Cable question HELP

I need some monitor cables for my pa. I went to monoprice and they have 25 ft cable at a good price with the 1/4" ends that I need. I seen that it says the ends are sheilded. I thought you weren't supposed to use sheilded cable for speakers. I contacted their tec support about it and the answer I got was "I use them with my pa with no problems". Should I stay away from these or would the not hurt anything?????

Isn't more of a problem to use non-shielded cables for instruments?

When it comes to speaker and instrument cables, I get confused - I know one kind of cable can be used in either application in a pinch, but the other can't be. I think the former is instrument, and the latter is speaker.

Speakers, anything is good. (lampcord)

More professional , the better of course...the thicker gauge, also.
14-12...

Hate speakon ends, but, sometimes you need them.

John Phillips01-23-2003, 11:47 AM
Two fundamentally different types of system.

Guitar cables are 'signal cables' and only have to handle very tiny currents, and must be shielded to prevent noise getting into the system. All the cables between the guitar and the amp, including any between effects and any in the amp's effects loop, need to be this type.

Speaker cables are 'power cables' and need to handle large currents, but don't need shielding.

You can't safely use a guitar cable for a speaker cable, because the fine conductors in this type of cable won't be able to stand the high currents and may simply melt - or damage the insulation and short out. There is also a risk to the amp even if the cable survives - because a shielded cable has quite a lot of internal capacitance, it can interfere with the correct loading of the amp.

You can safely use a speaker cable as guitar cable, but you will get a terrible hum and buzz problem because there is no shielding.

Actually, you can use guitar cables for signal connections to and from a mixing board, but not PA speakers.

This is really a 'historic' problem caused by the same type of connectors being used for both purposes... if they had entirely different plugs, no-one would worry about mixing them up! This is one reason I like to use gray or orange power cable for my speaker cables - you aren't going to mistake them for signal leads or vice versa.

All 1/4-in jacks are "shielded" but you must make sure you have speaker cable there, not a signal cable stage lead.

Most bought speaker cables heave "speaker" or "SPK" printed on them.

However if you are carrying signal to self-powered PA speakers (many monitors are), then you do want co-ax signal cable.

It is not the shield that is the problem with speaker cable, it is the size of the conductors in the usual shielded cable. You can get shielded cable with multiple 12 AWG conductors in it, and that would work just fine, unnecessary, but it would work great. Shielding usually is not necessary because the impedance is so low. It is the size of the conductors that is important, not the shields. At anything under 100w and 25', any wire bigger then 18 AWG will be fine. As stated, lamp cord works fine in lower power situations, but it is not very rugged,