the_planet wrote:Speaker cable: Larger gauge, unshielded, meant to handle high current, low impedance, thus noise isn't much of an issue.
the cables themselves are not high or low impedance the things you plug them into are high or low impedance.
'skin effect' is the issue here. electrons are all negatively charged, so they repel each other. as current goes up you have more electrons, so there's more repelling going on. the electrons being held back and pushed around is akin to resistance which changes the voltage and current (Ohm's Law.) this effect also goes up as the frequency goes up. audio is not a high frequency signal, 22kHz is a very very very slow signal but the highs would be affected first. thicker wire means there's more room for the electrons to move around, so the skin effect is less.
Instrument cable: Smaller gauge, shielded, meant to handle low current, high impedance, noise can be an issue.
IMO they're just meant to be easier to handle and have different types of connectors on them, RCA, TRS and XLR whereas amp cables have Speakon connectors.
If you use an instrument cable between your guitar cab and amp, you may melt the cable and fuck your amp up.
do you know that for sure? it takes quite a bit of current and a thin wire to melt. I've never seen it happen or seen someone try it so I'm not going to say. I would say it's a rule of thumb to use heavy gauge wire there, I don't know how much danger there actually is there.
If you use a speaker cable on your guitar you will get noise because the cable is unshielded.
yep and guitar cables are built to work with guitars.
guitars are much much much more susceptible to parasitic impedances in the cable, IOW there's a capacitance naturally built into every cable that can't be avoided that can affect a guitar's tone. this is debatable, some guys will tell you they can hear what kind of batteries are in a stomp box.
At least that's how I understand it.
it's a tricky subject, electricity is (usually) invisible, voodoo black magic.
Something I've learned is not to skimp on cables. Buy the heaviest-duty looking ones you can afford that aren't Monster (I'm a big fan of Planet Waves). Cables take a lot of abuse, and it's worth it not to have to borrow someone's 1/4" because you found out the connector in yours is shoddy during soundcheck.
good advice. in the forum when we've talked about this, people agree that the quality of the connector is very very important.
my favorite gotcha is when things go wrong and you can't figure it out. you used all your trusty cables too!! oh, that's the problem, you always use the same cable and move it around a lot, you wore it out. what was tried and true is now intermittent and flaky.
no worries, audio is really misunderstood.