Cables Matter

I've always considered myself very into my own guitar tone, but I've recently been awakened to a whole new world. More on the Tone Revelation later, because right now I'm thinking about how I cannot believe what I have been missing cable-wise for virtually my entire guitar-playing career.

I've always played very decent gear, some basic yet solid and some top shelf, but I never paid much attention to cables. Seems the music store Whirlwind guitar cables did the trick just fine until I recently started getting very serious about my tone. After much research and agonizing indecision, I purchased a 12' Sommer GrindyCop Beast (what a name!) from www.lavacable.com to connect my guitar with my pedal board and half a dozen 6" patches to outfit my pedal board. A Monster Rock remains in place from the pedal board to amp. My thinking here was that if I could improve everything from guitar to the only non-true bypass pedal on my board that contains a very good buffer (a Visual Sound H20 V2), that I would improve my tone without having to make drastic changes further downstream. Turns out I was right. The moment I took my amp out of standby and touched the guitar strings, I could tell something was dramatically different. Not only was there even more of my guitar signal coming through the amp, but even the response to my picking was different. The best way I could explain it is that it felt like there was nothing between my guitar and the amp; faster attack might be one way of describing it. Better lows, more present mids, beautiful highs and very responsive to my playing.

The best news is that this cable, while not cheap, is a fraction of the cost of some of the highest end cables available but is widely touted by many of the folks over at The Gear Page forum (www.thegearpage.net) as performing as good if not better.

So the moral of this story is: if you are serious about your tone, don't overlook your cables!