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I'd like to welcome a new site sponsor, Atlantic Quality Design, makers of the ZEROCAP Ultra Low Capacitance Guitar Cable. My curiosity about these cables was piqued by a recent review in Premier Guitar. Here's some info about the ZEROCAP Ultra Low Capacitance Guitar Cable.Not only that, check out Atlantic's awesome Guitar Pickup Tone Database, where you can listen to 199 pickups from brands including DiMarzio, Seymour Duncan, Epiphone, Gibson, ESP, Fender, Ibanez, Joe Barden, Kent Armstrong, Lace, PRS, Peavey and many more, played through various cable lengths and types. You can even compare two pickup/cable combinations to each other.
The ZEROCAP ultra low capacitance cable lets you hear all the frequencies being produced by your guitar. Cable capacitance kills the high frequencies from your pickups, resulting in a muddy sound. The ZEROCAP cable makes your guitar think it is driving about one foot of cable, and the sound opens up in an amazing way.
The ZEROCAP consists of quality custom manufactured guitar cable and fully shielded metal plugs, plus special interface electronics housed in a tiny enclosure toward one end of the cable. Connect the ZEROCAP cable between your guitar and amp, turn it on, and you are ready to rock! It's battery powered so there are no power supplies to plug in.
What does the ZEROCAP cable do?
The ZEROCAP cable reduces the cable capacitance to near zero, typically 50 picofarads (in any length), which is effectively the capacitance of the connectors. Even the best guitar cables have 15 to 30 picofarads of capacitance per foot, amounting to a tone killing 650 picofarads for a 20 foot cable.
The ZEROCAP cable lets you use long guitar cables with little high frequency loss.
The ZEROCAP cable eliminates the "tone suck" when you roll back the guitar's volume pot.
The lack of capacitance eliminates the midrange gain boost caused by plain guitar cables.
The pickup is still connected with a straight through wired connection from the guitar to the amplifier.
The ZEROCAP cable does NOT buffer or amplify your guitar's signal with inline electronics.
The ZEROCAP cable does NOT change the output impedance of your guitar.
With the ZEROCAP cable, the guitar's sound is brighter and flatter. You hear the actual pickup sound, unfiltered by the cable, and you get more of the good sound that has been eaten by cable capacitance until now.
ZEROCAP cables sound the same regardless of length? Yes. There is no passive 'premium' cable that can make that claim. Say you buy a 10 foot 'premium' cable for club use, and a 20 foot cable of the same brand for large stage use. The longer cable will have double the cable capacitance and will further murder your tone. All ZEROCAP cables have the same sound, regardless of length, as if they were not there!
What about all the other cables in my rig? If you have a pedalboard with cables connecting your pedals, make sure they are as short as possible. There are stomp box connection cables that are only inches long, or less. These have very low capacitance. Understand that stomp boxes all have capacitance as well, so don't insert any more effects than you need in the signal path. And when a stomp box is switched out using "true bypass," the capacitance of the cable and box next in line adds to all the capacitance before it. (This is a disadvantage of true bypass pedals!) So use the shortest cables possible. You can purchase a short ZEROCAP cable to connect your pedalboard to your amplifier. Here's a diagram to help you decide where to use ZEROCAP cables. Basically, any cable after a buffered or powered pedal can be a less expensive plain cable.
But the ZEROCAP sounds different. Yes, it does! The more even sound and lack of artificial midrange boost means you may have to adjust your amplifier's tone controls. When you want that extra high end, it's there for you, open and not nasal. Think of it: You have been playing through 500 picofarads of choking cable capacitance since you were a kid. Not any more!
You'll notice that the volume control no longer kills the high frequencies in your guitar's tone. Previously, the resistance of the volume control conspired with the cable capacitance to ruin your tone at lower volumes. Since the cable capacitance is now gone, that does not happen and your guitar shimmers as much on 5 as it does on 10.
SOUND CLIPS: Compare popular cables to the ZEROCAP in our TONE SHOOTOUT!
To understand how cable capacitance affects tone, read our article.
The ZEROCAP ultra low capacitance cable lets you hear all the frequencies being produced by your guitar. Cable capacitance kills the high frequencies from your pickups, resulting in a muddy sound. The ZEROCAP cable makes your guitar think it is driving about one foot of cable, and the sound opens up in an amazing way.
The ZEROCAP consists of quality custom manufactured guitar cable and fully shielded metal plugs, plus special interface electronics housed in a tiny enclosure toward one end of the cable. Connect the ZEROCAP cable between your guitar and amp, turn it on, and you are ready to rock! It's battery powered so there are no power supplies to plug in.
What does the ZEROCAP cable do?
The ZEROCAP cable reduces the cable capacitance to near zero, typically 50 picofarads (in any length), which is effectively the capacitance of the connectors. Even the best guitar cables have 15 to 30 picofarads of capacitance per foot, amounting to a tone killing 650 picofarads for a 20 foot cable.
The ZEROCAP cable lets you use long guitar cables with little high frequency loss.
The ZEROCAP cable eliminates the "tone suck" when you roll back the guitar's volume pot.
The lack of capacitance eliminates the midrange gain boost caused by plain guitar cables.
The pickup is still connected with a straight through wired connection from the guitar to the amplifier.
The ZEROCAP cable does NOT buffer or amplify your guitar's signal with inline electronics.
The ZEROCAP cable does NOT change the output impedance of your guitar.
With the ZEROCAP cable, the guitar's sound is brighter and flatter. You hear the actual pickup sound, unfiltered by the cable, and you get more of the good sound that has been eaten by cable capacitance until now.
ZEROCAP cables sound the same regardless of length? Yes. There is no passive 'premium' cable that can make that claim. Say you buy a 10 foot 'premium' cable for club use, and a 20 foot cable of the same brand for large stage use. The longer cable will have double the cable capacitance and will further murder your tone. All ZEROCAP cables have the same sound, regardless of length, as if they were not there!
What about all the other cables in my rig? If you have a pedalboard with cables connecting your pedals, make sure they are as short as possible. There are stomp box connection cables that are only inches long, or less. These have very low capacitance. Understand that stomp boxes all have capacitance as well, so don't insert any more effects than you need in the signal path. And when a stomp box is switched out using "true bypass," the capacitance of the cable and box next in line adds to all the capacitance before it. (This is a disadvantage of true bypass pedals!) So use the shortest cables possible. You can purchase a short ZEROCAP cable to connect your pedalboard to your amplifier. Here's a diagram to help you decide where to use ZEROCAP cables. Basically, any cable after a buffered or powered pedal can be a less expensive plain cable.
But the ZEROCAP sounds different. Yes, it does! The more even sound and lack of artificial midrange boost means you may have to adjust your amplifier's tone controls. When you want that extra high end, it's there for you, open and not nasal. Think of it: You have been playing through 500 picofarads of choking cable capacitance since you were a kid. Not any more!
You'll notice that the volume control no longer kills the high frequencies in your guitar's tone. Previously, the resistance of the volume control conspired with the cable capacitance to ruin your tone at lower volumes. Since the cable capacitance is now gone, that does not happen and your guitar shimmers as much on 5 as it does on 10.
SOUND CLIPS: Compare popular cables to the ZEROCAP in our TONE SHOOTOUT!
To understand how cable capacitance affects tone, read our article.
1 comment:
Wow! That sounds like one bad ass cable. haha I really wondered if it was normal for your tone to dry out when you turn down the volume on amplifiers, but I had no idea that it was due to your guitar cable. Neat!
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