Wow - Elixir new cables

[Mats Nermark]

Hi,

 

At the Frankfurt show I was given a demo of the new Elixir cables. I really didn't think I would hear any difference in that environment but I did. Then I was given the opportunity to try them with my own equipment and wow, that sure made a difference.

 

I now have Elixir from guitar to pedalboard and from pedalboard to amp or Boss GS-10 amp sim. I thought I had an OK sound but I always felt some elements were missing. A touch of dynamics and some warmth. I have also felt that my treble was a bit hard and harsh. No more. My Tyler SE HD sounded good before, now it sounds like 10 times the money I paid for it. Very Happy!

 

I realized that with my Edwards SA-118 that while it always sounded so much better than my Gibson ES-335 it wasn't quite "there". Now it is.

 

Yes, these cables are sort of expensive but then then they aren't cheap in any way. I was actually considering a custom built 335 clone but now I'm so close in sound to where I want to be.

 

My other superstrat also sounds better. Chimier with the SD staggered vintage singles and chewier with the JB in the bridge.

 

Tomorrow I will try the Tele and the solid bucker guitars. I'm expecting to be smiling.

 

This is without doubt the best thing so far this year in my musical life.

 

Cheers,

 

Mats N

 

PS. No, I'm not affiliated with Elixir in any way. I just like their stuff.

[philbo]

I'm always leary of miracle claims made for cabling. Even when the writer is quite sincere, the placebo effect can dominate. Especially when the cables cost a lot of money.

 

If you want to post the results of a series of technical measurements, or even the results of a double-blind listening test, I'd be interested in seeing it. Otherwise, I have to consider it a combination of hot air and enthusiam.

[blue2blue]

True double blind testing usually straightens out some of the more extravagant claims that marketers make for their cables. There've been a number of rigorous double blind tests published that put the lie to many outrageous magic cable claims.

 

Now -- don't get me wrong. I think it makes sense to use good, dependable cable. And guitar cables carry a lot of weight -- in the sense that the signal they carry is very low in power/amplitude and the chances of degradation are high over long runs.

 

FWIW, I have a new client with a small custom shop (he does theatre sound in high ticket venues for a real living) and he's been experimenting with a line of good cables. He uses the same cable and connectors and coatings as some companies that charge about three times what he charges. And his stuff isn't cheap. He's supplied me with a handful of them. (I really like the Neutrik silent connectors, very handy if one has to switch guitars on stage and so on -- and, amazingly, they work.) They have that weird flex mesh cover, though, and I'm still not sure how I feel about that. But it's nice to know I have a cable that's worth about 25% what my J-Strat cost.

 

Just for fun, here's part of what he wrote about his cables:

A professional musician has certain expectations when purchasing a premium instrument cable. You want the signal of your instrument to be conveyed with minimum alteration to the next device in line, whether it

[John Sayers]

They have a video demonstration (or not ) on their site - in the corner it says -relative to a standard 3ft cable.

[Anderton]

Guitars are the one signal source where cables can make a difference. If the pickups are feeding a high impedance input, then cable capacitance can be a significant factor. However--there is little agreement on whether more capacitance is good (creamier tone) or bad (less capacitance=crispier tone).

 

The longer the cable, the higher the impedance being fed, and the higher the output impedance, the more of a difference cable capacitance makes. In my experience, though, that's the ONLY cable parameter that matters. Inductance and resistance simply aren't part of the picture, although they are for situations with heavy current drains (e.g., speakers).

 

The reason why there is so much controversy about cables is some guy can plug a synth through a cable into a mixer and hear zero difference compared to another cable - because there is none. But when the impedances get really high, it's a different ball game.

[Mats Nermark]

 

I'm always leary of miracle claims made for cabling. Even when the writer is quite sincere, the placebo effect can dominate. Especially when the cables cost a lot of money.

 

 

Hi,

 

I totally understand what you're saying and I am the same.

 

But I did get to test them without pressure of buying. My ears found them pleasing which is the only criteria for me.

 

Cable history:

First I used whatever I had.

Then as I got more aware I used a George L from guitar to pedals and a ProCo from board to amp.

Then Evidence Audio Melody to buffer on pedalbpard and Mogami from board to amp.

Now Elixir and it just works.

 

Not saying this is right for everybody as sound is a personal thing but it works for me.

 

Cheers,

 

Mats N

[blue2blue]

Guitars are the one signal source where cables can make a difference. If the pickups are feeding a high impedance input, then cable capacitance can be a significant factor. However--there is little agreement on whether more capacitance is good (creamier tone) or bad (less capacitance=crispier tone). The longer the cable, the higher the impedance being fed, and the higher the output impedance, the more of a difference cable capacitance makes. In my experience, though, that's the ONLY cable parameter that matters. Inductance and resistance simply aren't part of the picture, although they are for situations with heavy current drains (e.g., speakers). The reason why there is so much controversy about cables is some guy can plug a synth through a cable into a mixer and hear zero difference compared to another cable - because there is none. But when the impedances get really high, it's a different ball game.

 

Hum rejection would also be a measurable quality you'd want, too, right? I'm assuming when you say inductance that you mean the wire's 'self-inductance' (however you would say that, I would have been an English major had I matric'd; but I understand, indcutance is inductance, right?). But isn't measure of its inductance related to its ability to reject hum from external sources? (I know how ignorant I sound, here).

 

Also -- I may be really exposing my roots as a would-be English major here -- how can resistance* of the cable not be some kind of factor when we know its length is... I'm thinking you mean with average cable at average lengths, yeah? As in comparing the resistance of one 15 foot cable and another, it will be so close for these purposes as to not matter, right?

 

*Also, isn't impedance in AC a sum of resistance and reactance, where reactance is related to the inductance (proportional to increase in frequency) and the capacitance (inversely proportional to frequency increase) of the circuit? But, I'm assuming that this falls under the paragraph immediately above and that while these are factors they're probably not significant factors in this kind of application.

 

 

Do those questions even make any sense -- I'll admit when I was a kid and should have gone to the mat conceptually with Ohm's law and particularly issues of resistance/impedance, what I did, instead, was just memorize the practical import of a lot of the conclusions one should better derive from a proper understanding.

 

But I just (I mean just as in over coffee this a.m.) did a refresher course (using my friend the Internet and specifically answers.com, which aggregates pertinent reference sources on topic searches)... and I think I've filled in some fundamental gaps in my understanding... but...

 

I still feel a little like Walters...

 

 

 

At least now I understand why we use capacitors for HP filters and inductors (coils) for low pass... For decades I always remembered it visually -- a cap in the tweeter circuit and a coil (we used to also call them loops) in the woofer side. Sadly, when I was a kid, I learned to skip over tricky things like theory to memorize facts and imports, instead. And that's been a crutch I should have thrown away a long time ago. Without an understanding of fundamentals, remembering a bunch of facts or general abstractions is inefficient and produces fragmented, incoherent knowledge... which puts me... here.

[philbo]

 

Hi, I totally understand what you're saying and I am the same. But I did get to test them without pressure of buying. My ears found them pleasing which is the only criteria for me. Cable history: First I used whatever I had. Then as I got more aware I used a George L from guitar to pedals and a ProCo from board to amp. Then Evidence Audio Melody to buffer on pedalbpard and Mogami from board to amp. Now Elixir and it just works. Not saying this is right for everybody as sound is a personal thing but it works for me. Cheers, Mats N

 

 

I understand. I was being cautious - - snake oil is a common product where cabling is concerned....

[philbo]

Hum rejection would also be a measurable quality you'd want, too, right? I'm assuming when you say inductance that you mean the wire's 'self-inductance' (however you would say that, I would have been an English major had I matric'd; but I understand, indcutance is inductance, right?). But isn't measure of its inductance related to its ability to reject hum from external sources? (I know how ignorant I sound, here). Also -- I may be really exposing my roots as a would-be English major here -- how can resistance* of the cable not be some kind of factor when we know its length is... I'm thinking you mean with average cable at average lengths, yeah? As in comparing the resistance of one 15 foot cable and another, it will be so close for these purposes as to not matter, right? *Also, isn't impedance in AC a sum of resistance and reactance, where reactance is related to the inductance (proportional to increase in frequency) and the capacitance (inversely proportional to frequency increase) of the circuit? But, I'm assuming that this falls under the paragraph immediately above and that while these are factors they're probably not significant factors in this kind of application. Similarly, the cable inductance is not significant because the amount of cable inductance is an extremely small fraction of the inductance of the guitar pickups (they are coils, after all). Do those questions even make any sense -- I'll admit when I was a kid and should have gone to the mat conceptually with Ohm's law and particularly issues of resistance/impedance, what I did, instead, was just memorize the practical import of a lot of the conclusions one should better derive from a proper understanding. But I just (I mean just as in over coffee this a.m.) did a refresher course (using my friend the Internet and specifically answers.com, which aggregates pertinent reference sources on topic searches)... and I think I've filled in some fundamental gaps in my understanding... but... I still feel a little like Walters... At least now I understand why we use capacitors for HP filters and inductors (coils) for low pass... For decades I always remembered it visually -- a cap in the tweeter circuit and a coil (we used to also call them loops) in the woofer side. Sadly, when I was a kid, I learned to skip over tricky things like theory to memorize facts and imports, instead. And that's been a crutch I should have thrown away a long time ago. Without an understanding of fundamentals, remembering a bunch of facts or general abstractions is inefficient and produces fragmented, incoherent knowledge... which puts me... here.

 

The resistance is only a factor if it is above a certain percentage of the total impedance. If the cable has 1 Ohm of resistance, and the guitar pickups have 5000 Ohms of resistance, then the cable resistance is not significant. It's sort of like having a clerk ask you for $12.451232. For all practical purposes, he should be satisfied with $12.45.

[blue2blue]

Cool. I suspected it was something like that. But... you know us literal minded English major types. (And would like to think that -- in light of how much sense that seems to make -- I might have eventually thought of it.)

 

 

[peeder]

 

Guitars are the one signal source where cables can make a difference. If the pickups are feeding a high impedance input, then cable capacitance can be a significant factor. However--there is little agreement on whether more capacitance is good (creamier tone) or bad (less capacitance=crispier tone). The longer the cable, the higher the impedance being fed, and the higher the output impedance, the more of a difference cable capacitance makes. In my experience, though, that's the ONLY cable parameter that matters. Inductance and resistance simply aren't part of the picture, although they are for situations with heavy current drains (e.g., speakers). The reason why there is so much controversy about cables is some guy can plug a synth through a cable into a mixer and hear zero difference compared to another cable - because there is none. But when the impedances get really high, it's a different ball game.

 

 

Has anyone ever made such a distinction visible?

 

I understand there's a way to get a reproducible tone through a guitar pickup via a specially-made driver coil...Seymour Duncan uses these to develop his pickups. That would allow you to run sinewave sweeps and test tones etc. through various pickups to see what their frequency response, distortion, transfer function etc. looks like on a chart, using the effects send from a variety of amplifiers, DI boxes, etc.

 

That way we could test all the various makes of cable (no need to test the simply rebranded Belden wire of course) and we'd have visual and reproducible evidence of exactly what the differences are. Because there are far too many variables the way things are...you are not only relying on hearing in a space (with all the comb filtering and positional differences that trip up audiofools), you're also playing different things on your guitar...all we have now is the very opposite of double-blind, scientific testing.

 

I am happy to run these tests, and publish the results in reproducible detail, if someone will provide me one of those driver coils.

[blue2blue]

My primary criteria for guitar cable is -- Does it come in Hello Kitty Hot Pink?

[philbo]

 

Has anyone ever made such a distinction visible ? I understand there's a way to get a reproducible tone through a guitar pickup via a specially-made driver coil...Seymour Duncan uses these to develop his pickups. That would allow you to run sinewave sweeps and test tones etc. through various pickups to see what their frequency response, distortion, transfer function etc. looks like on a chart, using the effects send from a variety of amplifiers, DI boxes, etc. That way we could test all the various makes of cable (no need to test the simply rebranded Belden wire of course) and we'd have visual and reproducible evidence of exactly what the differences are. Because there are far too many variables the way things are...you are not only relying on hearing in a space (with all the comb filtering and positional differences that trip up audiofools), you're also playing different things on your guitar...all we have now is the very opposite of double-blind, scientific testing. I am happy to run these tests, and publish the results in reproducible detail, if someone will provide me one of those driver coils.

 

 

 

By doing that, you'd also be adding in the frequency, phase, and filtering characteristics of the guitar - the pickup, the wiring & tone control, etc. Which is fine if that's what your looking for. You could probably do better using an E-Bow to excite the string, since the harmonic content of the signal reaching the pickup also depends on where the pickup is (bridge, middle or neck) and the resonances of the body.

 

If you are just looking to measure the characteristics of the cord, you could rig up a swept tone generator, feed it through a 5K Ohm impedance, and measure it both with and without the cord, then subtract the two in a DAW to see what the difference is. FWIW, I'd suspect the difference signal will be quite small, unless of course the cord is picking up hum or whatever.

[peeder]

 

By doing that, you'd also be adding in the frequency, phase, and filtering characteristics of the guitar - the pickup, the wiring & tone control, etc. Which is fine if that's what your looking for. You could probably do better using an E-Bow to excite the string, since the harmonic content of the signal reaching the pickup also depends on where the pickup is (bridge, middle or neck) and the resonances of the body. If you are just looking to measure the characteristics of the cord, you could rig up a swept tone generator, feed it through a 5K Ohm impedance, and measure it both with and without the cord, then subtract the two in a DAW to see what the difference is. FWIW, I'd suspect the difference signal will be quite small, unless of course the cord is picking up hum or whatever.

 

 

The idea is to see if any two guitar cables actually sound different. So I would test each cable with a wide variety of real-world pickups and amps...as long as everything else is kept constant any differences from cable to cable will be made plain.

 

I'm going to go on record as predicting that under 5 meters in length there will be no sonic difference audible (20Hz-20KHz) at the amplifier for virtually any common guitar pickup and amplifier combination. But that's only a prediction; we have to do the experiment. I have the protocol in place, I just need one of those driver coils and we can put the matter to bed.

[bbach]

I'm a serious cable skeptic. I recogize the need for quality, but just don't buy into too many cable claims, not just with my guitars but also my surround sound stuff. I've not been able to see or hear the difference when trying Monster cable at 4 times the price of the cables I order without any special packaging or advertising.

 

Hmmm.

 

I'm a tough sale there I guess.

[mikeSF]

 

... (I really like the Neutrik silent connectors, very handy if one has to switch guitars on stage and so on -- and, amazingly, they work.) ...

 

 

Just a comment about the Neutrik Silent plugs mentioned in this thread -

 

I bought half a dozen of these back in December to solder up with some new cable and also replace one end of my favorite go to cable. Within the first week of having them, two of the plugs had already failed, that is, the spring loaded sheath surrounding the base of the plug shaft got stuck inside and would not release, in other words, the reed switch inside would no longer function and the cable could not short when unplugged. I sent one of the plugs back to the dealer and they replaced it, but since then, it and another of the originals has begun to stick when unplugging. in time, it springs back out but remember, it cannot do what it is supposed to do when it sticks.

 

 

here is a clip of the problem occurring:

[YOUTUBE]jSZEa1GSf_w[/YOUTUBE]

 

so buyer beware - this is NOT as great an invention as it appears. I am unhappy with them and they were $11 apiece plus shipping, IIRC.

 

Boo, Neutrik, this product needs further refinement!!

 

fwiw

[otaypanky]

I was shocked at the difference using George L cables as compared to the Monster Rock cables I had been using. With my guitar volume control all the way up, both cables sound good. But when the guitar volume control is rolled down, the tone turns to mud with the Monster cable, but still maintains pretty good tone with the George L's. I also tried Monster Jazz cables and had the same poor results. I had been planning on changing the pots in several of my guitars to try and correct the loss of tone, until I discovered quite by accident that the cable was the culprit. It's not like I had just purchased the 'end all' cable and I was expecting miraculous results, so I wasn't pre-biased. It was just a co-incidence that I used a different cable, but the result was so significant that I heard it immediately ~

[Anderton]

 

I was shocked at the difference using George L cables as compared to the Monster Rock cables I had been using.

 

 

Sounds like you're describing a difference in cable capacitance.