For the love of God, why can't I repair this instrument cable?

[Chuck H]

That is an uncanny likeness!

And some of our best, fry ordering customers were potatoes. We Always kept it on the DL.

[Justin Thomas]

Don't mind Juan, he's okay. Just cranky.

Juan, play nice!

Jusrin

[olddawg]

I had some cables older than most peoples grown children. I would repair them, shorten them, resolder the Switchcraft ends. Recently I bought some main brand cables on the cheap. I cut the ends off of my old cables, put them in the drawer, and threw the cables away. They do wear out. Can only be stepped on and impacted so many times. They corrode internally, outgass, dry out, etc. I doubt these new ones will last 40 years.. but for $12 apiece who cares... Ah the modern world in a cable..

[Chuck H]

Oh yeah. I'm still using a cable I got in 1984!!! Surprisingly, the neoprene jacket hasn't failed and only one end has been replaced. Actually repaired, I didn't need to replace it. IIRC it has slightly lower capacitance than other 20' cables and so I favored it when I gigged so I wouldn't need to go to a 15'. Now it's just the cable I still use. Some day it'll fail irreparably and an era will have ended

[Tone Meister]

Does the inner jacket covering the conductor have a black lining on its outer sheath? If so, that black lining is conductive and must not make xontact with the conductor.

Just a thought.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Does the inner jacket covering the conductor have a black lining on its outer sheath? If so, that black lining is conductive and must not make xontact with the conductor.

Just a thought.

Good point! Some cables have a conductive plastic sheath as you describe, it needs to be trimmed away from signal carrying points inside plugs. A long time ago a band I was working for got a box full of patch cables from Ernie Ball, thrown in as a freebie because the star was Ball endorser. Some giftie... most of 'em didn't work well. They looked great, had good plugs, nice flexible cable. BUT they had a carbon-infused cloth inner sheath crammed against the signal conductor. Once I figured out what the problem was, some quick work with a razor blade, trimmed that black cloth back just a quarter inch, got 'em all fixed right quick.

Thanks for mentioning this Tone Meister!

[Enzo]

And lucky is the man who didn't learn that the hard way. I know that conductive sheath fooled me one day long ago.

[Randall]

I've been fooled by the conductive sheath as well on some nice Canare cable a few years ago. I know to cut it back now.

[TimmyP1955]

I was working backline - long story short, the guitar sounded awful, and we quickly determined that it was his FullTone cable, so I traded him. Back at the shop, the Fulltone measured 10k Ohms from tip to sleeve. I could not get either connector apart in order to fix it (?!), but I'm sure it was the same issue discussed above.

[Helmholtz]

FWIW, the conductive sleeve serves 2 purposes:

1) It essentially increases shielding coverage to 100%.

2) It strongly reduces cable handling noise: Flexing a cable causes friction between the wires of the shield and the insulator. This results in electrically charged spots on the surface of the insulator causing static (triboelectric) noises when the shield contacts theses spots. The conductive sleeve prevents the surface charges.

[Tone Meister]

And lucky is the man who didn't learn that the hard way. I know that conductive sheath fooled me one day long ago.

Then I am not lucky. I learned it the hard way after building THREE touring pedalboards with a total of 118 connectors! Yes, I had to go back and check/repair each connection. Turned a two day job into three.