In a world of snake oil surrounding cables how do you know you are spending your money on what matters? OFC and Gold Connectors: Do they really matter? Perhaps, but likely not for the reasons you are thinking... Hosa Cables - hosatech.com/ Other CSGuitars cable videos: Instrument vs Speaker Cables: What's The Difference - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JhbG_WQ7ORo.html Balanced vs Unbalanced Cables: What's The Difference? - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-leTqWEZeVM4.html #Cables #Hosa #CSGuitars More from CSGuitars: Gain access to exclusive content at: www.patreon.com/csguitars Buy CSGuitars Merchandise: www.csguitars.co.uk/store Website: www.csguitars.co.uk Contact: colin@csguitars.co.uk
@@ScienceofLoud the amount of times I have looked that up and never found a specific answer is at least double digits. I always assumed. Thanks mate, great video
Even the unscripted format was so educational. As someone with an education degree, I love how you inform even when no one asks. You get why teaching exists and I love your channel for it
I do like "future Colin", he seems to be very slightly smarter than "current Colin" yet always ensures the viewer has the correct info before the end of the video. He always has "current Colin's" back; he's nice that way!
Can definitely confirm about the oxidation on old game cartridges. I inherited a bunch of my grandfather's old game systems when he passed away last year, and none of the cartridges worked until I popped them open and had a go at the contacts with some rubbing alcohol and just a little brasso. Every single one I've treated this way so far has worked flawlessly.
Other than build quality, the main thing that matters in a guitar cable is capacitance. When plugged into a guitar with passive pickups, the cable can add a significant amount of capacitance to ground. Cables can vary from around 60pf/meter to over 300pF/meter. The effect this has is like swapping out a different value tone capacitor. Higher capacitance shifts the pickup's resonance peak to a lower frequency. Using a long, high capacitance cable can significantly darken your tone.
A few ohms resistance in a signal cable means nothing in a high impedance guitar circuit. There's somewhere around 10kOhm inline resistance in a guitar pickup. It does make a difference for speaker cables.
Only you could make a 10+ min "ramble" about cables interesting enough to a noob like me to watch it all! Just noticed my cable is not gold plated and now i'm sad.
This was so cool man, and you didn't lose anything in terms of impact or learning experience by being unscripted. You might feel a drag towards perfectionism sometimes, but if you just want to talk about something, as yourself and unscripted, don't ever think it's not good enough. Amazing video, learned a huge lot and loved the different style 😎
I am SOOOO happy that someone else understands all of this stuff, and is willing to share with others who may not be in "the know". As an amplifier technician I am very regularly explaining and communicating stuff like this to people. Knowledge is power.
PREACHING THE TRUTH. You are absolutely right that “higher quality” cables aren’t designed for better sound (even though that’s how they are marketed) I completely agree with everything you said.
Neutrik phono plugs are extremely long lasting. But it it isn't just the materials, it's the design. There's no separate solder lugs to get loose, instead you solder directly to the contact. My two main guitar leads are well over 15 years old and are still going strong. (I gig, tour and teach professionally). I made them with Neutrik jacks and Canare cable. Also, they are bright red, so get trodden on much less. OFC will also tarnish much more slowly, so the conductor lasts longer. Thanks for your excellent content!
3/2023: Good Day. I meant to mention this previously, but, Love your Dinosaurs. Quality and Attention to Detail account for everything. I do buy good quality cables, for the reasons that you mention. Thank You once again for this fine tutorial. I really enjoy them and learn from them. Best Regards
4 года назад
I once talked to a technician of "Vovox", a producer of extremly high class cables for musicians. He told me, they find it much more important to give their cables *a core of absolute the highest quality copper* to improve their quality. - The *use of gold or silver* is often said as being required by other factories, but this is mainly for the exclusive "nobility" of the materials, and done by them mainly to justify their extremly outrageous prices and - in the studies, the "Vovox" technicians did, they did not found "that" great effect on the conductivity of the cable.... Thought, this would be interesting... All the best! Keep rockin'!🤟🎸 Andreas
we use Deox-it in avionics repair world. we use it to clean electrical contacts which routinely get exposed to rain water, salt air, etc. it allows you to clean the connectors with out having to resort to a wire brush or anything else which could damage the thin gold layer on the contacts. where i could see it being useful is if you play outdoor shows, sweat tons onto your guitar, or spill beverages where they don't belong. i bet Angus Young's guitar tech uses it by the case :) Deox-it is usually paired with preserv-it: deox-it cleans while the preserv-it protects
Very nice video, I agree with almost all points :). I install a lot of technology in events venues, and you have to keep one thing in mind when it comes to gold plated cables: Yes they don't corrode, but they react to nickel plated jacks and you end up with galvanic corrosion and that reduces the connectivity drastically. We have had to change a lot of jacks in amps and other places, where the jacks of the devices were nickel plated, but the plugs used were gold plated. They weren't working properly anymore and have caused a lot of connectivity issues over the years. So my rule at work is just to mate gold with gold and nickel with nickel wherever possible. Most guitar amps and guitar pedals are nickel plated, so I would certainly just use nickel coated Neutrik plugs instead of gold, just to prevent any faults in case it is touring equipment and it sees a lot of different temperatures and humidity levels in its time. And another fun fact: Oxidised Nickel is as conductive as fresh Nickel, just doesn't look as "good" anymore. So I would just worry about using decent cable with amazing shielding like you did and decent Neutrik plugs as you said as well. And when choosing the right cable I would look at the capacitance of the cable. That usually ranges from 60pf/ per metre to about 300pF/per metre. If the cable has a higher capacitance, then it tends to give you a slightly darker tone.
Really nice video! I live by the principle to buy good quality once rather than cheap stuff several times. Our world suffers greatly from cheap low quality products thrown out in the millions to maximize company money. Love the message, keep it up mate!
Another great video. The one thing I never understood about these buzzwords in the cable world... Why don't the manufacturers just advertise the /actual/ purpose of gold jacks and premium wire? I mean... The benefits sound really worthwhile even when being honest.
Neutrik connectors are made of win. They are near indestructable. I like the ones with an automatic switch on the end so it mutes the signal when you unplug a guitar. No nasty noises during a hurried guitar change, particularly if you forget to stand on your tuner.
Oxygen in copper causes oxidation over time and turns your conductors in your cable all green and crumbly. That oxidation will impede the conductivity by a fair bit. Effects on longer cables even more noticeable. But more importantly oxidation causes the cable to break easily when flexed. Not something you would want on stage.
Great advice Colin. Quality repairable ends (e.g., Neutrik, Switchcraft, Amphenol) is the best sign of an all around quality cable. I'd be careful with the gold plating, some companies use such a thin and crappy plating a little bit of the old in-and-out and the plating is gone, it can be money spent for nothing.
Thanks for this. I've been saying this for years. "Nice cables are worth it because they don't break or corrode!!!" I'd rather drop $300 on a cables for my rig once than $50 every few years when the cheap ones fail...or worse: fail in the middle of a gig. Remember: "Buy nice or buy twice."
Let's be real, most cable failures are either going to happen during your gig, or close enough before it that you don't notice until you're on sound-check and your signal keeps cutting out...
Learn to solder and cut the price of those cables by 2/3! High-end DIY cables are a very economical solution to paying the mark-up for premium commercial cables even when using the same exact components.
Hey Colin. I I'm a bit sceptical about deoxit degreasers, but if you haven't already you should definitely check out stuff like Servisol ipa170, SAS10 and WD40 fast drying contact cleaner, they're just fantastic! They clean out electrical stuff (and can even clean motherboards sometimes) without damaging anything. To give an example, I literally brought a few unusable pieces of outboard gear back to life with the WD40 version. The pots basically didn't work with all the dust and grim built up inside them, but I sprayed it right into the pots (behind the face plate) while turning them until the crackling was gone, and they're now back on the rack in a commercial studio and work perfectly.
Gold is LESS conductive than copper. Gold plating was originally used as a very thin plated coating on connectors that would not normally be unpluged. When plugged in, the gold is supposed to move aside and allow copper to copper connection while protecting against contact oxidation. While silver will oxidise (tarnish), the oxidised silver will still have better conductivity than copper. "Heavy Gold Plating" is a marketing ploy to charge more for the product.
Fantastic info as ever. One point about cables never talked about is right angle vs straight. I use nuetrick right handle attached to all my guitars. Like many I loop my cable back through the strap, it helps reduce the problem of stepping on the cable and it bending /snapping in the socket. That's also why I use right angled ones too. I even use with a Strat socket as actually it makes the cable be at an angle back to to strap.
I used to just buy whatever cables I could get, usually vox or fender ones, ended up breaking within about 6 months or so. one of my bandmates that worked at a studio told me to look for van damme cables with neutrik heads, so I just found a cable builder online that made guitar cables of that spec and shelled out about the same price I'd paid for a fender cable.. that was in early 2018 and they're still going strong *touch wood*. good to have the gold neutrik heads explained and what the advantages are.
I have to say, I have usually avoided Hosa cables as it felt to me to be an "Amazon brand". By that I mean, it appeared (to me) to only exist in the realm of Amazon, but if I am honest I was under that impression because I didn't do any research on the manufacturer, or who uses Hosa cables. Now that I have seen this video, I will be giving them a try. The Edge series seems to rival my Mogami Gold cables, and I would love almost anything to stop using Monster cables (such fluff from Monster.. good cable, but over the years have shifted to more of a money grab than a quality thing). GLS and now Hosa, IMHO, are using the same tech as Mogami is, for about half the price. If I can get the same quality for less, I am sold! Thanks for the video, I have always enjoyed your content, as it's right up my alley man. Keep on Keepin on!
That can actually be valid at times, especially if you compare them to like 40 gauge chinese crap which of course they don't tell you is 40 gauge. The connector quality is importnat too for high power applications. Of course, you have the snake oil category in every industry, but that's still always better than the cheapest crap on the market
It's for the same reason that luxury car manufacturers don't have any "B" surfaces even though you'll never see them. If they go all out on them, they'll go all out on everything. Great vid btw.
i love music and and i Love science its the constant battle for passion in my world and now there is this channel (that i've been watching for a year now) but still I LOVE THIS CHANNEL MORE SCIENCE AND GUITARS
the gold protective solution Hosa provided most likely adds a lubricating barrier to prevent the gold plating from wearing off, which it often will do, as it is a very thin plate of gold on the connector, and thus will wear off quickly if not protected.
10:20 agreed. My pedalboard has like $300 worth of cable/connectors for that very reason. Super high quality connectors and cable so that I don't have to deal with it. I switched to wireless for instrument cable cause I don't like to sit still.
Silver and copper have both better conductivity as gold and are way cheaper. But, as Colin also mentioned: gold doesn't corrode which is an important factor with connectors. However it is a soft material, and a thin layer can erode quite quickly, especially in applications like guitar cables that are often plugged and unplugged. Btw. with some basic soldering skills you can make your own guitar cables for way cheaper than what companies ask for ready-made cables.
defo prefer this presentation to the more "polished" videos. gotta agree... build quality is king when it comes to guitar cables. When I was learning guitar back in my early teens I had some terrible cheap leem cables, and they all broke at the soldered jack connections. Moved on to Piranha cables (you'd get them in merchant city music), which had neutrik jacks. All of a sudden a lot less of my Saturday job money was spent on guitar cables...
The gold plated plugs alone wouldn't make a big difference in connectivity unless the jack is also gold plated? Else, the oxidation inside the jack becomes an impedance that would still require the multiple insertions/removals to erode that layer away, or require the cleaning of the jack in order to achieve the most conductive contact. Thanks for the clarity on the OFC copper as I had not bothered to research it yet to date, and so only knew it sounded good. And 'tis a good point that if the cable manufacturer makes the effort with using the better materials, that it should stand to reason the overall product is better due to the actual care given in the manufacturing process of the cable as a whole. And I've been considering giving HOSA guitar cables a try of late per my experience with other cables I have of theirs to date. So, it's good to hear someone else's opinion on their product.
Love that it's non-scripted!! feels more natural and it's still extremely fluent and coherent imho. obviously, I love the other stuff, too, but I feel so much more personally adressed as a viewer if you do it like this. :) let future-Colin tell us about the details ;) but seriously, awesome content, flawless presentation and the educational value is over 9000!!
Every cable I've ever owned broke at the jack somewhere. Usually from being stepped on. If you break tip you are done. I do think the Nuetrik connectors make a difference but these get worn just anything. I do have some Planet Waves (now Diddario) that have soldered jacks that you can easily clip and reattach but the tips wear out on those as well. I just keep a box of quarter inch jacks and a soldering gun handy.
Jeez I had my suspicions about the boutique cable specifically in the pedal world, although I'm not sure many of those claimed to be better "sounding", they just charge 50% more for some colored rubber or braiding and shiny connector housings.
Love your videos, Colin! Such good information and Always delivered so well! Wish I could subscribe over and over. Your subscriber base should be so much higher. Thanks, bro!
Dude, i love you videos. Although i may have figured these things a long time ago from experiecne, most people did not have that oportunity and theese videos are a famtastic resource for people starting out (or fooled by blog posts). If more of the comunity was likeminded to you, we would all have a much better time looking around for good stuff:)) cheers!
I wouldn't trust a company not to make a bad cable out of the best copper... is there an objective measure of cable quality? and what's the point of using gold plated connectors when the plugs themselves are not gold plated? thanks for a great show ^_^
The problem with your theory with gold plating making the cables better Colin is that gold is a very soft metal and the thickness of the plating is so ridiculously thin. So after only few dozen times you plug and unplug the cable, the gold plating quickly begins flaking off and it totally mitigates the advantage of having the gold plating in the first place. Also, the only way a gold-plated connector could be beneficial is if both the lead and the jack that you're plugging the cable into are BOTH gold-plated. Which on guitars, pedals and amplifiers, they almost never are. I suggest reading this article instead. Which imo, discusses the topics covered in this video 100x better: zerocapcable.com/?page_id=213
I just stumbled across your channel coz a student asked me if it's worth buying a Donner guitar to start on. Found this vid after. Could listen to you ramble about physics, chemistry and music all day. Do you have a cable wrapping video?! I'd love to share that with my students
Great video. One of the things that really annoyed me while being a teen is that I couldn't invest is good cables and the cheap ones kept breaking somewhat often. Same thing with headphones.
I'm a synth player, and I have done A/B tests on high quality versus low quality cables and the difference was shocking. It wasn't even a matter of some imagined effect, the cheaper cables (the cheapest Hosa cables, actually) sounded muddy and boomy, whereas the more expensive ones had a crisp high end with detail. All of them were roughly the same length too. I was really shocked because I thought my whole life that cables didn't make much of a difference, but they clearly do!
What do you think about non shielded speaker cables going from an amp head to cab? I hear everywhere about the capacitance and different cables yielding different tone but not as much on speaker cables. General consensus is if you have the right gauge and decent connectors and quality then it doesn’t matter?
You're just wrong on this one Colin. And I'm not even talking about the cables. I'm talking about this concept: "Nobody in their right mind would spend more money on the more expensive copper just to make a crap cable out of it". Actually, that's precisely what I would do if I wanted to maximise profit, because people - especially bad musicians - are always actively looking for pointless numeric data about the things they buy so that they can feel smart while purchasing it. Busting those myths is a good chunk of what you do here, and the main reason why I like your content so much. So, in my humble opinion, the OFC thing Hosa has going on is obviously an attempt to appeal to people believing that the copper being OFC makes the cable worth the purchase because "it sounds better". Otherwise, I think I might just reply "Well this amp is awesome, it has a stand-by switch which is very close to being completely useless, but hey, if they bothered to put it in, the build quality and the care of the amp must be stellar!" :) By the way, keep it all up, I love your content and I'm not gonna stop supporting you any time soon.
You're missing something vital in your synopsis: if you wanted to maximise profit you wouldn't buy more expensive materials, you'd buy the cheap ones and then just claim they are better for made up reasons. Just intent statistics to make the crap stuff look good. Once again, it's very clear to me, someone who used to manufacture cables as a job, that Hosa's products are high quality and justified in what they claim. They don't insist that OFC makes the signal any better, they simply state that's what grade they are using. That's the big difference here, there isn't any misinformation or extortion going on.
@@ScienceofLoud I never implied that Hosa stuff isn't great, actually! But still, even though they are never lying to customers, there's a giant grey area between using OFC with no expectation whatsoever that it will automatically trick people into thinking their cable is better because of that, and "misinformation or extortion". What they do is very legal and possibly very honest, but if my uncle happened to buy a lot of their stuff believing that removing oxygen from the copper has magical properties... they wouldn't be crying while taking the money.
There are several reasons some manufacturers may use OFC. First being that there's no single magic bullet that makes a better cable, it tends to be a culmination of things: conductor, shielding, connector, solder/crimping, qc and tolerances, etc. Westlake Pro has a pretty good write-up online about whether OFC matters. As they point out, unequivocally proving that OFC is more conductive and therefore sounds better would be a pretty tall order. However, copper is crystalline in nature with each crystal being a boundary that electrons have to cross. By removing impurities such as iron, which can cause resistance, there are less hurdles for the electrons to pass. If you have a single cable it might not make much of a difference, but may have a larger cumulative effect when wiring up an entire studio with hundreds of feet of copper runs. There is also the added advantage of less oxygen equaling less chance of oxidation and corrosion over time. According to tests, oxygen-free copper runs cooler than other conductors, is more resistant to shorts, more durable, and long-lasting. All of these add up to something manufacturers offer to people with several benefits, though we agree that there are some pretty dubious claims out there, or at least exaggerations in the differences they make. When it comes to Edge, to make a true high end cable for musicians who are out looking for them, we answered that demand by manufacturing them with the kind of components many expect and that we feel are necessary to achieve better noise resistance, low capacitance, and durability. This doesn't mean lower cost cables won't do the job, and we make those options, as well. Ultimately the most important thing is that the cables are reliable and consistent absent any smokescreens.
The point once again being missed here is that you don't see OFC in a poorly made cable. If you are going to scrimp on all the physical construction, you're not going to pay more for higher end materials. So my point is that, putting aside any marketing connection, OFC is an indicator that the build quality of the cable will be fit for purpose. It's then the responsibility of the consumer to look at all the OFC options and determine which ones are inflating their prices based on misinformation and deception.
@@ScienceofLoud It's also important to note that prices often reflect where they were manufactured by factoring in labor costs, and sometimes the level of QC and tolerances involved. There are some brands you purchase at a premium due to a reputation which may include reliability and consistency. Price can also be a way to influence brand perception along with a consistent track record. So sometimes more expensive equals "better", but certainly not in all cases. For our part, we've always tried to marry the same quality and reliability customers expect at price-points that won't gouge your wallet to death. There are lots of options out there, so the better informed customers are about what they're buying, the more questionable claims are scrutinized.
The biggest problem with audio connectors I have run across is that cheap, foreign made connectors are not built to tight tolerance. I have used brand new foreign made 1/4" plugs that were horrible, due to the fact that they were not of the exact size specs. Use good quality cables and keep them clean. Gold plating ant OFC will not make enough difference in sound unless you are working in the most high end recording studio.
Disagree with you Colin, guitar cables do affect frequency and levels and are even microphonic. I didn't really care in the beginning but did later change most of them in my chain to higher quality and with less high frequency damping by shortening them as much as possible. Not spending a fortune on them but Hosa, Fender and similar are making a huge difference from the cheap ones.
I suppose the cable capacitance issue is a moot point too once you hit a buffered pedal as that will set unity, and lower the impedance so making it easier to pass.
The gold coating on a cable is so thin it really makes no difference. It very quickly wears off so the corrosion resistance really isn't that great. It also does not increase conductivity. It would decrease conductivity because now the electrons have more material to travel through. You cannot add to what is already lost through the cable. You can only reduce losses.
My dog pissed on my Monster cables that were plugged into my Boss pedal board outputs and they corroded inside the jacks ruining the cables and the pedal board jacks.🤦🏻♂️😎🎸 Rock n Roll
On most pedalboards the only important thing is good shielding to keep noise out of the cable because these small patch cables seldom are removed or receive physical abuse.
Chrome resists oxydization as well as gold but it's much harder and resists wear better. Conductivity is not issue since the plating is so thin there is not a measurable difference. Chrome plating is at least as good as gold and much less expensive.
Like you said, gold plated connectors do not corrode like nickle plated ones over time, therefore are more durable., in theory. My 20-30$ planetwave cables last a very long time and sound good and are not gold plated...the build quality is there however so paying premium prices is ridiculous... don't buy cheaply bult cables because they just fail and are more unreliable but there is no need to spend a fortune on cable also.
One of my brothers is a chartered mechanical engineer and he worked at a copper cables factory for quite a few years. In his words, all the audiophile hype about expensive cables was pure shite unless the build quality was factored in. They did make cables for some exotic applications though, so he had to know his stuff. In the days when I was totally up for it, I would make my own cables from Neutrik jacks and whatever cable lengths were available at the time.
TL;DR Don't buy expensive cables for any touted tone difference, buy expensive cables because they have a lifetime warranty and you won't ever have to *buy* a replacement. If there is a tonal difference, it's nothing that can't be achieved by tweaking the EQ on your amplifier.
EE here, gold plating has one obvious downside: it can be short lived. Many equipment have pretty harsh connector contacts. full of grime and rough surfaces after decades of use, and often the connector spins about in the connector during use (guitar cable for exaple) and this can scrape off the gold plating from the connectors in short order. Gold plating is best when you connect it ONCE and once only and it'll stay reliable for decades. With repetitive use, it can scrape off. Hard gold plating is exceptionally expensive, i'm not sure even Neutrik uses that in their connectors.
I usually slip in a couple of cheapo cables of whatever I have the least amount of every time I order from Thomann or Gear4music. I think I have to slow down on that practice though since the old question of "argh, where is that cable I need right now" has over the years been replaced with "where are all these cables gonna go!?"
I'm pretty sure you are honest and transparent so would you mind if I ask: Would you do a video explaining the excellence if for instance Mogami or why not Vovox sent you a box of cables?
I just had to get 2 new cables one was a 10 ft from the mid 80s the other I bought in the 90s they wore out at the same time. They outlasted all my later purchased cables
