Help Me Explain Power Cables to my Guitar Friends

ghostrider, you are way off on the association of clean power and distortion. There's good distortion and then ther's bad distortion. I play a Dr Z (Prescription) amp. All his designs are based on power tube distortion rather than preamp driven distortion both of which are hugely different from bad power distortion. Clean power, high dollar propriatary caps, matched tubes, NOS tubes, point to point wiring all add to these amps not take away. They have massive transformers to keep the bottom end tight and they are among the most touch responsive amps and dynamic out there. The notes are very articulate and defined. A players dream amp. Victoria, Matchless, Swart all the same deal.

Some guitar players are getting into the high end patch chords (George Ls for ex) and good speaker cables but as a player with 30+ years of gigging i have to say patch cords are questionable unless you are recording and get real about the power cord thing. The idea of trashing an $80 cord on a $50 dollar gig isn't all that appealing. Half of the time you are playing a bar with out-of-date-ground-loop-from-hell electrical, beer lights that send more signal through your single coils than your playing does, shoved into a corner of a no acoustics dive playing to loud patrons who think you are a live jutebox. If you want a real difference for the real world a player should get something to keep line voltages where they should be. Resonance control as mentioned above is a benifit as well.

All the potential improvements from cords assumes the guy has spent money on a high quality responsive amp in the first place. A lot of guys think it's nuts to spend $1500 or better on an amp. Spending money upgrading a mass production fender blues Jr is nothing but a waste (nothing particularly bad about a blues Jr but it is what it is).

Piezo, I think you missed my point. Like it or not, many classic guitar amp sounds are the result of imperfection and happy accidents. Consider the classic Marshall, Fender, and Vox amps as examples.

That doesn't mean that you can't build a premium amp that also sounds very good. I didn't mention it above, but I also have a mid 90's Matchless HC-30. It's a cathode biased EL84 amp, based of the Vox AC30 design and tuned for great power amp distortion. It has hand wound transformers and point to point wiring. I love it for rhythm work - it has a greasy, buttery distortion that really augments your playing. However I also like preamp distortion for solo work - there's something magic about having tons of controlled, well articulated sustain at your fingertips.

The Groove Tubes Solo 75 is a compromise - it can do nice preamp distortion and wicked power amp distortion. You can select Class AB, grid biased Class A or Cathode biased Class A for the output stage from rear panel switches.

For awhile I had a rack mount processor from ADA called the Ampulator. The purpose of this thing was to simulate big amp power tube distortion using a 12AX7. It gave the user front panel control over bias, amp class (A, AB), feedback, tube balance, and power supply hum leakage. Playing with these controls was very instructive - for example the sounds of some classic amps depend on some hum leakage for the rough, false note tones they can generate. I came to appreciate how much imperfection, cheap parts, and design limitations influenced the classic amp tones.

Let's not forget speaker distortion. A Celestion 30 sounds very different from an EV-12M at 100 watts.

My Matchless simply doesn't get some of those really raunchy early rock tones, though it's a wonderful amp on its own terms. THere's more than one approach to interesting guitar tone.

Hey Crazy4blues An interesting situation that you have. My suggestion when one of these musicians says that they must see scope measurements, I'd throw them a fast ball smack damb directly back at them. Ask them why the "H" do they use a TUBE based amp when a SOLID STATE amp likely measures better.

Furthermore, most well-built solid state and tube amps will measure quite well in terms of the standard measurements used to rate amplifiers. As that is the case, why would a musician 99 times out of 100 use the tube amp over the solid state amp? Hell, with the solid stater there are no tubes to fail, they cost less, etc.

As an aside, I've nerver heard of a musician with much understanding of an oscilliscope. Given that a musician wants to use a 'scope to verify that one cord cannot be better than another, I'd be very curious what specifically they wish to observe on a 'scope that provides a definitive answer.

Tubes108 - If you ask the question and the guitar guys are on the ball, they will probably note (pun intended) that high magnitude second order harmonics are similar to reverb, and probably similar to room reflections in indoor listening environments.

If the power supply and power cord in your friends guitar amplifier is appropriately designed and sized then I am afraid your friends are most probably right.