SureTone Cables

(4 customer reviews)

Perfect for Keyboard, Synth, MIDI, Bass, Guitar & Pedals.

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Hear the Difference

  • Enhanced touch sensitivity
  • Longer sustain
  • Sweet clean tones
  • Overdrive gains bite
  • Improved note separation
  • Pedals sound better
  • Bigger dynamics

Here’s Why

  • Unique thin-wire design delivers quicker, stronger attacks and warmer, deeper bass
  • Oxygen-free, ultra-pure copper wire and shielding unleashes the purest tone
  • Super-thin Teflon jacket minimizes energy loss, clarifies overtones and lengthens sustain
  • New slender ¼” plug design minimizes energy absorbing plastic and uses thin, pure brass to eliminate sound degrading gold plating
  1. One end of the SureTone cable is marked with a silver dot; plug that end into your instrument for your initial listening. Our cable is definitely directional and does not sound the same when reversed in direction. We do encourage you to listen to the cable in both orientations; you may find that for certain kinds of music you prefer the sound when the cable is reversed.
  2. The cable’s sound will definitely improve as it breaks in. You will hear it get even smoother, cleaner and warmer as you build up the hours of playing, with about 150 to 200 hours of time required to reach peak performance. If you want quicker break in, plug the silver dot end into a music source, say a tuner or CD player on repeat. Use an RCA male to 1/4” female adapter to plug in. Connect the other end of our cable to your instrument amp (or to a PA or hifi amp; the amp doesn’t need to be on) and just let the music source play continuously until you’ve built up the hours you want.
  3. To ensure longevity of the cable, always disconnect by gripping the plug, not by pulling on the wire.
  4. The SureTone cable design deliberately uses unplated brass plugs because any plating—whether gold, silver, rhodium or nickel plating—will somewhat degrade sound quality. The brass will darken with age with minimal effect on sound. For players who want the last iota of good tone, we recommend polishing the brass plugs every 6 months with either a) a paste of lemon juice and baking soda; b) Flitz metal polish; or c) 0000 superfine steel wool.
  5. Whenever possible, keep the wire cable a few inches away from any plastic, including artificial fiber rugs and plastic speaker/electronics covers or plastic chairs or other wire bundles. The adverse dielectric absorption effect of any significant mass of plastic near the cable is very audible—and this holds true for any cable, not just ours.

TECHNICAL COMPARISON OF THIN VERSUS THICK CABLES

How can Mapleshade’s cable be so thin but sound so good?

The simplest answer is that our SureTone cable makes your instruments sound so good because it is so thin, by design. Conventional cables sound much duller and more compressed because they are ridiculously, needlessly thick. Why are SureTone invariably preferred in listening comparisons? For three principal technical reasons, based on our thirty years of meticulous design-by-ear experiments:

  • Our thin copper conductors sound cleaner and have better bass and treble than thick conductors. Technically speaking, this is because thin wires have less signal-distorting “skin effect”, as is well understood by microwave engineers and physicists. Skin effect delays low frequency tones relative to high frequency tones, thus smearing the crisp attack and sustain of each note or chord. Our copper wire is 3 to 5 times thinner than conventional cable conductors, thereby delivering much lower skin effect and punchier, much more transparent tone.
  • Since there is no such thing as a perfect insulator, all wire insulation absorbs or “steals” energy from the cable’s electrical signal currents—thus compressing and smearing the sound of the instrument. Twice as much mass of insulation steals twice as much energy. Our ultra-thin insulation design has 10 to 20 times less mass than the thick plastic insulation used on conventional cables. That removes a major cause of dull, indistinct tone.
  • The quality of our cable’s conductor and insulator materials has a major effect in further enhancing the clarity and dynamics of your instrument’s sound. The high purity copper wire we specify for our cable contains less than 1/10th of the principal impurity found in the copper used by conventional cables. The energy absorption of any insulating material is measured by the dielectric absorption factor; our polypropylene and Teflon insulation’s dielectric absorption is 15 times less than the cheap polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic that insulates almost all conventional instrument cables.

 

Why do engineers insist that thin cables can’t possibly sound good?

Conventional electronic engineers—those who invariably reject listening tests as too “subjective”—are quick to assert that sine wave measurements are the indisputable scientific proof that thin cables must sound inferior to thick ones. But their alleged theory is invalid: their measurements are precise but irrelevant.  Consistently disproven by rigorous listening tests, the conventional theory rests on two eighty year old measurement assumptions still taught in electronic engineering schools:

  • First, that audio measurements based on sine wave test signals allegedly predict whether a loudspeaker, amplifier, microphone or cable sounds good or bad.
  • Secondly, that capacitance (i.e. energy storage) and resistance supposedly are the only measurements important for predicting whether one cable sounds better or worse than another.

The conventional electronic engineering theory built on these two old assumptions claims that cables with high capacitance will sound dull with diminished, rolled off treble—and that cables with high resistance will sound thin with weakened bass.

So to lower the capacitance of their conventional cables, engineers design their cables with increased diameters (because the larger the separation between the cable’s center conductor and its outer shield, the less the stored energy). To decrease the resistance of their cables, traditional engineers increase the thickness of their conductor wires.

This way, engineers can sell their thick cables by advertising impressive measurements from sine wave tests. But their theory only looks good on paper; it doesn’t enhance your listening experience unless your care more about hearing sine waves rather than music.

The latest neurological research shows that the human brain’s highly sophisticated processing of  complex musical sounds means that testing with artificially smooth sine waves simply is not useful for predicting what sounds good to the ear.

Even worse, cables, loudspeakers, amplifiers and microphones respond entirely differently to the infinite complexity of real music test signals than to the synthesized smoothness of sine waves—as shown in thousands of published listening + measurement tests of audio equipment, tests in which the music listening results contradict the sine wave measurement predictions.

Without delving into the fascinating mathematical and physical details of why sine waves can never approximate the astonishing complexities of music tones or why real electronic components respond so differently to complex tones versus smooth sine waves, you can confirm for yourself the fallacy of  the conventional engineer’s predictions for cables by the following simple experiment:

  • Borrow the thickest standard instrument cable you can find.
  • If you have the right meters, measure the actual capacitance and resistance of both our thin cable and the conventional thick one. You will certainly find that the thicker cable has lower capacitance and lower resistance than our very thin SureTone.
  • Plug in your electric guitar or keyboard and play each cable for one minute. If possible, get a panel of listeners to participate in the experiment.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, you and each listening panel member will agree that the thin SureTone cable, with its “too high” capacitance and resistance, has satisfyingly better-sounding bass and treble—as well as better dynamics, clearer overtones and cleaner attacks.

In simple terms, so much for the cable predictions of conventional electrical engineers.

Our Money Back Guarantee

Please read the instructions and use our products as directed prior to return since this is critical for optimal results. If you cannot hear, see or feel the difference after trying our products as per the instructions you may return it within 30 days to the place of purchase for a refund. The returned item must be undamaged and unmarred with all original packaging and instructions intact and included.

To return an item:

1. Please contact your original place of purchase for returns or for a shipping address if sending the item by mail or parcel service. You will need to have a copy of your sales receipt. Please include a note giving the reasons for the return.

2.  Please pack the product to be returned with great care. The product must be returned undamaged and unmarred with all original packaging and instructions intact in like-new condition.  Be sure to include a copy of your receipt and your name, address, e-mail and phone number for processing of the refund.

3. We encourage customers to send the return using a trackable shipping method.  It is your responsibility to ensure the returned item arrives to your authorized dealer undamaged.  MMSG will not accept responsibility for returned items that are lost or damaged during shipping.  Once received, your return will be processed your authorized dealer will issue your refund promptly.  

Warranty

We are very proud of the engineering and manufacturing quality of our remarkable products. Therefore, Mapleshade Music & Studio Gear, LLC warrants for a period of One (1) Year from the date of purchase when purchased from an authorized reseller. We will replace, without charge, any product that proves to be defective in materials or workmanship if it is returned to the original authorized reseller with the original receipt.

The warranty does not cover defects that are the result of an accident, misuse, contact with solvent chemicals or malfunction caused by other audio equipment. We are not responsible for damage that is caused by user abuse or by the product being used for what is not intended (for example do not use an instrument cable as a speaker cable; it will overheat and possibly damage your amplifier.).

The warranty excludes all incidental or consequential damages.

To activate our warranty, the product must be returned (with the original receipt) at the purchaser’s expense to the original authorized reseller or place of purchase.

You will receive a replacement as soon as it is confirmed there are defects in materials or workmanship.

Warranty Exceptions

The One (1) Year warranty does not apply to any Mapleshade Music & Studio Gear, LLC product that has been self-repaired or altered in any way. The warranty excludes any external damage and/or normal wear and tear to the product

4 reviews for SureTone Cables

  1. Charles Chadwick (verified owner)

    Amazing! Incredible. Gives great hope for the future of music. Excellent!

  2. Charles Chadwick (verified owner)

    Amazing! Incredible. Gives great hope for the future of music.

  3. Charles Chadwick (verified owner)

    Amazing! I have found what I was looking for. Surpasses expectations!

  4. Charles Chadwick (verified owner)

    Great!

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If you have a question about our product, please use the form below and we will get back to you

    For questions and technical support, please contact:

    Richard Casey
    ‭(845) 241-3103‬
    info@mmsgstore.com