Bad 1/4" cable?

Interitus

Member
Many years ago, I couldnt afford a drum set, so I bought a guitar. Along with the amp, I also picked up a 20' 1/4" cable. I remember it to be a slightly more expensive cord, but it had an right angle connector on one end, and I thought it would last me longer than one of the cheaper ones.

So, a year or two later after everything had been sitting unused for a while, with the cord wrapped up neatly, I finally got around to trying it again. For some reason, I'm getting a lot of noise from the cable. The connectors are soldered on, with a cover that screws on overtop of the soldered on parts. The joints look fine. Any idea why I'd suddenly start getting noise? Can it be repaired?
 
Run your fingers along the cord, look for any "kinks" in it.

If you're getting noise from your amp, I'd check the inputs on the amp and your guitar first (are they loose at all), then borrow a chord and a guitar from a mate, try both of them out, and then try just the chord with your guitar.

If you find the problem really is in the cable, check out the connections on either end, you can probably open them up to see if there's any problems. If there are any kinks in the cable, you might consider cutting the cable on either side of the kink, and putting a connection on to the two loose ends. You'll now have 2 guitar cables and one little kinky bit that you can throw out.

If you're lucky you'll end up with at least one decent length guitar cable out of it. If not then you can always buy a new one, they're not that expensive, and I'd suggest Planet Waves as a brand of some repute (but also on the more expensive end of the range).

Check your guitar and amp out first. If it's either of them, and you don't really know what you're doing, a shop will is the best choice for finding someone to check it out.
 
This may sound on the side of 'silly' but check that you're not playing near any CRT monitors or strong electrical sources. They can cause all sorts of problems. Just yesterday I was sorting out some ground loop problems with my own rig and other interference issues. Check these as well. Try re-arranging the order things are plugged in and checking for strong electrical sources close to your rig.
 
Its definately the cord, as I've got another cord that works just fine, but its only 3' long. Same problem with another one, but its a really cheap cord and I'm not sure where I got it.

I've used the cord in an area where there's no computers or anything and it does the same thing. I'll open up the connectors and re-solder the joints, and check for kinks.
 
Could well be radio interference. If it's 20' long and unbalanced then you're going to start getting problems. Shortening the cable length will resolve some of this. If the leads are long I would suggest buying balanced ones in the future. These are the leads with two rings around the jack connector as opposed to just the one - assuming we're talking about jack leads.
 
I have dozens of cables for my studio and many times, for just no reason at all, some will go bad.

Abuse, age, amount of use never seem to play into it. I can have two identical cables, and one will last forever, while the other one will go bad after a short period of time.

It's always a mystery to me, as there doesn't seem to be any reason for any cable to go bad.
 
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