Guitar cables... how capacity eats the sound.

Interesting, but that 30' cable he was demoing is $130 ...

http://www.aqdi.com/zerocap.htm

For $130, I would rather have six regular cables, and one expensive cup of coffee.

Hehe, I thought turning down the volume and preserving all the treble was the coolest thing in the demo.
But soldering in a treble bleed is way cheaper!

Solution: Don't use a thirty foot cable.

Quote from Lokasenna

Solution: Don't use a thirty foot cable.

....if any difference in the sound with a long cable is something you do not like.

Michael Wagener went out of his way to hammer home this point at WireWorld Studios in Nashville. He was/is a big fan of George L's cable and Creation Audio Labs' active "Redeemer" low-impedance buffer, which you can install in your guitar or purchase as an add-on device to add to your cable much like this.

The reason I bring this up is because we had something of a debate over this. There's no doubt that long, capacitive guitar cables are a source of treble bleed, particularly when plugged directly into a tube amplifier input. Your choices are to either a) Shorten your cable, b) replace it with a lower-capacitance cable (George L's, in this case) or c) put an impedance-correcting buffer somewhere in the circuit; preferably on the guitar end (as with the Redeemer) or heck, even as the first pedal in the signal chain. At the time, the Redeemer Inline ($99) didn't exist as a product and we were arguing over whether such a solution would actually work. It does.

ANYWAY - for extremely long instrument->amp cable runs (hundred of feet) for use in recording studios there are also dedicated devices just for this. The fun part was actually paying a visit to CAL's factory and getting a hands-on demo from the company owner, who would give presentations at NAMM. "Here's an ordinary long guitar cable, but let's make this a harder test - let's use jumper cables instead." [plays some guitar, a touch muddy] "Now let's turn on the Redeemer circuit." [plays some guitar, sound cleans up, more sparkly]

I don't know if the ZEROCAP product is active or not, but if it was passive it would be worth comparing against a Radial Dragster Load Corrector ($49) which sounds like a very similar device. For the rest of us, plug into something with a high-impedance active buffered input - like your Kemper!

-djh

Just get a good quality guitar cable which is not too long and don´t burn any money on snake oil.

Been using 3 of these for 10 years now with a LOT of abuse without a single failure:
http://www.thomann.de/de/somme…e_spirit_xxl_instr_60.htm
You can even get them now with neutrik silent plugs:
http://www.thomann.de/de/somme…irit_xxl_ins_6_silent.htm

However the best way to keep your guitar signal clean when using passive pickups is to simply not have anything between your guitar and your amp input.

Quote from skoczy

This is powered "device" - Type A23 Battery, 12VDC, and you cannot get it in Europe - Due to governmental regulations, this product is available only in the US and Canada!

May I ask what governmental regulations?

Ok, sounds like a secret weapon.
Or it is not ROHS compliant.

Quote from skoczy

I a just about tu buy Sommer Spirit XXL cable with these silent plugs! Do you plug this silent into guitar or into amp? Guitar rather, huh? Or it depends if you change more amps or guitars you play.... but since we have all amps in Kemper, I suppose silent plug will go into guitar.

Yes, the Silent Plug into the guitar.

Quote from Ingolf

Ok, sounds like a secret weapon.
Or it is not ROHS compliant.

I'm betting on B between your choices. Or it might even be that they haven't bothered getting a CE mark

As to the cables and buffer devices.

For a buffer device to work so as to negate the effects of the cable, it's got to be at the guitar end. Any tone loss due to capacitance of the cable cannot be magically restored so it's guitar end or nowhere

As soon as you hit a nice high impedance device then the tone suck stops. This can be the input of your amp OR an effects pedal with buffered bypass.

The thing to stop you using a buffer at the guitar end? Vintage-style fuzz pedals and wah pedals (real ones, not modelling :)). Vintage fuzz circuits when 'on' are low input impedance and naturally suck tone. The designers thought of that and made them brighter than they should be to compensate. So if you use a buffered device *before* the fuzz, the fuzz will sound shrill and horrible. IMO anyway And wah pedals just sound messed up after a buffer.

So for me, I use a very low impedance cable and again they're not expensive. A 3m Klotz La Grange is under 30 Euros and that will do the trick, or it does for me anyway When I built effects pedals for a hobby (which I'll probably come back to at some point) I had a board full of home made stuff plus a few commercials. The first thing in the chain was my wah, then a couple of vintage fuzz. All had been modified to true bypass but even so it adds SOME capacitance but it was acceptable. Then it went to a home made Klon Centaur which has a very nice buffer circuit. It worked a treat

Eddie Van Halen is famous for his 200 feet cable runs, because that is part of his tone. I really wouldn't get into high end cables, just too pricey. I'm not worried about treble bleed because I use about 30-feet cables on stage, haven't had the need for anything longer. Maybe someday, but in such a situation, it might make sense to have a buffer pedal in-between, maybe even something like a simple tuner that does that job. Short cable to buffer pedal, long cable from there on.