bad plug causes tonal shift?

[daz]

I haven't posted for a long time, but whenever i have a issue that requires the need to ask very experience guys this is the place ! Anyways, i had this HiCon plug on my guitar cable thats from the same company that makes sommer cable. Really quality looking angle plug that like the neutrik has the silent plug feature that like the neutrick uses a sleeve thats pushed up when inserted that removes a ground to signal short. The plug went bad recently and the tip and sleeve became loose to where you could spin it around. The final death symptom was the expected intermittent buzzzing/shorting of the signal as the plug moved around. But heres the strange thing. I noticed a few weeks ago my tone seemed different. Irt sounded like the low mids were a bit boosted and slightly overpowering the rest of the frequency range. When i put a new plug on /(same model but brand new) the tone came back to normal and sounded very balanced. I had to change my amp settings quite a bit because of it.

My question is, how could a bad plug cause this? I mean, resistance would, but wouldn't any degree of contact sound normal ? I mean, wouldn't it just be no sound or normal sound and nothing in between? I have to thing there must have been a resistance, but i can't see how, and even if there was wouldn't the bad tone go intermittently between that normal tone? I just can't see how a resistance can happen between 2 metal parts. I wound think it's either open or closed.

[Helmholtz]

I am not familiar with the construction of that plug. But as you described it's a silent plug. These have a signal shorting mechanism. So if it's not completely shorting anymore, it might still develop some resistive load. Additional resistive load reduces PU treble response.