinue to keep the big boys on their toes.We’d need a book-length study to get intoan exhaustive roundup of what’s out there,but there are some key characteristics tolook and listen for when choosing a solidand dependable cable in today’s market.

1. George L’s .225 Prepackaged10\' Cables ($38 street).2. Mogami Platinum 12\' Cable($110 street).3. Lava Cable Ultramafi c 12\'Cable ($92 street)
The Capacitance Wars andthe “Sweet Spot”
Capacitance, measured in picofarads (pF),began emerging as a buzzword in the late’90s, and rightly so. It’s probably the singlemost influential property that affects thesound of a cable. Bill Lawrence—whobegan designing pickups and guitarsfor the likes of Fender, Gibson, Peavey,and others in the 1950s, and who pioneeredsolderless cables—explains why.“The higher the capacitance of a cable,the less highs reach the amplifier. High-capacitancecables shift the resonancetowards the lower frequencies, whichdramatically alters tone. For example, JimiHendrix used a coiled cord with 3,000pF [of capacitance]. This was the secret ofJimi’s tone: Shifting the resonance frequencybelow 2,000 Hz on his Strats has a similareffect to a midrange boost. When herecorded and needed a typical Strat soundfor some tracks, Jimi switched to a short,low-capacitance cable.” (This also brings upa valuable corollary: The longer the cable,the greater the capacitance—which is whyshorter cables always sound brighter.)
Among most manufacturers today, theconsensus “sweet spot” for capacitance isbetween 20 and 30 pF per foot—a fractionof what Hendrix and his contemporarieshad to wrangle. The reasoning comesfrom years of measurement, customerfeedback, and plain old trial-and-error. “AsI’ve designed my own cables, I’ve foundthat it’s really a balancing act,” says LavaCable founder and CEO Mark Stoddard.“If you think of your guitar cable as apipe—the lower the capacitance, the biggerthe pipe—two things happen if you gotoo low: Your highs are out there longer,so the note won’t drop off in time and theguitar will sound shrill to most people.The other risk—and I learned this the hardway—is that the cable tends to be moremicrophonic. That’s literally because youcan hear more.”
Hitachi hard disk driver. George Lewis, who founded GeorgeL’s in the ’70s and is widely credited withbringing the first low-cap, high-end guitarcables to market, apparently favored thelower (and thus brighter-sounding) endof the sweet spot. The company’s mostprominent endorsee is Eric Johnson,whose crystalline clean tone seems naturallygeared for the upper-mid accent that’sa signature of, for example, the GeorgeL’s .225 line of cable—a slightly heftiercable, in terms of weight and thickness,than the .155, which is sold as part of thecompany’s custom effects kit. (With solderlessconnections growing in popularity,it’s easier than ever for players to cut andassemble their own patch cables.) GeorgeL’s also sells bulk cable by the foot—another innovation that more companiesare adopting.
Hosa Technology’s Elite Series modelhovers around 21 pF, which theoreticallyplaces it in the sonic ballpark of George L’s.The same holds true for Mogami’s PlatinumSeries, but as Mogami cable is sometimesconsidered the Cadillac (or perhaps moreaptly, the Lexus LFA) of premium guitarcables, similarities start to diverge with thepF rating. Hosa’s Elite can claim equalreductions in handling noise and evensimilar connectors made by Neutrik, butMogami’s large-diameter cable is madewith Neutrik’s Silent Plug, which cutsthe signal out completely when changinginstruments. There’s a clear aura of luxuryto any Mogami product. However, attwice the price of some of its competitors,whether the high-end engineering andadd-ons translate to noticeable differencesin sound (more on this below) is in theear of the beholder.

4. Planet Waves AmericanStageInstrumentCable 10’ ($19 street).5. Whirlwind Leader StandardL18R ($28 street).6. Hosa Elite Guitar Cable($44–$85 list).
Further up the capacitance ladder,the affordable Planet Waves AmericanStage cable targets a very specific 28 pFrange. As a matter of philosophy, JimD’Addario doesn’t see the need to gooverboard with vastly different sonicflavors. “If you look back at the historyof some of our competitors, they mighthave had a ‘lead guitar’ model and a ‘jazz’model and whatever else, and essentiallyall they did was doctor the EQ by buildingdifferent levels of capacitance intothe cable and attenuating the highs. Doyou really need to buy two $60 cableswith different sounds when you can justchange the tone on your amp? That’ssomething we wanted to address right fromthe beginning.”
$\'Guitar\'$
Over at Lava Cable, Stoddard agrees inprinciple with this approach, at least as faras capacitance is concerned. To that end,Lava Ultramafic premium cable is rated at25 pF and made with a silver-plated copperconductor at a slightly larger-than-normal18 gauge, which Stoddard discovered givesthe cable a “punchier” sound. But he’s alsokeenly aware that customer tastes can bewide-ranging and eclectic, and he tries toaccommodate them whenever feasible. The metal lathe gingery pdf free pdf.
“One guy may not like what another guythinks is the bomb,” he explains, “but youstill can recommend things. For example,coils are great for Fender amps, becauseFenders are bright, and a 20-foot coil isequivalent to about a 30-foot cable in termsof accumulated capacitance, which makesthe amp sound a little darker and moremusical. Greg Koch has been using ourcoils for quite some time, and [Nashvillewhiz kid] Daniel Donato loves them.”

7. RapcoHorizon G5S Professional 20\' ($29 street).8. Asterope 15\' ($149 street)
Along those lines, RapcoHorizon G5SProfessional cable is an affordable 18-gaugemodel rated at 45 pF, so it falls into thedarker end of the sonic spectrum. That said,the prevailing school of thought about higher-capacitance cables, as Bill Lawrence notesin his Hendrix example, is that they’re bettersuited for the rigors of live performance.This is especially true when considering theusual noisy ambience of a crowded venue,where the sonic nuances of low-capacitancepremium cables tends to get lost.
In fact, this is exactly what Whirlwind’sAl Keltz told PG in 2008, but not becausehe believed such low-cap cables necessarilymerited their premium price. “I agreethat cables can and do have some effecton frequency response,” he said, partly indefense of the company’s stalwart Leaderseries, which to this day is a staple of ruggeddependability on the road, “but unlessthe cable capacitance is extremely high, theeffect will be subtle. These differences alsobecome much less noticeable when you fireup the whole band and all sorts of soundsstart interacting with each other onstage dueto room resonances and comb filtering.”
This throws open the floor to all sortsof opinions about whether incrementalchanges in capacitance really can beheard—a discussion that gets even morepotentially delicious when a new companylike Asterope steps to the fore with what itmaintains is a disruptive technology. “Wewant to create emotional experiences forartists and listeners,” says president andCEO Dariush Rad, “and help them deliversignals that are providing obvious and clearadvances in harmonics and sonic characteristics—bandwidth, transient response,spectral balance—all these things that arevery real and at the critical heart of makingmusic. We know there are skeptics, but youcan hear it and literally feel it with this technology.That’s what I want to share withevery player I know.”
A respected record producer and engineerhimself, Rad waxes almost poetic inhis commitment to Asterope’s premiumPro Artist line, for example. Thus far, thecompany has kept its design specs very closeto the vest, but the glowing praise fromguitarists who endorse the cable—includingDavid Grissom, Lance Keltner, andKenny Vaughan (each a musician’s musicianamong Austin and Nashville cognoscenti)—suggests perhaps Asterope really is on tosomething different.
Materially Speaking
Once you get past capacitance, opinionsbegin to deviate wildly about other aspectsof a cable’s design that might affect a guitar’ssignal characteristics. Some insist thepure conductivity of the metals used tomake the 1/4\' connectors plays a role in thesound. Others get into a soldered vs. solderlessstandoff, where a cold weld or a gas-tightcrimp might be the only acceptablealternative to a good old-fashioned solder.And still others would rather hang from aledge by their fingernails than admit that astandard cable sounds the same no matterwhich end you plug into the guitar.
One thing we can be sure about:Whether a cable is made with oxygen-freecopper (OFC) or electrolytic-tough-pitch(ETP) “common” copper, it won’t helpyou sound like Eddie Van Halen. But acase can be made for high-quality materialshaving some influence on the sound, howeverminute, especially when consideringconductivity.
“Whenever you increase the conductivityof the cable and lower its resistance, ittypically sounds a little bit better,” Lava’sStoddard asserts. “It’s not a whole lot, butit’s there.” He points to his Ultramaficcable, which is made with custom-shoppedplugs from G&H (one of the mainsuppliers of parts, along with Neutrik,to American cable manufacturers). “Theplugs have a silver core,” he explains, “sowe literally replace about four inches ofbrass with silver, which is higher in conductivityand lower in resistance.”
Hosa Technology vouches for its premiumZaolla Silverline cables with asimilar assertion, albeit with more detail.“While it is true that silver is superior tocopper as a pure conductor of electricity,this is not to say that silver alone issuitable for every application. If it wasthat easy, we could simply replace copperwith silver and be done with it! Low-levelanalog audio signals benefit fromthe MF [midrange frequency] boost, or‘warmth,’ associated with copper. Thus,all Zaolla Silverline instrument cablesfeature a solid-silver center conductorand an enamel-coated, stranded-copperancillary conductor in a unique hybridconfiguration for the best of bothworlds.” To some players, that complexexplanation might sound a bit hard toprove, but then again that’s not exactlya new situation in guitardom. As witheverything else in “the relentless pursuitof tone,” the only way to know for certainwhether certain bits of minutia willmake a difference in your sound is totest-drive a product yourself.
Of course, let’s not forget that qualityparts and craftsmanship should alsoextend the life of the cable—and addresslong-standing design flaws wheneverpossible. Jim D’Addario points to onesmall innovation with the AmericanStage cable that was engineered as asolution to the wide variation in instrumentjacks that often results in looseconnections. “The tip of the plug is calleda GeoTip, because the geometry of it iscompletely different,” he says. Basically,thanks to a slightly flattened bulb and anelongated shield, the newly designed tipenables a more secure connection withthe positive flange of just about any jack,old or new. “It’s the kind of detail thatlooks like nothing, but we put hundredsof hours into designing and testing thatsucker so we can cover enough of all thevariations, and come up with a better connectionfor everybody. It’s very similar toputting a seat belt on [laughs]. When youhere that clunk, it just goes in and youknow it’s gonna stay there.”
In the End, Trust Your Ears
With so many choices at your disposal, it’seasy to get overwhelmed when looking for1/4\' instrument and patch cables. But themain thing to keep in mind is that a cable isan integral part of your signal path, and that—just with everything else in the chain fromyour instrument to your amp—you shouldfollow what you hear. No matter what yourphilosophy about cables—if you like them flatand uncolored, or with enough accumulatedcapacitance to coil a python—just keep yourears open, and you’ll find one that fits yoursound, your playing style, and your budget.“To strip it down to the basics, signalmatters,” Rad says. “You’re spending alifetime honing your craft, and you’respending thousands of dollars on your rig,so don’t underestimate how critical yoursignal path is. We should be cradling thatlike a baby, because that’s where all thedata is, y’know?”
$\'Usb$
And once you’ve got a handle on thedata, feel free to take that baby out for astroll. “Guitar players have freaky ears,”Stoddard quips. “We’re constantly tweakingsound, whether it’s a pedal or an amp or aguitar, and I think most of us have a soundin our head that we’re after. Everyone’s gotsomething that they like, and your cableis an integral part of that. There are tonefreaks out there who will take a brand newcable, no matter what kind it is, and they’llplug it in back and forth, in two differentdirections over and over again, until theyfind the direction they think sounds best,and then they’ll mark it!
“What I still believe to this day, though,is if you find the cable you really like andthat works in your rig, it opens up moretonal range in your amp and gives youmore depth to work with. That’s the keylesson I’ve learned. If you do your researchand play with a few cables and find thatone you like, you literally have more room.I’m not a shredder, but I’m a digger, and ifI’m digging in, I want to feel that note. Iwant to hear it freakin’ scream! A good cablecan make a difference. It can help that notesustain better, and that’s not snake oil.”
...'>Guitar Patch Cable To Usb(17.04.2020)
Fender Guitar Patch Cable 2 Pack. $54.98Save: $47.99 (87%)$6.99.
more.. Gear • Cables • Pickups & Accessories
If you’re like most guitarists and bassists,you probably started hoarding guitarcables pretty early on in your playing career.For decades now—probably since the dawnof electric guitar—many a basement jamhas ended in cable-spaghetti chaos. Back inthe day, you’d get home from the jam andlater realize that the 10-foot Switchcraftyou’d bought last month had somehowshape-shifted into an old Kordex AudiblePurity, or vice versa. Like guitar picks,cables tended to change hands pretty easilybecause none of us really gave any considerationto how they sounded—all that matteredwas that they worked. And the moreyou had, the better.
Back in the ’80s, we carried aroundknapsacks full of them—thick ones, thinones, molded ones, coiled ones, long ones,short ones, and even the cheap Radio Shackknockoffs that at times seemed like theymight have been more useful as shoelaces.Every once in a while, someone wouldsplurge for a high-end professional modeland prattle on for hours about how muchcooler and deeper it made everything sound.The poor sap would bring it to rehearsal,plug in his Strat, crank it up and shout,“Hear that?” We’d just look at each otherand shrug, knowing that eventually, thatvery same cable would make the knapsackrounds, too.
Slowly but surely though, over the lastcouple of decades, these attitudes havechanged. Some attribute it to the adventof digital recording: As software grew moreadept at delivering pristine, high-resolutionaudio, weak links in the signal chainbegan to stand out, creating a demand forinstrument cables that were better at suppressingtriboelectric noise (aka “handlingnoise”—clicks and pops, mostly) but thatalso didn’t EQ the sound of the guitar (aphenomenon that basically comes down toa cable’s capacitance, which we’ll get intoin a minute). Meanwhile, as competitionamong cable manufacturers picked up andnew companies joined the fray, design engineersstarted to dig more into research andanalysis, all in a concerted effort to “build abetter cable.”
As Jim D’Addario recalls, after D’Addario& Co. acquired the Planet Waves line in1998, the focus was on problem solving—specifically, signal loss and degradation,handling noise, and connection failures.“We started measuring everything, becausewe wanted to find out what was there,” hesays. “And we really didn’t play into EQ-ingthe tone of your guitar before it hits yourfirst pedal or your amplifier. If you’ve gotgreat-sounding strings with a good pickupand a good cable, the signal should be pureand not doctored-up by pieces of equipmentin the chain. When you get to your effectsand your amplifier, that’s where you tailoryour sound.”
These days, it no longer makes sense toconsider your guitar cables as mere accessories.Materials, manufacturing processes, anddesign specs have evolved to such a degreethat many seasoned axe-slingers swear theycan hear—or at the very least detect—noticeabledifferences in signal response, transientharmonics, and dynamic range. Elite playershave always endorsed specific brands becausethey heard something that appealed to them,but now more than ever, companies rely onconstant feedback from their endorsees—andof course, their regular customers—in aneffort to stand out in an increasingly competitivemarket.
For bassists and guitarists, it’s a greattime to shop and experiment. The bignames like Whirlwind, Planet Waves,George L’s, Hosa Technology (and its subsidiary,Zaolla Silverline), Mogami, andmore have rolled out new cable lines orintroduced significant upgrades in the pastyear, while young companies and recentmergers like Lava Cable, RapcoHorizon,and the Austin-based upstart Asteropecontinue to keep the big boys on their toes.We’d need a book-length study to get intoan exhaustive roundup of what’s out there,but there are some key characteristics tolook and listen for when choosing a solidand dependable cable in today’s market.

1. George L’s .225 Prepackaged10\' Cables ($38 street).2. Mogami Platinum 12\' Cable($110 street).3. Lava Cable Ultramafi c 12\'Cable ($92 street)
The Capacitance Wars andthe “Sweet Spot”
Capacitance, measured in picofarads (pF),began emerging as a buzzword in the late’90s, and rightly so. It’s probably the singlemost influential property that affects thesound of a cable. Bill Lawrence—whobegan designing pickups and guitarsfor the likes of Fender, Gibson, Peavey,and others in the 1950s, and who pioneeredsolderless cables—explains why.“The higher the capacitance of a cable,the less highs reach the amplifier. High-capacitancecables shift the resonancetowards the lower frequencies, whichdramatically alters tone. For example, JimiHendrix used a coiled cord with 3,000pF [of capacitance]. This was the secret ofJimi’s tone: Shifting the resonance frequencybelow 2,000 Hz on his Strats has a similareffect to a midrange boost. When herecorded and needed a typical Strat soundfor some tracks, Jimi switched to a short,low-capacitance cable.” (This also brings upa valuable corollary: The longer the cable,the greater the capacitance—which is whyshorter cables always sound brighter.)
Among most manufacturers today, theconsensus “sweet spot” for capacitance isbetween 20 and 30 pF per foot—a fractionof what Hendrix and his contemporarieshad to wrangle. The reasoning comesfrom years of measurement, customerfeedback, and plain old trial-and-error. “AsI’ve designed my own cables, I’ve foundthat it’s really a balancing act,” says LavaCable founder and CEO Mark Stoddard.“If you think of your guitar cable as apipe—the lower the capacitance, the biggerthe pipe—two things happen if you gotoo low: Your highs are out there longer,so the note won’t drop off in time and theguitar will sound shrill to most people.The other risk—and I learned this the hardway—is that the cable tends to be moremicrophonic. That’s literally because youcan hear more.”
Hitachi hard disk driver. George Lewis, who founded GeorgeL’s in the ’70s and is widely credited withbringing the first low-cap, high-end guitarcables to market, apparently favored thelower (and thus brighter-sounding) endof the sweet spot. The company’s mostprominent endorsee is Eric Johnson,whose crystalline clean tone seems naturallygeared for the upper-mid accent that’sa signature of, for example, the GeorgeL’s .225 line of cable—a slightly heftiercable, in terms of weight and thickness,than the .155, which is sold as part of thecompany’s custom effects kit. (With solderlessconnections growing in popularity,it’s easier than ever for players to cut andassemble their own patch cables.) GeorgeL’s also sells bulk cable by the foot—another innovation that more companiesare adopting.
Hosa Technology’s Elite Series modelhovers around 21 pF, which theoreticallyplaces it in the sonic ballpark of George L’s.The same holds true for Mogami’s PlatinumSeries, but as Mogami cable is sometimesconsidered the Cadillac (or perhaps moreaptly, the Lexus LFA) of premium guitarcables, similarities start to diverge with thepF rating. Hosa’s Elite can claim equalreductions in handling noise and evensimilar connectors made by Neutrik, butMogami’s large-diameter cable is madewith Neutrik’s Silent Plug, which cutsthe signal out completely when changinginstruments. There’s a clear aura of luxuryto any Mogami product. However, attwice the price of some of its competitors,whether the high-end engineering andadd-ons translate to noticeable differencesin sound (more on this below) is in theear of the beholder.

4. Planet Waves AmericanStageInstrumentCable 10’ ($19 street).5. Whirlwind Leader StandardL18R ($28 street).6. Hosa Elite Guitar Cable($44–$85 list).
Further up the capacitance ladder,the affordable Planet Waves AmericanStage cable targets a very specific 28 pFrange. As a matter of philosophy, JimD’Addario doesn’t see the need to gooverboard with vastly different sonicflavors. “If you look back at the historyof some of our competitors, they mighthave had a ‘lead guitar’ model and a ‘jazz’model and whatever else, and essentiallyall they did was doctor the EQ by buildingdifferent levels of capacitance intothe cable and attenuating the highs. Doyou really need to buy two $60 cableswith different sounds when you can justchange the tone on your amp? That’ssomething we wanted to address right fromthe beginning.”
$\'Guitar\'$
Over at Lava Cable, Stoddard agrees inprinciple with this approach, at least as faras capacitance is concerned. To that end,Lava Ultramafic premium cable is rated at25 pF and made with a silver-plated copperconductor at a slightly larger-than-normal18 gauge, which Stoddard discovered givesthe cable a “punchier” sound. But he’s alsokeenly aware that customer tastes can bewide-ranging and eclectic, and he tries toaccommodate them whenever feasible. The metal lathe gingery pdf free pdf.
“One guy may not like what another guythinks is the bomb,” he explains, “but youstill can recommend things. For example,coils are great for Fender amps, becauseFenders are bright, and a 20-foot coil isequivalent to about a 30-foot cable in termsof accumulated capacitance, which makesthe amp sound a little darker and moremusical. Greg Koch has been using ourcoils for quite some time, and [Nashvillewhiz kid] Daniel Donato loves them.”

7. RapcoHorizon G5S Professional 20\' ($29 street).8. Asterope 15\' ($149 street)
Along those lines, RapcoHorizon G5SProfessional cable is an affordable 18-gaugemodel rated at 45 pF, so it falls into thedarker end of the sonic spectrum. That said,the prevailing school of thought about higher-capacitance cables, as Bill Lawrence notesin his Hendrix example, is that they’re bettersuited for the rigors of live performance.This is especially true when considering theusual noisy ambience of a crowded venue,where the sonic nuances of low-capacitancepremium cables tends to get lost.
In fact, this is exactly what Whirlwind’sAl Keltz told PG in 2008, but not becausehe believed such low-cap cables necessarilymerited their premium price. “I agreethat cables can and do have some effecton frequency response,” he said, partly indefense of the company’s stalwart Leaderseries, which to this day is a staple of ruggeddependability on the road, “but unlessthe cable capacitance is extremely high, theeffect will be subtle. These differences alsobecome much less noticeable when you fireup the whole band and all sorts of soundsstart interacting with each other onstage dueto room resonances and comb filtering.”
This throws open the floor to all sortsof opinions about whether incrementalchanges in capacitance really can beheard—a discussion that gets even morepotentially delicious when a new companylike Asterope steps to the fore with what itmaintains is a disruptive technology. “Wewant to create emotional experiences forartists and listeners,” says president andCEO Dariush Rad, “and help them deliversignals that are providing obvious and clearadvances in harmonics and sonic characteristics—bandwidth, transient response,spectral balance—all these things that arevery real and at the critical heart of makingmusic. We know there are skeptics, but youcan hear it and literally feel it with this technology.That’s what I want to share withevery player I know.”
A respected record producer and engineerhimself, Rad waxes almost poetic inhis commitment to Asterope’s premiumPro Artist line, for example. Thus far, thecompany has kept its design specs very closeto the vest, but the glowing praise fromguitarists who endorse the cable—includingDavid Grissom, Lance Keltner, andKenny Vaughan (each a musician’s musicianamong Austin and Nashville cognoscenti)—suggests perhaps Asterope really is on tosomething different.
Materially Speaking
Once you get past capacitance, opinionsbegin to deviate wildly about other aspectsof a cable’s design that might affect a guitar’ssignal characteristics. Some insist thepure conductivity of the metals used tomake the 1/4\' connectors plays a role in thesound. Others get into a soldered vs. solderlessstandoff, where a cold weld or a gas-tightcrimp might be the only acceptablealternative to a good old-fashioned solder.And still others would rather hang from aledge by their fingernails than admit that astandard cable sounds the same no matterwhich end you plug into the guitar.
One thing we can be sure about:Whether a cable is made with oxygen-freecopper (OFC) or electrolytic-tough-pitch(ETP) “common” copper, it won’t helpyou sound like Eddie Van Halen. But acase can be made for high-quality materialshaving some influence on the sound, howeverminute, especially when consideringconductivity.
“Whenever you increase the conductivityof the cable and lower its resistance, ittypically sounds a little bit better,” Lava’sStoddard asserts. “It’s not a whole lot, butit’s there.” He points to his Ultramaficcable, which is made with custom-shoppedplugs from G&H (one of the mainsuppliers of parts, along with Neutrik,to American cable manufacturers). “Theplugs have a silver core,” he explains, “sowe literally replace about four inches ofbrass with silver, which is higher in conductivityand lower in resistance.”
Hosa Technology vouches for its premiumZaolla Silverline cables with asimilar assertion, albeit with more detail.“While it is true that silver is superior tocopper as a pure conductor of electricity,this is not to say that silver alone issuitable for every application. If it wasthat easy, we could simply replace copperwith silver and be done with it! Low-levelanalog audio signals benefit fromthe MF [midrange frequency] boost, or‘warmth,’ associated with copper. Thus,all Zaolla Silverline instrument cablesfeature a solid-silver center conductorand an enamel-coated, stranded-copperancillary conductor in a unique hybridconfiguration for the best of bothworlds.” To some players, that complexexplanation might sound a bit hard toprove, but then again that’s not exactlya new situation in guitardom. As witheverything else in “the relentless pursuitof tone,” the only way to know for certainwhether certain bits of minutia willmake a difference in your sound is totest-drive a product yourself.
Of course, let’s not forget that qualityparts and craftsmanship should alsoextend the life of the cable—and addresslong-standing design flaws wheneverpossible. Jim D’Addario points to onesmall innovation with the AmericanStage cable that was engineered as asolution to the wide variation in instrumentjacks that often results in looseconnections. “The tip of the plug is calleda GeoTip, because the geometry of it iscompletely different,” he says. Basically,thanks to a slightly flattened bulb and anelongated shield, the newly designed tipenables a more secure connection withthe positive flange of just about any jack,old or new. “It’s the kind of detail thatlooks like nothing, but we put hundredsof hours into designing and testing thatsucker so we can cover enough of all thevariations, and come up with a better connectionfor everybody. It’s very similar toputting a seat belt on [laughs]. When youhere that clunk, it just goes in and youknow it’s gonna stay there.”
In the End, Trust Your Ears
With so many choices at your disposal, it’seasy to get overwhelmed when looking for1/4\' instrument and patch cables. But themain thing to keep in mind is that a cable isan integral part of your signal path, and that—just with everything else in the chain fromyour instrument to your amp—you shouldfollow what you hear. No matter what yourphilosophy about cables—if you like them flatand uncolored, or with enough accumulatedcapacitance to coil a python—just keep yourears open, and you’ll find one that fits yoursound, your playing style, and your budget.“To strip it down to the basics, signalmatters,” Rad says. “You’re spending alifetime honing your craft, and you’respending thousands of dollars on your rig,so don’t underestimate how critical yoursignal path is. We should be cradling thatlike a baby, because that’s where all thedata is, y’know?”
$\'Usb$
And once you’ve got a handle on thedata, feel free to take that baby out for astroll. “Guitar players have freaky ears,”Stoddard quips. “We’re constantly tweakingsound, whether it’s a pedal or an amp or aguitar, and I think most of us have a soundin our head that we’re after. Everyone’s gotsomething that they like, and your cableis an integral part of that. There are tonefreaks out there who will take a brand newcable, no matter what kind it is, and they’llplug it in back and forth, in two differentdirections over and over again, until theyfind the direction they think sounds best,and then they’ll mark it!
“What I still believe to this day, though,is if you find the cable you really like andthat works in your rig, it opens up moretonal range in your amp and gives youmore depth to work with. That’s the keylesson I’ve learned. If you do your researchand play with a few cables and find thatone you like, you literally have more room.I’m not a shredder, but I’m a digger, and ifI’m digging in, I want to feel that note. Iwant to hear it freakin’ scream! A good cablecan make a difference. It can help that notesustain better, and that’s not snake oil.”
...'>Guitar Patch Cable To Usb(17.04.2020)

Guitar Patch Cable To Usb

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