Often, the cables that connect our instruments to our amplifiers can be an afterthought; we grab whatever ones work from among the those we haven’t lost or left at the last gig, and throw them in the gig bag. Of course we have heard that higher quality cables can make a difference in tone, but few of us have had the opportunity to test a variety side by side. And even if we have, we usually discover that the ones that are audibly different can cost as much as that new pedal we covet. That kind of money seems steep for something we are likely to lose, and what the hell, we can always turn up the treble on the amp.
The fact is, cables do make a difference. So when Planet Waves announced that their American Stage cable utilized “exclusively designed technology to ensure optimized ‘sweet spot’ capacitance and impenetrable shielding to achieve [their] trademark transparency,” I figured I should check them out.
