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RCA-6.5 cable adapters are friend or foe?

PostPosted: Fri Jan 21, 2011 6:56 pm
by Ryan Collings
So I'm on to the next phase of my busking rig which is power & cabling. For reasons I won't go into, I needed some cables right away so I hastily purchased some digitech RCA cables from jaycar along with some RCA-6.5mm adapters. I know what you're thinking "RCA!? WTF!?" but I have no choice as I'm running 2 korg kaoss pads which use RCA... 

These cables are cheap as price-wise: $5.50 each plus $1.75 for each adapter. 

Ideally though i'd prefer to have some cables made up sans adapters which match the quality of the rest of my chain... But maybe these digitech cables are ok? As far as RCA goes they look pretty legit but the use of adapters is making my junk-dar go off. 
 
Anyone care to offer some advice? I can get a refund on the cables if I act fast.

Thanks in advance :)

- Ryan  

Re: RCA-6.5 cable adapters are friend or foe?

PostPosted: Fri Jan 21, 2011 9:49 pm
by DarkSky
I have had relatively little experience with Digitech gear or cables, but none of it has been good. So I'm afraid my junkdar would be going off before I even got to considering the adapters. Sorry.

FWIW, Jaycar sell decent all-metal RCA and 6.5 plugs, and IIRC, some reasonable quality (and heavy) fig-8 coax cable. If I were you, I'd grab those and spend 15mins with a soldering iron (or if your soldering skills aren't up to snuff, take a couple of cold ones to a friend whose are). You'll end up with a cable that is streets ahead of anything that says Digitech on it IMO. :-B

Re: RCA-6.5 cable adapters are friend or foe?

PostPosted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 5:27 pm
by rob
here's the first question: do the cables you bought work?

If so and if you don't require extra heavy duty robust cables that you can drive the tractor over or aren't squeezing every last drop of performance out of a very high end critical audio system, then maybe what you have is just fine!

Re: RCA-6.5 cable adapters are friend or foe?

PostPosted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 7:03 pm
by Ben M
Hey Ryan

Do the said cables feel substantial? Or woosy? You know....are you happy to hold them or do you feel unsatisfied when they are in you hand?
I wouldn't have many probs with the adaptors. They will just be a direct extension of the cable.

I can't imagine the sound being drastically different between adapted cables and non adapted in your busking setup.

BTW...............PLAY SOME CHISEL!
Does that sound familiar? :D


cheers
Ben

Re: RCA-6.5 cable adapters are friend or foe?

PostPosted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 7:09 pm
by Ben M
Haha

Love the Junk-dar!

There'll be much junk-dar over the years. It's just the way to meet your needs when they need meeting.

All the best.

Ben

Re: RCA-6.5 cable adapters are friend or foe?

PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 9:55 am
by Ryan Collings
Thanks for the advice y'all!

The RCA with adapters seems fine so far...

To be honest I'm having more trouble with the crappy headroom of the Korg min-kp...

Re: RCA-6.5 cable adapters are friend or foe?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 9:05 am
by Drumstruck
I find RCA-TS adaptors work well - esp. if you gaff them up.

TS-RCA adaptors, on the other hand, are pretty poor.... but a bit of gaff helps..... GAFF ^:)^

Re: RCA-6.5 cable adapters are friend or foe?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 2:27 pm
by stosostu