BEST GUITAR CABLES EXPLAINED

In an ideal world the cables and patch connectors that carry your guitar signal would carry the entire audible bandwidth of audio and beyond with zero resistance, zero or variable capacitance, zero microphonics, zero distortion and never tangle or break no matter what you did with them!

In the real world, that isn't possible, at least for now, but by using the best guitar cable and jack plugs available we can go a long way to ensuring our tone flies true and hits its target every time and that's our goal here at SHOOTOUT!
Black Powder Guitar Cable 3 Metres

Musicians may spend 10,000 hours or more practising to become really good at their art, so it seems a little crazy to skimp on the most essential basics of new strings and a good quality cable considering the relative price points of these items.

Cheap budget cables suck when they sort of work and they suck even more when they don't! They invariably suffer from poor shielding causing squeals, hums and clicks, microphonics causing thumps and clunks, and then by obeying Sod's (Murphy's) Law they invariably break or short during a soaring solo at a gig or a recording session!

'Boutique' cables can be great but can suffer from exponentially increasing prices by chasing ever diminishing returns of improvement. However, without going that far, you can have 'boutique' at a midrange price. Below we look at all the differences.

There's an awful lot of nonsense surrounding 'the sound' of guitar leads, when in truth almost all of a cable's 'tone' is down to total capacitance (length x capacitance per unit length).

So here we go... the best guitar cables explained with related information on buffers and true bypass pedals:

Guitar Cable Capacitance and Resonant Frequency

Guitar Cable Capacitance Chart

Guitar Cable Length and Signal Loss

Guitar Cable Myths and The Cable Fairy

Guitar Cable Shielding and AC Hum

Guitar Cable Microphonics and the Triboelectric Effect

Braided vs Spiral vs Foil Guitar Cable Shielding

True Bypass Pedals vs Buffered Pedals

DIY vs Premade Guitar Cables

Silver Plated Copper Cables and 'Red Plague' Galvanic Corrosion

Copper vs Silver Signal Conductor Guitar Cables