The Steel Guitar Forum

My Eico capacitance bridge and even my mid-grade Fluke meter give identical readings to my old HP Network Analyzer. Just keep your hands off the leads and allow for the capacitance of the meter leads!

Like most I use George L cable for my steel hook up which works just fine. For my Tele to amp I use Bill Lawrence low capacitance cable which really works well. It opens up the full frequency range of the guitar and amp but is also a very flexible cable which George Ls is not. Well worth trying for guitar players.

I'd have to take issue with Craig Baker when he says that if you have a buffer, nothing downstream affects your signal at all. There simply is no basis in fact for this assertion, and Electronics 101 says otherwise:

10ft of cable with 25pF per foot would represent a capacitive reactance of about 60k ohms at 10kHz. The signal from a steel is the way it is because of the higher partials. Lose those and you really notice the degradation in tone.

With some pickups having impedance of about 15k ohm this reactance is comparable - anything less than 10 times as much would be audible. It represents an appreciable loss of the higher frequencies in the audio signal. But Craig is right that a low-Z buffer hugely reduces vulnerability to effects of cable capacitance. It just doesn't eliminate it altogether.

I do agree with Greg Cutshaw about skin effect. It's nonsense to talk about skin effect below 100 MHz - so it has no application in audio at all.

Will,
You'd never believe some of the things I've said over the years, but I don't recall ever saying anything as crazy as: "if you have a buffer, nothing downstream affects your signal at all."

The first thing that comes to mind is a short circuit. That would certainly affect your signal, buffer or no buffer. Nor can a buffer overcome bad cables, connections, or a multitude of problems downstream.

Most people realize that I am probably one of the biggest proponents of using a good buffer. However, I'm quick to add that they don't work miracles. At least the ones I promote don't. If I have misled or mis-stated something, thank you for pointing it out Will, but it was not intentional and I apologize.

Respectfully,
Craig Baker

An EPS15C is about 35 dB down @ 10KHz. Of course, it all adds up, but those partials have sharp edges and sometimes rounding them down sounds better to my ear.


I just LPF'd a track I recorded this weekend @ 3500 Hz and it sounds like people dropping silverware occasionally.

YMMV.

Craig, I'd be the first to admit I paraphrased you. What you actually said was:

When you have a buffer, the type or length of cable you use is of no consequence. With a very low impedance signal, your music is protected and imune from the effects of capacity.

I thought it was a pretty accurate summary, but I obviously took it a stage too far. Your initial point was fair comment of course.

I'm still trying to work out what an EPS15C is though, so I'm still thinking about Les's post.

Will,
Thank you for your note.

I too was puzzled by EPS15C. I thought perhaps it was a rare Epiphone.

I googled it and lo and behold, it's a speaker.

http://www.amazon.com/EMINENCE-EPS15C-1 ... B005F5U7LW

Again, thank you Will.

Craig

Sorry about the EPS15C reference, fellows. I omitted needful words What;'s that thing about "assume" again?

Yes, it's an Eminence speaker designed for steel, in the tradition of JBL and Peavey speakers commonly used for steel.

Because midrange is the "speech" part of our hearing range, we are more attuned to it, so small changes add to big effects. The upper mid knob on my amp gets a good workout every time I set up.

There's this one note I set that by - if that note sticks out too much, then it gets turned down. Otherwise, at level, it gets annoying.

I could not dial that out at all on a Twin. I'm sure it's something peculiar to my playing, guitar or something.

Interesting condition Lee.

Makes me wonder if there is some part of your guitar that is resonant to that note; perhaps a rod somewhere in the undercarriage that is being excited by the note and producing a sympathetic vibration. If the note is amplified and produced by the speaker, all the worse. Have you tried recording direct, or using headphones to listen for the troublesome note?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_resonance


Just an idea Lee.

Craig

I read that the material the jacks are made of effect the tone. I use George L wire and use the brass ends as I read they are SUPPOSED to have a neutral tone and the chrome plated has a brighter tone.

I'll see if I can find where I read this and post it.

Also, what has a brighter tone, the old oil and paper caps or the ceramic and poly caps. I bought some of the old paper caps for a lap steel but may try something else.

Ordinary cords should give you a very acceptable sound. Admittedly, I've never even bothered to measure the capacitance of my cords. I keep them as short as possible, and if one doesn't sound right...I try another. To me, it's that simple. Common sense dictates that I don't need a ten foot cord between your guitar and your pedal, or a twenty foot cord between your pedal and your amp. So after I've tried two or three different ones (and if I'm still not happy with the sound) I know that the "problem" is elsewhere. It may be the room, it may be the way the amp is set, it may be the humidity, or it may just be in my head. At any rate, I get the best sound I can, and go on playing.

I don't mean to sound indifferent or unsympathetic, but I'm pretty sure that Buddy, Paul, Pete, Weldon, Hal, and Curly, also never bothered to to do capacitance measurements on their cords!

In my younger days,I tried buying my sound. I'd hear about a chord, a different amp, pickup, etc. and I would buy it only to be disappointed. A great lead player I worked with told me one night when we were playing and I was cursing my sound, "What do you think they put knobs on those amps for?" From that moment on I solved most of my sound problems and saved a tremendous amount of money. That's not to say one should stop experimenting though.

I just realized that I need to earn an engineering degree to be a good sounding musician...