Help me decide on some new instrument, patch, and speaker cables

[the_wallcrawler]

I've done a lot of searching on the site and found lots of great opinions. Unfortunately, those opinions are widely varied. In addition, I'm not sure what everyone's setup and musical tastes are. I'm wondering if you fine folks can at least help me in narrowing my search for new cables.

I've settled on choosing from the selections at lavacable.com. At the very least, I've kind of concluded that I can't go wrong with any of the options there. I'd just like to try and ensure whatever I get is "better" than what I have now.

So with that, I would be looking to replace the following:

Planet Waves instrument cables
Planet Waves patch cables
Monster Standard 100 speaker
Monster Studiolink 500 patch

My set up will be this:

Gibson SG Standard (stock pickups) or Charvel San Dimas (Duncan JB, Duncan 59) --> Maxon OD808 --> ISP Decimator Noise Reduction --> Mesa Boogie Single Rectifier Head --> Loop --> MXR 10 band EQ --> BBE Sonic Maximizer (maybe. given the success of the Maxon + MXR combo I may remove this) --> Mesa Standard 4x12 cabinet

As you can probably guess, I typically play high gain stuff - metal, rock, hardcore, punk. I'm not terribly disappointed with what I have now, just think it could be better. And actually, I have not yet added the Maxon, ISP, and MXR to my setup, but plan to soon (they are ordered and waiting for delivery).

A lot of the stuff at Lava is simply out of my price range. I'd like to get your opinions/suggestions on what would work best for me out of the following cables (patch and instrument both) in my price range:

Lava ELC
Sommer Spirit XXL
Sommer Grindy
Gepco XBand
Gepco GLC20
Canare
Mogami
George L
Van Damme
Gotham

Speaker:

Vovox
Evidence
Cardas
Kimber
Tara Labs
Sommer
Canare

Thanks for your help.

 

[the_wallcrawler]

 

[justonwo]

I wouldn't go nuts on cables. Any high quality cable should work fine. I have the Vovox Link Protect A and Van den Hul Integration Hybrid cables. The former is quite nice, but not significantly better than my Planet Waves cable. The latter, though it sounds nice, is so ridiculously stiff as to render it somewhat impractical. In both cases, I don't really feel they are much better than the Planet Waves cables I had before.

I REALLY like the Lava ELC for pedal boards. I DO think those cables sound great for the price, and they're very flexible which is great for pedalboards.

Speaker cables - I think there's a less compelling reason to go with a high-end cable here since treble bleed/capacitance is not really an issue.. I like the Planet Waves speaker cables, myself.

You will get lots of opinions here, obviously.

 

[turtleheadblues]

I've done a lot of searching on the site and found lots of great opinions. Unfortunately, those opinions are widely varied. In addition, I'm not sure what everyone's setup and musical tastes are. I'm wondering if you fine folks can at least help me in narrowing my search for new cables.

I've settled on choosing from the selections at lavacable.com. At the very least, I've kind of concluded that I can't go wrong with any of the options there. I'd just like to try and ensure whatever I get is "better" than what I have now.

So with that, I would be looking to replace the following:

Planet Waves instrument cables
Planet Waves patch cables
Monster Standard 100 speaker
Monster Studiolink 500 patch

My set up will be this:

Gibson SG Standard (stock pickups) or Charvel San Dimas (Duncan JB, Duncan 59) --> Maxon OD808 --> ISP Decimator Noise Reduction --> Mesa Boogie Single Rectifier Head --> Loop --> MXR 10 band EQ --> BBE Sonic Maximizer (maybe. given the success of the Maxon + MXR combo I may remove this) --> Mesa Standard 4x12 cabinet

As you can probably guess, I typically play high gain stuff - metal, rock, hardcore, punk. I'm not terribly disappointed with what I have now, just think it could be better. And actually, I have not yet added the Maxon, ISP, and MXR to my setup, but plan to soon (they are ordered and waiting for delivery).

A lot of the stuff at Lava is simply out of my price range. I'd like to get your opinions/suggestions on what would work best for me out of the following cables (patch and instrument both) in my price range:

Lava ELC
Sommer Spirit XXL
Sommer Grindy
Gepco XBand
Gepco GLC20
Canare
Mogami
George L
Van Damme
Gotham

Speaker:

Vovox
Evidence
Cardas
Kimber
Tara Labs
Sommer
Canare

Thanks for your help.

Thank you for considering us. Don't forget the Lava Magma Cable available at our dealers. 20 ft instrument cable for 29.95.

 

[the_wallcrawler]

Went with 2 12' Lava ELCs and some of the Mini ELCs. Seemed like a solid middle ground.

 

[Bobby D]

i LOVE the lava cables for pedalboards......my pedalboard has never been so tidy! and my wife put all the cables together for me.

i also use the lava purple coily cable and love it.

honestly.....i think the Lava ELC cables are the best bang for the buck....

if you were a jazz guitarist who played a $10k guitar straight into an expensive amp....i would consider looking into the $200 super high end cables.

but for the average gigging guitarist, the Lava ELC stuff is great. replaced almost all of my monster cables with Lava

 

[GtrWiz]

Check out Colossal Cables, as good or better than cables that cost 2x as much. I just got a speaker cable and it's really great!

 

[Wolf Child]

I just ordered the Lava ELC Mini Patch Cable Kit, 2 Vovox Sonora Instrument Cables and a Van Den Hul Inspiration Hybrid Speaker Cable from [email protected].

Maybe I'm drinking the Kool-aid or maybe I just made a killer lifetime investment into my rig!

Thanks Mark

 

[bluesjuke]

Just ordered two Sonorus myself.
Guess we'll be reviewing together later.

Ought to be nice with the NOS tube order I put in today too that are more favorable to a couple of my amps.

 

[Wolf Child]

Oh look, my last post was @ 4:20