How did the cable come about?

Thomas explains:

“After using various speaker cables for many years without paying much attention to the type of cable, I made a discovery purely by chance one day: I was using a not particularly expensive Marshall cab cable with moulded plastic plugs and noticed that my sound was no longer as stiff, but round and still airy. Naturally, I wanted to get to the bottom of this straight away. I tested everything I could find: solid copper cables, ordinary hi-fi speaker cables, silver-plated cables, cables with different cross-sections and, of course, the quality cables from the well-known brand manufacturers. I found that all these cables sounded more or less neutral and that the sound was never as round as with the cheap, short Marshall cable. The ‘mojo’ was missing – the thing that makes the sound seem homogeneous in itself and, on top of that, detached from the cab.

After a workshop with a columnist from a specialist guitar magazine, I told him about my discovery, and we found that we had had similar experiences in this respect. He then sent me a piece of a 1953 Fender power cable. I soldered jack plugs onto this cable and used it as a speaker cable. I had to admit that the cable delivered the warmth and the round, balanced sound I had always been looking for. After analysing the number and nature of the cable’s inner conductors, I set out to find a similar cable. And lo and behold, I found a cable with a slightly larger cross-section that delivers exactly the sound I was looking for, even at a greater length, without any significant loss of power.

Another insight came to me when I had to shorten a guitar cable several times. After the third cut, there was suddenly an incredible change in sound. I could not explain such a big tonal difference simply by the change in capacitance caused by the shorter length. Only many years later did I learn of a theory, unknown to me until then, which says that there are certain cable lengths at which a cable simply sounds different. I then tested these ‘magic’ lengths – with the result that I really did find the ideal length for my cable.

These two insights, and everything else I know about cab cables, form the basis of what we can now present as the BluGuitar ‘Vintage Premium Speaker Cable’ with tonal integrity.”

Thomas Blug