stack amp cable question (for guitarists)
kigcat
Posts: 298
ok here goes ive been playing electric guitar for the last 15/16 years. For 90% of that time ive been playing through a vintage fender combo transistor amp but i have just purchased and am presently waiting awaiting the arrival of a marshall MG100dfxh valvestate 100watt head and a mg4x12 angled cabinet the question i have for you guys out there is this..... Looking at online pdf manual for this amp it says that the head has to be connected to the cab using a "UN SHIELDED" jack plug..... Ive never known of anyone using a groundless cable on a cab will it be ok using a standard jack to jack cable i.e. normal guitar/patch cable or do i really need a special cable that has no ground. in other words is this just marshall trying to get me to spend more money on there products.
I'm not saying stupidity should be a capital offence, but what say we take the safety labels off everything and let nature run it's course?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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use a speaker cable. you're dealing with a much higher voltage and current level. a guitar cable won't cut it.
the connection between a head and a speaker is the same as between a PA amp and it's speakers.
you want a speaker cable.
a 2-3 foot speaker cable isn't going to cost that much.
He picked up a monitor wedge for use in our practice space, and needed a speaker cable to connect the monitor to the amp. So he took my speaker cable for my extension cabinet, and wired up his monitor. He then proceeded to plug my amp into my cabinet with a cheap RadioShack coiled instrument (guitar) cable. We practiced later that afternoon. We played for about an hour, went out for a cigarette, then came back into the practice room. I plugged in, turned the amp on, and *white smoke*. It fried the curcuit board in my amp. Literally melted the board through in several places. And it never even blew the fuse! It was the right-amperage fuse and everything.
I guess I can't hold it against him, though... it was a Fender solid-state screaming heathen that sounded like absolute crap. I went over to tubes soon after, and never turned back.
Anyways, get something like this:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/sid=031019225658150131025216218149/g=guitar/search/detail/base_id/35558
The 18-guage 6-footer should work fine. Your local music store will have these cables, too. They might have heavier-guage cables that cost more, but it doesn't hurt anything to have a bigger cable than you need.
"Use a thick wired zip cord for speaker hookup. Don`t use thin coaxial guitar cables as speaker wire if possible. This is specially true for bass, where damping factor, tone and watts could be easily lost. However, if your are experiencing radio or T. V. interference, a shielded guitar cable might help out with this problem, as the culprit interfering radio frequency energy could enter your amp through a speaker cable, as well as through the input cables. Additionally, shielded coaxial cables used in the speaker path might cause some amplifiers to break into uncontrollable and dangerous oscillations. Caution is advised here. If the amp doesn't sound right or if it behaves oddly after installation of a shielded coaxial speaker cable, go back to using the zip cord type. " from http://trentino.best.vwh.net/
yipee!!!
big ass amp for the kigcat;)