For those more trivial tech room questions that don't warrant a whole thread. I hope folks find this thread useful, I've got so much good information from the PRF. Salut!

Guess I should kick this megajam into hyperdrive. So...Q: is there any reason I shouldn't use RCA cables for guitar? It seems to take the signal fine, using RCA-1/4" adapters. Want to use it for an effects loop where I can't spare the multiple instrument cables. Thanks in advance, I'll take my answer off the air.

Here's something I've always wondered that I didn't think needed a whole thread:Why is the tape loop in a Space Echo all loose and jumbled rather than sitting taut on a series of reels and such?

SecondEdition wrote:Can anyone tell me what this guitar effect is and what it's supposed to do? I know Martin Moscrop from ACR used it on the band's early (and obviously best) stuff (he told me so), but I have no idea what the thing does.From everything in those reviews, it looks to me like VCF stands for Voltage Controlled Filter, so it's probably an ASDR envelope of some sort. That would be my guess.

That would be my guess. The second reviewer at the link seems to agree.

They will break and be noisier. Spend the money on a couple short 1/4" guitar cables.

tarandfeathers wrote:Here's mine: the A820 and A827 have a reverse record function, but there's no second erase head on the take-up side of the record head. If you want to record something backwards, do you have to use blank tape or manually/spot erase the section to be recorded on before you start?Good point! I haven't ever use the reverse function on one of those machines, we had one at school but I never thought of that.

Thanks!

Most quality guitar cables have a conductive PVC layer around between the insulation of the lead and the shielding to help prevent microphonic noise as they move around. I would say that if it were being fixed in a pedal board then this would'nt be as much of an issue. You can roll your own .25 cables for next to nothing and get the exact lengths you need.

If it sounds and works ok for a bodge, then I suppose it's ok. Not something I'd do permanently.The cable will probably have worse specs than guitar cable with respect to screening (leading to noise) and possibly capacitance, but this is less of an issue for use in an effects loop.