Guitar to amp wiring

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 5:15 am

No problem - discussion is always full of differing opinions AND facts, and usually nearly everyone gets SOMETHING out of it - and you're right, tweaking and experimenting is the way new ground is broken in any field -

Coming from an engineering background, I have a strong tendency to want to know WHY I hear a difference in something, and when I see some claim like "our wire will give you 500 more watts per channel", or something maybe a little less ridiculous, I tend to examine the technical side to see if there is ANY concept that's even slightly believable - in other words, I am sometimes more anal than I need to be

Also, please don't think I'm yelling when I use CAPS in spots - it's just that I'm NOT anal enough in this area to figure out how to slightly accent certain words so my meaning isn't lost - I think that problem is a significant part of misunderstandings in most net communications; someone intends to place emphasis on ONE word, while someone else may see a DIFFERENT word as being more important, and that can change the intended meaning to something very different. If I came across as browbeating, it wasn't intended; it's just hard to make sure people "hear" what you "said" sometimes...

If you want to try an experiment in tone, you could build a little box with a couple of 1/4" phone connectors, a 4.7k ohm resistor, and a 200k ohm (or greater) pot - just wire the two connectors tip-to-tip and sleeve-to-sleeve, then put the resistor in series with the wiper and one leg of the pot, and connect them between the two terminals of one of the connectors - plug your guitar (try different types of pickups too) into the box, plug the box into your amp, and play while someone turns the pot from one end of its range to the other, and listen to the tone coming out of the amp - this won't hurt anything - guitar pickups don't have any power that could get "shorted out", active pickups can handle a load of 4.7k ohms (the lowest this circuit will allow) and inputs to amps can be completely shorted without hurting anything. The higher your guitar's pickup impedance, the more difference you'll hear as you turn the pot -

Gotta run, let me know if you want to build the box and didn't follow my description... Steve

guitarguy · Post by **guitarguy** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 7:55 am

I get what you are saying. I believe the Varitone control on a Gibson BB king Lucille model guitar works the same way. Not to mention I have a bag full of various compacitor's to connect my volume pot to my tone pots, and trial and error till I find the one I like best for the Guitar.

My understanding of direct boxes wasn't complete, but it's something I've been looking at since your post. As your first post said " This is never an easy subject". I guess this topic would come down to knowing your equipment and what variation of equipment best achieves the output you are looking for. I would have to believe that the various assortment of cables to be the best option. Which leads to another question.

Monster Cables. The theory of monster cables is that the different wires in the cable are different lengths. In other words High Frequencies travel slightly faster than Low Frequencies. So the cables are wraped in different lengths so all the frequencis hit the recieving end at the same time. My question would be at shorter distances do you think this theory would make a difference. I mean I don't see at short distances how the human ear could detect the difference based on that theory. They are thick guage cables so I can see the value there, but for the extra $20 does this theory hold water, at shoter distances (say under 50 feet).

And not to worry I never think anyone is yelling on a post board.

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 8:47 am

Although the human ear is incredibly remarkable, I tend to think that a majority of cable hype is just that - although there are some pretty respected people out there that preach the value of Litz wire for speakers - this is where several different thicknesses, not lengths, of wire exist in one stranded conductor, each one separately insulated and twisted - roughly, the theory is that even audio travels along a wire subject to the "skin effect", where only the surface of the wire is actually seeing conductance - by varying the diameter of a bundle of strands, supposedly you get more even frequency response.

In spite of my natural curiosity, I've yet to find time to test this - (or money for that matter - I hear the Litz wire isn't real cheap)

As to the Monster stuff - been meaning to take my capacitance meter to a GC next time I go, and ask to test each level of monster guitar cable (100, 500, 1000) for capacitance and possibly resistance, although even a 20 footer would be hard to measure without a lab-grade setup. Haven't got there yet.

Read one test session of some Westlake mains, they offered a set of speaker cables that cost around $5000 IIRC - most of the participants claimed they heard a big diff between those and standard heavy guage speaker cable - not having been there, I'm still dubious, although several years ago I got a shock when I found out capacitance really DOES make a diff, especially in Prosumer stuff - After which I dug into the math to see WHY -

I think bottom line is "your ears, your choice" ... Steve

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 12:53 am

Hi again - I had not time to experiment with and without direct box, or using the cable tricks, but I came across the Reamp device. I wonder if any of you experienced it.

http://www.reamp.com/

Gwen

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 8:15 pm

http://mercenary.com/smarressmard.html
http://mercenary.com/lilasitrdesm.html

This may be what you are looking for

Regards Yuri