All you ever wanted to know about guitar cables (but were afraid to ask)

Recently, guitar entered the mysterious and magical world of audiophiles. The kind of world where you can buy carbon turntables for 30 000 pounds (yes), anti seismic isolation racks, or cables for 14 000 pounds! Of course, all these expensive devices highly improve the purity and detail of the sound, and finally allow you to listen to mp3 like you should! (Irony inside) Do you recognize the phenomenon? Yes, this is the same thing with guitar, the quest for "THE sound", with expensive guitar pedal effects and cables! Fulltone, George L's, Evidence Audio, Monster Cables... A lot of new "luxury" cable brands! Is there really a difference? What are the characteristics of a "good" cable? How much should it cost?

First, lets demolish some myths about guitar cables together.

Guitar cables myths and legends

1. Gold-plated jack
This first legend around cables comes from the fact that gold is often use in high quality conductors (computers, HiFi...etc), because the conductivity of gold is better than a lot of other metals, and because gold does not corrode. So we would expect an optimal transfer between the jack and the jack input of your amp, guitar pedal...etc. However, 99.999% of effect, amps or guitars have nickel-plated jack inputs! Therefore, the conduction value will be the one of the lowest conductor, that is to say nickel. Moreover, the conduction value of gold compared to nickel is not that much different.
What is more is that gold is a soft metal, the plating quickly wears off the jack when you plug / unplug it a lot. So the gold plating will not corrode (neither will nickel plating anyway, unless you wait for many many many years...), but will goes off the jack! Unless you have a massive gold jack plug (sell your house if you want a pedalboard with those ^^)

Here, we can clearly see that only the tip of the jack is gold-plated

Moreover, in most cases the plating is not pure gold
(and surely not for this 0,7 Euros Chinese jack plug)

  

Analogman sunface DIY clone #2

As I was curious, I decided to build another analogman sunface with the NKT275 red dot transistors I got. However, whereas my first Sunface used a veroboard, I decided to use a PCB. The layout I used for this was conceived by Scruffie, and uses a voltage inverter with a MAX1044. A very ingenious system allows you to switch the power off when you unplug the input jack, very useful with 9V battery. However, as the enclosure I used was quite small (1590B from Hammond), I did not have space left for a battery so I decided to go full power supply. Which is also more practical for a pedalboard stompbox that you are not going to move a lot. And with the voltage inverter, any 9V boss like power supply is perfect! I used a 3PDT PCB. It is very practical, and most of all, really really neat looking. I really paid attention to the wiring this time and try to make the cables as short as possible. I am really happy with the result, it is really nice looking inside.

3PDT and true bypass wiring

I found out that it was easier for beginners to make a proper true bypass wiring when they fully understand how does it work. Here is a blog post to explain it in an easy way!

The 3PDT Footswitch

Before going any further, you have to understand how functions a 3PDT footswitch. The 3PDT stands for "3 poles, double throw". Here is a diagram showing the different possibilities :

Vemuram Jan Ray clone

I recently made a Vemuram Jan Ray clone. For the record, the Jan Ray overdrive is one of the many scandals that shook the boutique pedal community recently. Indeed, the Jan Ray has been proven to be a Paul C. Timmy slightly modified as we will see by studying the circuit. However, Vemuram pretended that it was an original design he made up listening to old Fender amps during 3 years... And sold the pedal at an indecent price for an analog pedal: 370 euros (400 dollars) !

This is a typical marketing strategy: "the price represents the quality", which is totally absurd for a basic electronic guitar pedal... He sold a lot of them whereas Paul C. produced the same pedal for 120 dollars. This a pedal that deserves to be cloned, and if you want to buy this sort of overdrive, go for the Timmy!

 

Analogman Sunface Build

Here is a first build I made not so long ago, an Analogman Sunface.

Very simple layout, a classic fuzz face with some light modifications, like a bias pot that I called "woof" here for fun.