The Steel Guitar Forum

FIRST I`D LIKE TO SAY WHAT A GREAT FORUM THIS IS;
THERE ARE TONS OF YEARS EXPERIENCE AVAILABLE,AND
EVERYONE QUICK TO HELP!

MY QUESTION IS : WHEN MEMBERS SAY THEY HAVE MEASURED
THE CAPACITANCE OF THEIR CABLES, IS THE pF VALUE
PER FOOT OR THE CABLE AS A WHOLE.IT WOULD MAKE A
BIG DIFFERENCE WHEN USING LONG CABLES.
I`M PRESENTLY USING BELDEN 9272 TWINAX WHICH IS
SPEC`D AT 17.9pF PER FOOT BETWEEN CONDUCTORS.
I`M NOT SURE HOW THAT HOLDS-UP AGAINST THE MORE
POPULAR CABLE BRANDS.

THANKS MUCH,
LEO D.

Capacitance is measured in per foot because of the way capacitance works. You'd multiply it by the number of feet to get the total.
But it matters less if you run a low impedance signal.

Hi Leo,
What part of PA are you in? My roots first grew in suburban Phila.

Lane worded his reply slightly different than I would have. 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.

(With a good low impedance buffer, often for the first time you can hear the full range of that expensive steel guitar you paid for.)

Best regards,
Craig Baker 706-485-8792

cmbakerelectronics@gmail.com

C.M. Baker Electronics
P.O. Box 3965
Eatonton, GA 31024

I measured George L's at 24 pF per foot. The straight and angled connectors add about 4pF each. I have used really cheap, low shield coverage cable from Radio Shack that had only 10 PF per foot. I believe you need to tune your cable lengths to tune the sound to your liking. I've noticed differences in how having the capacitance distributed in the cable varies the tone in ways you might not be able to get with amp tone controls. Having super low capacitance or just canceling out the capacitance with an active circuit may not result in the best tone. Most pickups and recordings were made with a decent amount of capacitance in the cables, connectors, effects units and volume pedals. It's a system and just the right set of components yields the sound that I like. Adding a reverb pedal to this system for example adds a buffer with high input impedance and low output impedance. Experiment to find a combination of parts that works for you!

THANKS LANE AND CRAIG,
AT 17.9 pF ,THE BELDEN CABLE SOUNDS O.K. TO ME.

CRAIG ---I`M IN THE LANCASTER AREA;ALSO KNOWN
AS PA DUTCH COUNTRY.JUST UP THE TURNPIKE FROM
PHILLY.

THANKS GUYS,
LEO D.

It's true, there were a ton of great recordings made with an abundance of capacitance. We'll never know just how much better those recordings could have sounded if the equipment of the day had been as good as the talent.

Leo,
Had many great lunches at the Freeze & Frizz restaurants when I lived in Leola. Are they still in business?

Best regards,
Craig Baker 706-485-8792

cmbakerelectronics@gmail.com

C.M. Baker Electronics
P.O. Box 3965
Eatonton, GA 31024

On the subject of how much experience you refer to here, it would be interesting to have a total number of years combined of all 15000 or so players.

Sorry to hijack, but you got me thinking.

To my ears the classic recordings with low tech tubes and unbuffered pot pedals smoke todays sounds in most cases. I've heard Emmons play with and without the blue box buffer in person and he sounded much better without it! I've owned them and re-sold them not caring for them or buffered pedals. Removing all the capacitance load on the pickup will certainly make it sound different, not necessarily better.

Years ago, all we had was "lo fi" equipment and the masters made it work. As electronics improved (some say it hasn't) they used and embraced the new technology, including cables and still sounded great.

Low cap cable, to me, is a must. I use George L's (have since it first came out) but there are other low cap cables that work equally well. For some, they prefer higher cap cables as they think they get too many highs.

BTW, I'm from Mechanicsburg,Pa.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but capacitance is only one of the factors in determining what comes out the other end. I've heard cables w similar capacitance values sound vastly different.

Craig Baker wrote:We'll never know just how much better those recordings could have sounded if the equipment of the day had been as good as the talent.

Ever thought they may not have sounded any better? I have. And, while I think many players today are full equals to what we had back in the '60s, for some reason...they simply don't sound as good )to me, anyway).

YMMV

Jim Palenscar wrote:Please correct me if I'm wrong but capacitance is only one of the factors in determining what comes out the other end. I've heard cables w similar capacitance values sound vastly different.

That's correct, Jim. All factors of the cable's makeup come into play, not just capacitance. Like the number of strands in the conductors, what the strands are made of, how the shield is constructed, what the dielectric is made of, resistance per foot, the "skin effect", etc., ect.

Nuthin's ever simple, eh?

Donny,
No, I never have.

However, It has occurred to me how much worse those recordings might have sounded if the studios had used high impedance microphones.
At least they got one part of the equation right.

Craig

I've posted a link to this comparison before but here is a fairly well thought-out cable shoot-out video/recording which includes the George L's in addition to cables from Klotz, Lava, and Analysis Plus. There is a lot of talk about cable capacitance, etc but very few audio comparisons of a bunch of expensive cables side by side.

https://www.eurotubes.com/store/pc/cables.htm

I thought the George L's sounded a little congested in the highs and the Lava Blue Demon seems like the best value. I probably liked the Lava Ultramafic overall.

One thing to keep in mind with this sort of thing: you may or may not actually be hearing differences. Most of your ears are in your brain and memory is treacherous.

Electric guitar tone caps are in the range of 0.20ish to 0.50ish *micro*Farads. That's 200-500 *nano*F or 200,000 to 500,000 pF. Most steel pickups have a lot more signal than a Telecaster bridge pickup. This also completely depends on what you're connected to.

Les Cargill wrote: Electric guitar tone caps are in the range of 0.20ish to 0.50ish *micro*Farads. That's 200-500 *nano*F or 200,000 to 500,000 pF.

Les, I'm more familiar with 0.05uF for the classic Fender tone cap... not much audio gets around a 0.5uF tone cap at passive guitar impedances. Here's a link to some stupid expensive tone caps... note at 0.022uF:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--GIBPCAP059 ... god2pACFw=

Still puts 20pF/foot in perspective.... for 0.05uF, you'd need a cable 2500 feet long to see that kind of attenuation. Any time these comparisons are done, I agree with Les... double-blind is the rule.

My bad - I missed a zero - translated (for example) 0.022 as 0.22. Still, it's many orders of magnitude.

For all the ranting & raving about how good those old wax paper/foil capacitors were (or are?), you'd think that at least some of the "tone heads" would take the roll-your-own approach, and make their own wax paper/foil caps. It's not rocket science, and we certainly did it when I was young, along with filing carbon resistors to change their values, etching crystals to change their frequencies, and modifying speakers to change their tone and frequency response.

..and walking through 4 feet of snow barefoot to school- uphill both ways (I am one of those guys)

I use Belden 8218 through the rig, the original Lawrence cable at 20pf/foot, what George L's had Canares "improve" to get the pretty colors... still there, still cheap, still tough. I also have some 33pf stuff if I need to cut some treble to a specific loop or something. I'm curious as to what else a cable does besides picofarads, and or/short out, and/or transmit police radios? What changes tone beside the picofarads?

It is a fact that most equipment is designed to be entirely AVERAGE-sounding - guitars are built to sound good through the average tone of amps, amps are designed to amplify the average of a set of guitar tones, everything is built to match up with the largest possible number of other components. But on a practical level, this mostly means you just have to defend your treble, until you're ready to cut it - for me (and most steelers?), cut it right at the end, by using PA speakers like Widows or Altecs. I also tend to subscribe to the Bill Lawrence notion that it's a real good idea to learn what your cords do, what your pickups do, your amp & your speakers, then adjust your tone accordingly and accurately with 15c capacitors and 50c resistors rather than the seemingly random "experiments" with $50 cords and $100 pickups and $1000 amps and $2000 guitars. "Experiment" to me means working towards a prediction, not just "Wow I used to have money!"

Agree with David about tuning the system. Skin affect has no affect at audio frequencies. At audio frequencies there is no transmission line effect so no need or benefit to matching the source and load characteristic impedances. Resistance and inductance of the cable at audio frequencies is also negligible. The right amount of capacitance loading on the pickup before the pedal and after the volume pedal yields a pleasing tone. The classic pickup was not designed to be used or to achieve the desired tone with a high input impedance buffer!

""Experiment" to me means working towards a prediction, not just "Wow I used to have money!""

Good one!

I have used only the Belden 9272 Twinax (blue) cable since the early seventies, and I also made many special length cables of it for the Houston area steelers (Herb Remington sold a bunch through his store.) When I was working for NASA and the Mission Control Center was being being upgraded with new equipment, the Belden 9272 cable was what I saw miles of. Very low capacitance per foot and also a very fast wave front velocity was why they used it.

Another plus, is the bright blue color helps reduce tripping on it on stage. (Plus, for Craig Baker - it matches my Lil Izzy!)

Thanx,
Jim

(PS- No, I have never played that fast when I was younger to be constrained in any way by the wave front velocity!)

- for those who don't have one, you have to have a pretty darn good capacitance meter to get accurate readings in the pf range. They're out there, but my voltmeters can't do it.
- I think one would be better off with a signal generator and simply measuring the loss over a length of cable. There are details to be followed with this technique too, of course. If you need to know.