There’s a section at the end of our Guitar Cable TONE SHOOTOUT article that shows how cable capacitance is the only factor affecting tone in passive guitar cables. Neither the resistance, inductance, type of insulating material, oxygen-depravity of the copper, diameter, conductor shape, cryogenic treatment, craft beer impregnation, antimatter dielectric, nor any other factor affects the tone of a cable. Just the cable capacitance. Really.

We’re going to pause here a moment while all the guitar magazine cable reviewers clean spewed latte off their phones or computer monitors.

That’s right. Here’s the graph of the frequency responses of several big name cables we tested, from the shootout article. It looks like there is only one response curve because all five response curves are identical and coincident. That article tells how we did that test.

This exposes an interesting application for our ZEROCAP VC Device and Cable. The ZEROCAP VC device has a knob to adjust the actual capacitance of the attached cable, from a very low value (about 50pf) up to the natural capacitance of the cable. Thus, with the spin of a knob you can dial in the same capacitance as any cable on the market!

The only limitation is the maximum capacitance is set by the length of the ZEROCAP cable. A 30ft cable should suffice to emulate most cables on the market, from the nicer “low” capacitance cables (still around 20pf/foot) to the horrible high capacitance cables (up to 60pf per foot!).

And of course you can go down below the lowest low capacitance cable on the market, with the turn of that same knob, to get tones the others have never even imagined!

So there you go. Emulate $$$ worth of passive guitar cables with an inexpensive ZEROCAP VC system. You only have to know how to turn a knob!