The Steel Guitar Forum

Use De-Oxit and Pro-Gold, not alcohol...big difference. If you do this you probably won’t notice a difference with the new jacks.

Godfrey Arthur wrote:....G&H plugs are well made but feature a copper center on the tip for conductivity purposes.

Just exactly WHERE does that "copper center" contact the jack? Doesn't look to me like it contacts ANYWHERE and thus cannot make any difference!

Steven Paris wrote:

Godfrey Arthur wrote:....G&H plugs are well made but feature a copper center on the tip for conductivity purposes.

Just exactly WHERE does that "copper center" contact the jack? Doesn't look to me like it contacts ANYWHERE and thus cannot make any difference!

Good question. Thought the same myself. But the copper center carries the signal through the plug tip even if the copper does not touch the jack, it still carries the signal through the plug rather than leaving it to the steel part of the plug alone. It's current reinforcement. The copper "electrode" is fed from the nickle edge of the tip and feeds the positive wire. My guess is it's like using a quad cable of four wires with two each twisted together as pairs for positive and neutral in addition to the ground braid. Using quad cable like Canare wire and using the 4 conductors this way is supposed to increase the sound stage by being more than one carrier of the signal. There is a whole school of thought that certain frequencies travel along a wire's edge and not just through the wire.

When we have science discovering (admitting) things like the sun is not a burning ball of fire but electrical in nature, it sure changes one's ideas of the universe we live in.

All this said, any plug will sound different, brass ones vs nickle, etc., brands. So looking at different cables/plugs is like looking at picks. They all make different tones. Just think how the hits we liked listening to were serendipitous combinations of this cable and that plug chained together. Some pre thought, some happenstance. Hence having more than one brand/type cable/plug/jack is like colors on a palette. Not always a bad thing.

OK, I received the multi-contact jacks and put one in my TELE as that was handy. There is a positive “click”when you plug a cable in. Sound difference? Not anything noticeable to my ears. I’ll install one in my Williams later in the week.