Guitars. Amplifiers. Effect pedals. Speaker cabinets. These are what guitarists drool and lust over, spending hundreds or thousands on upgrading their sound and playing appeal. But what about the means to connect all these together?
Sadly, cables often seem to figure much lower down the purchase pecking order, with many players making do with cheap cables. Bad move as cheap often equals inferior tone and problems to come.
So what cables should be considered? More specifically, if you were looking for best options what could you select? One highly respected brand is Providence based in Japan. They have been making quality components for years, from their Providence pedals (check out their SOV-2 Stampede Overdrive) through to a variety of speaker, guitar and patch cables.
Recently, Guitar Techniques took delivery of a variety of their cables and found the results outstanding. With numerous lengths of P203 patch cable connecting our pedals together the sound is very clean with a bright top end and substantial low end 'width'. Mids are pronounced while distortion and echo effects have an almost '3D' projection when playing live. In addition, the gold plated plug connections are very secure with a patented slight angle for ease of inserting and removing.
Onto the speaker cables - we hooked up various amp heads with 1x12 and 2x12 cabs using Providence SP601 (4 core conductor) and SP602 (2 core conductor) cables. In comparison to what we have been using, the results are outstanding. Imagine dust being removed from your treble and a boost applied to the mid and low end frequencies. Playing seems more responsive - dig in to make the amp 'bark' or pick lightly to coax a glassy clean tone and the benefit is apparent.
So improvements are there to be had but don't just take our word for it.
Respected multi-stylist and session A-lister, Carl Verheyen had this to say when we spoke recently regarding the speaker cables:
"I was immediately impressed with the clarity of the midrange and found the tone to be smoother and richer. I have tried speaker cable that costs a lot more and gone as far as to match various brands with my distortion amps or clean amps. The Providence cables sound great for both!"
Prices start from 26 euros for the patch cables and 60 euros for the speaker cables.
For more information and to order visit http://www.providence-effects.fr/crbst_27.html
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