I’m SO tired of buying 2 brand new 10ft 1/4 instrument cables for my MOXF and they barely last a month. Just got burnt by TWO different manufacturers selling on Amazon. One set had sealed plastic tips and the other had metal connectors. I hadn’t even gigged with them and one of each set had signal failure issues or hum.

So.....

WHAT brand should I buy that I can rely on? Regardless of price tag. Tired of wasting money trying to get a “good deal”. I want solid workmanship and durability and general length of life.  I’m dubious of things like Gold plating, but if those types truly are better or more durable or better shielded, I want to know about it!

Thanks!

Long shot…

You’re not one of those guys who winds the cable around their palm and elbow on the same arm to coil it are you?

You can certainly twist and damage cable that way.  You end up with your cable always wanting to be in a figure 8 like that.

LOL. I used to though! I’m very careful with all my cables. No twisting allowed!  And, as I said, these last sets of cables were brand new.

Seems like Mogami, GSL, Fender, are the top sellers.

OK, glad we’ve cleared that up.

I find Roland instrument cable (gold series) to be fairly priced, well made and long lasting.  Not that anybody has gigged for a long time now, but I usually run that at gigs.  I’ve also got some Fender instrument cable, all good too.

I’ve only used Mogami cable in very short runs for studio purposes so I can’t really advise you on how durable it is for gigs.  It is an excellent cable but can cost you an arm and a leg.

With the hum, are you sure you don’t have a ground loop?

Good question, re: ground loop. I know how easy it is to chase your tail when it comes to hums and distortion, and my low IQ when it comes to electronics is certainly no help. So here is what I’ve done so far. 

When I move the suspect cable to another channel on the mixer the hum comes along with it. I’ve also switched the source output from the MOXf and the hum follows the cable regardless of MOXF output source.

If it was a grounding problem would the hum be heard in the main speaker even if the mixer volume is at zero? That’s something I’d need to double-check, but when things sounded good again as soon as I replaced the suspect cable I assumed that was the reason. 

BTW I run everything, including the main speakers, from a single APC unit since brown-outs and surging are common in my part of the world. I’m not sure what (if any) additional protection (or false security) it provides in relation to grounding and such.

It is possible that you have a ground loop which can be easy to fix, but tricky to track down.

The MOXF has unbalanced outputs, so you should be using the TS (Tip/Sleeve) type of cable and not TRS (Tip/Ring/Sleeve).

Another well documented cause of unwanted noise is when your MOXF is connected to a computer via a USB cable. You could try disconnecting it to see if any of the noise is reduced.

I don’t know anything about APCs