What's more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

[slo100]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

I have an old school curly cue cable that was made by ProCo, an otherwise decent brand compareable to Whirlwind, and that thing is atrocious sounding. It literally sounds like you've thrown a blanket over the cabinet when it is in use. It is the coolest looking thing in the world and is functional (as in gets the guitar's sound to the amp) but completely unuseable.

I don't have any operationally sound tubes that make that dramatic of a difference to my tone.

Put it this way, using something like my curly cable that kills the tone to that degree would prevent me from hearing any difference a change in tubes would provide (better or worse).

I'd upgrade your cables and then see how you like your tubes.

[Lesser Known God]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

Let's not forget that with Monster Cables, etc. you get a lifetime gaurantee. I'm personally very rough on the chord that goes from the guitar. I went through about 8 cables in a year before getting Monster. Even at only $10 a pop, that's $80. With the Monster 500's which I use now, I've damaged 1 and took it to my local GC and got it replaced. No questions asked.

[toddstaples]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

MONSTER STUDIO PRO SPEAKER CABLE.
The best money Ive ever spent

[JACKSONFREAK]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

The Korean Ibanez's are made by Cortech aka Cort.
The Schecters I believe are made by Samick. Still in Korea but they are too close in comaprison to the LTD crap by ESP which are made by Samick. However the Schecters sound better look better and just play better than any LTD could hope to.
Gil

[jgcable]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

I am gonna pick up a set of monster cables and do a comparison. There must be something that I am missing because almost everybody agrees that the super expensive cables sound better.

[mulder1966]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

I think the key is not the Monster cable, but the guage of wire used. Of course you are going to get better response from 12 or 10 guage wire than if you used 18 guage wire. It can be compared to a garden hose, if it's too small, your not going to get the amount of water you want. It's like the guys that try to sell you the silver straight wire (99.99% oxygen free, $100 per ft) and tell you that it sounds better than Monster cable.... I have tried the listening test, and it's not true. [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Matt Crooks]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

Unless I am mistaken - Monster is the only company that uses two conductors to get a phase accurate signal trhough the cord. Meaning, they use a thicker conductor for the lows and a thinner conductor for the highs. This allows the low frequencies and the high frequencies to travel through the cord at the exact same time, at the same speed, maintaing phase accuracy.

I have used Cannare and Mogamai, which are both high end cables, and they sound the same to me. They sound better than the cheap Whirlwind, Hosa and ProCo cables, but the Monster 1000 still sounds better than the Cannare and Mogamai. The question is: is the 10x the difference in prices worth the small gain in signal quality. For me, it is. When you've spent thousands on a gutiar, and thousands on an amp, a $100 cord is a drop in the bucket.

Also, the Monster 100 is not worth the money, they really aren't that good, and you can get the same quality for leess money. The 500s, to my ear, are worth it, and the 1000 are great. Just don't loose your $150 cable at the local bar [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Monster 1000 Cable

[eaeolian]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

I think there are some "boutique" cable companies using a similar sort of system that Monster does for phase alignment - I'm almost 100% sure I read about someone else doing it - but they're probably even MORE expensive.

The Monster 100 series - I own two, so I know - sound about the same as Whirlwinds, and seem more fragile. The 500s sound good - better than WW - but the difference is very slight, considerably less than, say, changing tubes in your amp. However, it does make a difference - the Monster 500 series seems to retain just a touch of brightness, and be just a bit "tighter" in the bottom end.

The 1000 series definately sounds better, in my experience, but they're damn expensive for a .05% gain in tonal quality that exposed to your bass player stomping on it. I think they're overkill for anything but studio work.

YMMV, however. Also, you won't notice it very much in less-than-controlled situations, IME.

Oh, and to answer the original question, tubes make a much larger difference in sound - but if your 99 of the way there, but your tone is missing some "life", try a Monster 1000 - then hide it from your bassist, where they seem to make a HUGE difference. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Mike

[ July 01, 2003, 09:51 AM: Message edited by: Michael ]

[RacerX]

Re: What\'s more important to tone, good cables, or tubes?

Originally posted by jgcable:
I have been selling exact ='s to monster cable at 1/10 of the price forever. I do admire their marketing and their profit margin though.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I went to

www.jgcable.com


....nothing....

[img]graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]