Re: Coiling medium/short cables.cables?

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jay Ts" wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:
"Steve Parker" <sparker@xxxxxxxx> wrote
There are people who I will not hire because they could not break
themselves of the habit of elbow wrapping.

I wonder if anyone has done a study of how long proper coiling
extends a cables life. I have some mic cables that are over 20 years
old. They still work fine.

Not to be contrary, but I have cables that might be over 50 years old,
ere used very haphazardly, and they are still fine, just getting a
little stiff. ;-)

I don't doubt it, but weren't they using much tougher construction
then? Like maybe braided copper wire for the shield, and not thin metal
foil?

Point well taken.

There's a middle ground - many modern cables use fine stranded wire in a
loose wrap. Braid looks more elegant but I don't know if it really that
much better.

Nobody in their right mind uses foil jacketed cable for mic cables, do
they? I thought foil was only for permanent installations.

I wasn't thinking about mic cable, rather guitar cable. I've been
searching for guitar cable I like for at least the past 15 years, and
still haven't found any.

I like braided copper shield because the wires in it coil in opposite
directions, and hold each other in place. I think a loose wrap of fine
stranded wire is used in mic cables to allow the cables to be more
flexible. But I suspect it also makes the cable more vulnerable to
developing gaps in the shield. With balanced mic cable, that's more
acceptable than in unbalanced guitar cable.

I've seen foil shielded cable sold as guitar cable. It was a long time
ago when I didn't know any better than to buy it, and it became a
learning experience for me.

From that, I realized that cables may need to be treated more nicely than
I would think, especially if it's some off brand product I don't
recognize. Many guitar cables are sold with molded connectors, and
there's no easy way to know what's in there without ruining the cable.

The most common signs of abuse leading to hard failure I see is the
outer jacket ripped by heavy abrasion or crushing, and cables just
completely torn apart by twirling.

I'm more concerned about soft failure, such as spaces in the shield
gradually opening up over time, and the cable's electrical properties
(especially capacitance) changing. I think that repeated twisting of the
cable plausibly could cause these, at least for some kinds of cables.

Jay Ts
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