| Author | Message | ||
| echo008
Advanced Member Username: echo008 Post Number: 270 Registered: 2-2003 |
I was just wondering if there was a specific brand of cable that Alembic uses to test there guitars/basses in there factory? I was hoping Mica or Val would chime in here? As well I was wondering if there was any consideration on Alembics part toward making and selling Alembic Brand instrument cables? I think that would be such a nice thing to see added onto there web store  - Tom | ||
| davehouck
Moderator Username: davehouck Post Number: 4439 Registered: 5-2002 |
Tom; in a recent thread, Mica stated a preference for Belden cable. And Alembic does sell 5-pin cables. They are not inexpensive; and I imagine the reason why is that in addition to being made with high quality jacks and cable, they are probably put together by people who, if they weren't putting together cables, would otherwise be working on Alembic basses, guitars and preamps. It's a small shop with a small staff, and it takes them a while to build the instruments. Imagine how much longer a custom order bass would take if the staff were sitting around making cables a few hours a day. But I'm just guessing; for all I know, Mica may be soldering cable right now with an eye toward putting them up on the site. If you really want an Alembic cable, you might want to call Vall and see if it would be possible to custom order one. My guess is that it would be high quality and that it would not be inexpensive. | ||
| jseitang
Intermediate Member Username: jseitang Post Number: 171 Registered: 6-2002 |
echo008-ive asked them alembic before, and they said that build basses and preamps take up so much time, they simply dont have the time to build cables. BUT in the old days, alembic did make cables with their basses. they made an alembic supercord, which is the belden cable as dave said. i see you live in NYC, i live in brooklyn. if you want to check it out, let me know. ill be glad to. | ||
| echo008
Advanced Member Username: echo008 Post Number: 272 Registered: 2-2003 |
Hi, Thanks for the offer but I was just wondering what the deal was. was hoping maybe they would offer up a few standard 1/4 instrument cables from time to time bearing the Alembic name, Obviously, they do the 5 pin cables for there series basses but I havent seen a 1/4 in. anyway Thanks - Tom | ||
| jseitang
Intermediate Member Username: jseitang Post Number: 172 Registered: 6-2002 |
my supercord is a 1/4 instrument cable by the way. | ||
| bkbass
Intermediate Member Username: bkbass Post Number: 110 Registered: 11-2003 |
jseitang I work in Brooklyn. It would be nice to chew the fat.Contact me. To all, I've recently gone rumaging through a discount cable bin at a local music store and bought a 20' Fishman 1/4" TRS "Y" cable for twenty bucks brandy new!It's perfect for the stereo 1/4" jack splitting the signal.Fishman still makes the cable at a reasonable list price and it's Belden cable. No fuss,no mess,cheap and easy to replace. | ||
| kmh364
Senior Member Username: kmh364 Post Number: 2028 Registered: 9-2003 |
Is that where the PA is hiding you these days, Barry? | ||
| bkbass
Intermediate Member Username: bkbass Post Number: 111 Registered: 11-2003 |
Yessireee Kev! It's time buddy,call me.How about a blurb about your exoteric audio cables? I look forward to chatting. | ||
| hifiguy
New Username: hifiguy Post Number: 2 Registered: 10-2006 |
On a related note, if you have plenty of money to spend, you might want to investigate high-end audio interconnects. Very pricey and usually handmade, some of the more likely brands would be Cardas Audio and Acoustic Zen. George Cardas and Robert Lee are, respectively, very accommodating about custom applications. definitely Alembic-worthy cable products and made with the same sort of passion and attention to detail. Price varies, but their top audio interconnects range around $700-1100 per meter pair (extra length is considerably less per foot as no additional terminations, which are Alembic-painstaking with these cables) so you're talking about real money for, say, a 25 foot mono cable. I've played around a lot with interconnects and speaker wire in my avocation as a high-end audio reviewer and can vouch for the sonic improvements made by exotic cable. Maybe Alembic could investigate a partnership with one of these manufacturers and have them OEM a line of wires. | ||
| bob
Senior Member Username: bob Post Number: 716 Registered: 11-2002 |
On a side note, I was wondering about that username... but Paul Bolin I recognize, as someone who started writing for Stereophile some years back. Welcome! And I happen to think that George Cardas would be a nearly perfect fit for some sort of collaboration with Alembic, interesting concept. I noticed a while back on the Cardas web site a mention of instrument cables, but at the time couldn't find anything further. But this other thread identifies at least one current source. | ||
| kmh364
Senior Member Username: kmh364 Post Number: 2044 Registered: 9-2003 |
Welcome Paul! As a long-time audiophile, music lover, Stereophile reader and guitarist/bassist, I can commiserate, LOL! Cheers, Kevin | ||
| hifiguy
New Username: hifiguy Post Number: 4 Registered: 10-2006 |
Thanks guys - yep I'm the Stereophile guy, and five years at The Abso!ute Sound before that. When this idea popped into my head Cardas was my immediate thought. I had to think a while to come up with another cable manufacturer, but Acoustic Zen might also be a possibility. Someone should clue Mica in about Cardas. It's just not a name that's known outside the perfectionist audio community. A line of "Alembic by Cardas Audio" signal cables would be successful, I think. I know some folks at Cardas, but I've only spoken with Mica a couple of times when my new bass needed a heat reset of the neck back in '99. | ||
| gare
Advanced Member Username: gare Post Number: 389 Registered: 11-2003 |
I was just catching up on my reading when I came across this thread. A few months back a friend (elec tech) and I were talking about cables and quality and such. The next day he sent me this article. I found it rather interesting. Some may disagree, but it's entertaining. http://www.ethanwiner.com/audiophoolery.html Gare | ||
| lbpesq
Senior Member Username: lbpesq Post Number: 1712 Registered: 7-2004 |
Gare: Thanks, very interesting article. I've never heard a significant difference between basic cables and more expensive, non-boutique, ones, like Monster. I use mostly Planet Waves and Monster these days because they do seem to be a little more durable, not necessarily for the sound. Bill, tgo | ||
| bob
Senior Member Username: bob Post Number: 717 Registered: 11-2002 |
Interesting? At my most generous, I might describe the article as mildly amusing - yes, perhaps even somewhat entertaining, but in my personal opinion (as always), not worth more than that. This is probably not the right forum in which to pursue the discussion, but my personal experience is quite strongly counter to most (if perhaps not quite everything) he concludes. For our purposes here, despite my adventures in hi-fi, I am not inclined to spend megabucks on cabling a bass rig (okay, even a guitar rig) for live performance. Personally, my threshold of diminishing returns would be just a little beyond Monster, maybe twice as much but not five times. But in other contexts, I am personally convinced that there is much more going on here than this writer understands, or is sufficiently open-minded to even consider. By all means, don't get sucked in by hype - either positive or negative. Trust your ears (and if your hearing is questionable, get a second opinion), then pay what it's worth to you. -Bob | ||
| lbpesq
Senior Member Username: lbpesq Post Number: 1714 Registered: 7-2004 |
Bob: Can you suggest a more scientific refutation of Mr. Winer's article? My experience is almost exclusively in live, full band situations where subtle differences are more likely to be "lost in the mix" than in a studio recording environment. It always seemed to me, based on my admittedly limited understanding of electrical engineering, that gauge, and it's effect on resistance, was the only really critical component of guitar cable effectiveness. Other concerns were more of a personal choice, like color and flexibility. Do different frequencies of my guitar's signal bounce around inside the cord like soundwaves bouncing around the interior of a club? Or is it merely a matter of the electical signal either passes through or doesn't? At least Mr. Winer's article attempts to explain what is physically happening. Can you point me in the direction of a contrary scientific explanation? Bill, tgo | ||
| keith_h
Senior Member Username: keith_h Post Number: 592 Registered: 2-2005 |
Here's another site I have run across relatingto speaker cables. In a nutshell it all gets down to resistance which is directly related to the length, guage and purity of the conductor. Keith | ||
| bob
Senior Member Username: bob Post Number: 718 Registered: 11-2002 |
Bill, I don't really have the time or inclination to try to scientifically refute the Winer article, nor the second article posted by Keith. In fact, they both say a number of things that are perfectly clear and indisputable. Certainly, several basic factors such as effective wire gauge, cable length, signal level, and so forth, are well-understood, and you should look to fall within reasonable guidelines. For instance, it can be downright dangerous to use an instrument cord as a speaker cable, and even if it doesn't fry, it probably won't sound as good as something heavier - we know this, no one is arguing the point. As I said earlier, more or less, don't waste your money on something you can't hear. If you have "never heard a significant difference between basic cables and more expensive, non-boutique, ones, like Monster", then other factors like flexibility, color, and ease of replacement would be appropriate things to guide your choice. At the same time, there do seem to be some people who "believe" - without necessarily being able to prove - that they can hear differences. I count myself in this camp, and at least a couple others said as much in the recent lava cable thread, and perhaps in some earlier threads. Even though (I believe) I can hear differences, that doesn't mean I'll necessarily spend the money. In my bass rig, I would choose to spend an extra grand for a better amp or something, rather than upgrading my cables - whereas in my stereo system, I really wish I'd had the budget to spend more than the $1800 I did on a pair of six foot speaker cables (they are pretty nice, I'm not complaining - but I know there are better). The reason I spoke up here at all is that both of these articles are trying to argue that the entire high end audio industry is a rip off. They both start by reviewing a few simple, well-known principles, but (having established their sound scientific approach), go on to make a number of outlandish and unsubstantiated claims. While I don't personally feel the need to defend the high end audio industry, reading stuff written in this fashion (regardless of subject) just happens to offend me. For example, Winer says "The key to identifying most audio scams is the very high prices charged. As an audio pro, I know that $1,000 can buy a state of the art power amplifier. So it makes no sense to pay, say, $17,000 for an amplifier that is no better and may well be worse." Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I would argue that he has made at least two or three unsubstantiated claims in that paragraph, and there is absolutely nothing here that I would consider "scientific". While I would certainly agree, in the most literal interpretation, that it would not make sense to pay more for an amplifier that is no better, he has done nothing to establish that such an amplifier does not, or could not, exist. I could go on for hours dissecting both of these articles (which, despite a decent number of valid points, both end up turning into rants), but this is not the appropriate forum. I think the bottom line is this: if you don't hear a difference, then don't waste your money. If you do hear a difference (and have taken the time to develop critical listening skills, tried to ensure a reasonably controlled environment, rely on your own judgement rather than advertising claims, and so forth), then pay what it is worth to you, regardless of whether you can find someone, today, who can explain exactly why in scientific terms. Yes, those little electrons do bounce around inside the cable, in odd ways that actually are frequency dependent, sensitive to skin effects, influenced by the composition and construction of the dieletric (insulator), and some other stuff, most of which is over my head. The simplest measurements (resistance, capacitance, or even length, diameter, and gauge) are summary or overall values that cannot fully characterize such behavior. This is most certainly not magic or hocus-pocus, but as best I can tell, it is also not fully understood by anyone on this planet at this point in time - not in strictly electrical terms, and most certainly not in terms of human audio perception. There is ongoing debate about the extent to which this kind of stuff matters at audible frequencies, if at all - but there is debate, and some people continue to spend significant time and money trying to understand it better. Look, to this day no one can explain why Stradivarius violins are so unique, yet it is generally accepted that they are (the varnish theory now appears to be pretty well discredited, and it seems we may be back to the wood...) If we haven't yet been able to figure that out, how can anyone believe that we have achieved an exhaustive understanding of electrical behavior, and can reduce it to some small set of simple measurements? Sorry for going on so long. Just so the point doesn't get lost, I still think Monster or something in that range is a quite reasonable choice for instrument cables, but I am also convinced that it is possible to do better, or worse, strictly in terms of sound. -Bob | ||
| bigredbass
Senior Member Username: bigredbass Post Number: 1058 Registered: 9-2002 |
So you spend real money on first rate cables from whomever . . . and you open up your expensive speaker cabs and they're wired from the jack/crossover to the speakers with this little 20-guage stuff that looks just like the wire that comes with those $20 car speakers at the flea market! J o e y | ||
| gare
Advanced Member Username: gare Post Number: 391 Registered: 11-2003 |
Were those the triaxial speakers ? Lots of interesting points here. I've always thought, heck if I'm playing in a bar, who's paying attention or listening that closely that they could tell the difference. How do you justify the extra cost ? (for the boutique stuff) Although there is a marked difference between the 3 pack of 20 footers from Sam Ash for $10 and Monster cables. I'll spring for the $40 cable, a little more durable and they have those pretty gold connectors. Bob hit it on the head..trust your ears. G |
