Audio: The cables aren't made of gold anyway!

I always hear people talking about cables and tone, whether they are guitarists or Hi-fi enthusiasts, and I think there is quite a lot of dodgy folk-lore about what is actually going on with regard to the design decisions made on using certain metals, like gold, nickel and copper, in their construction. I have a certain amount of experience in this field and would like to put a few things straight.


Firstly I work in a studio and I think it's worth mentioning what we use. None of the cables we buy are name brands and none are gold plated. One or two are Van Damme (generally ones we've "found" whilst clearing up). We still don't have any failures or problems with tone. What you get with a Planet Waves or Monster cable is generally a lot of sales jargon. They are on the whole well built, come with a warranty and occasionally have some innovative features (like some cables with a built in kill-switch), but mainly your not actually getting anything special for your money. They are also difficult to repair without snipping the cable and completely replacing the plugs.

The main bulk of our standard XLR, TRS and unbalanced jack cables are "home made". We buy Neuterik plugs (about £2.50 each) and big reels of quality shielded cable (about £50 for 100 metres). We cut the cable and solder the ends on ourselves. (This cable reel plus this plug and this plug (for XLR))

For guitar cables, I will agree that the tolerances change with regards to resistances (hence really long guitar cables sounding bad), but the difference in gold plated connectors over nickel is pretty much entirely theoretical, and gold is still more resistant* than the copper at the core of your cable.
*with these numbers it's very difficult to justify the use of the word resistance at all but that's the scale these numbers are on

Nickel resistance: 6.99×10−8 ohm metres (which is the same as writing 0.0000000699 ohm metres)
Gold resistance: 2.44×10−8 ohm metres ( 0.0000000244 ohm metres )
Copper resistance: 1.68×10−8 ohm metres ( 0.0000000168 ohm metres )
(wikipedia link)

The order of magnitude in these numbers here is so minuscule when compared to values across the rest of your guitar circuit (pedals and such) that the difference in and audio signal would be imperceivable, considering the distance the electrical signal has to travel, through the plating, across the plug, between the copper cored cable and the guitar wiring (also copper). The reason Gold is used in electrical connectors is because it doesn't corrode, rather than for it's electrical properties. Nickel is also corrosion resistant to a slightly lesser degree.


Capacitance is something that should also be considered in this argument. Capacitance comes from the quality of the shielding, and yes, it is important for unbalanced guitar cables, but that should come as a matter of taste rather than anything else. The capacitance adds a boost to somewhere in your tone. Low capacitance adds a boost to the higher end of the mids and a standard high capacitance cable will add something to the bottom end. So in picking a cable of a given capacitance, you should be matching it to your guitar for the tone that you like. Some guitars will sound thin with a low capacitance cable, others will be given that mid boost they need. (Sound on Sound link)

Also for those of you with Active pickups, capacitance makes little to no difference... read the bottom of this.

In conclusion:

Do what you like, but appreciate that the use of certain materials doesn't automatically make a cable better than any other and think before you give over another £25 for something consisting of parts with a retail value of about £6-£10. Gold plating, while very shiny, is only really useful if your working in quite a harsh environment (like a bath of acid), and nickel plated plugs on copper cables are what was used to record most of the best albums ever made!