Pro Audio Asylum

Posted by VermontGuy (A) on May 06, 2012 at 15:34:43

In Reply to: RE: Best PA speaker cords with both 1/4 inch and Neutrik speakons? posted by hukkfinn on October 26, 2011 at 11:51:11

I have a small venue PA system and have done shows for about 12 years or so; I've schlepped around several hundred pounds of cables from time to time and have had generally good results for the money over time with speakerrepair.com . My budget is between tight and non-existent. I have also found Peavey cabling to have decent longevity.

The weakest link in any standard quality cable will be the soldered connections, so it might be a good practice to inspect the connections on a regular basis and resolder them if you have any sense that something is getting beat up. Budget brands don't allow for this often as they tend to use molded plugs. I have found that the most reliable cables tend to be the ones I build or repair myself.

The trick for me is to maintain the cables in some decent manner; that usually means giving them a bath periodically and looking for failures.

The only other trick I use is to be religious about testing every cable with a pocket cable tester immediately prior to connecting it. Bad cables are embarrassing as hell and this is the only way I can be sure that I've done timely QC on every single piece of wire in the rig.