Cabling may seem like a minor detail, but getting it right is critical for attaining interference-free sound. A big part of having a good signal chain is using the best guitar cables. These high-quality cables let you avoid hum, noise, and frequency loss, ensuring your signal stays clean and uninterrupted for a better playing experience.
Here, we present you with what the market considers the best quality and most reliable guitar cables, based on actual reviews and ratings, including the most recent ones.
Note that we mainly feature the 10-foot version of each cable to make it easy to compare prices. Still, each cable is available in multiple lengths, and the ratings we have provided represent the combined ratings for all lengths of each cable that are longer than patch cable length.
Straight to Straight | Straight to Straight Product Image | Product Title | *GEARANK | **Sources | Check Prices |
 | 96 | 8700+ | |||
 | 95 | 3775+ | |||
 | 95 | 1350+ |
Straight to Right Angle | Straight to Right Angle Product Image | Product Title | *GEARANK | **Sources | Check Prices |
 | 97 | 475+ | |||
 | 96 | 1250+ |
*Gearank = Rating score out of 100.
**Sources = Number of gear owner and user opinions analyzed for these product Gearank Ratings.
Research Process: How Gearank Works
Since you’ve worked hard to perfect your sound, it makes sense to use cables that can handle the job. So, don’t settle for the first cheap guitar cable that you can get your hands on.
Here, we present you with what the market considers the best quality and most reliable guitar cables, based on actual reviews and ratings, including the most recent ones.
These guitar cable deals are sorted into two main categories. Straight-to-straight plug and straight-to-right angle plug. This way, you have an option for the guitar cord format that works best for you.
These instrument cables are also suitable for other instruments like acoustic-electric guitars and bass guitars. So, if you’re looking for the best bass guitar cable, you’re still in the right place.
It’s also wise to keep a backup cable in case of any issues. And just like your main cable, don’t settle for anything less than the best guitar cables.
Straight to Straight
A straight-to-straight electric guitar cord/cable features two straight connectors at both ends. Straight-to-straight guitar cables are ideal for setups where space isn’t an issue. They provide a reliable and straightforward connection that delivers optimal signal quality without the need for bending or adjusting the cable.
Cheapest
Fender Professional Series
The Fender Professional is the best buy guitar cable. It offers affordability, clear tone, and Fender’s quality craftsmanship.
Pros:
- Cheap
- Quiet operation
- Sturdy, flexible PVC jacket
- Sealed soldering and Reliable plugs
- No twisting and kinking
- Heavy
- Prone to tangling
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The Fender Professional Series cable sticks to a conventional design but is built with good-quality materials.
This cable features a 22 AWG wire with 95% OFC spiral shielding, ensuring a clear signal with minimal interference.
It is protected by an 8-mm PVC jacket that is durable and flexible. But the thicker jacket adds some weight.
The nickel-plated connectors on both ends are durable. It has sealed solder joints for long-lasting performance.
Despite being the cheapest on this list, this instrument cable effectively transmits your guitar signal with minimal external interference.
It has a warm, vintage sound quality and a sturdy build, reducing the chances of twisting and kinking.
The Fender Professional Series cable offers reliable durability, reflecting Fender’s established craftsmanship.
- Material: 22 AWG
- Shielding: 95% OFC Spiral Shielding
- Covering: 8-mm PVC jacket
- Available Lengths: Available Lengths: 5′ | 10′ | 15′ | 18.6′ | 20′
- Other features: Nickel-plated Connectors
Classic Style
GLS Audio Tweed
The GLS Audio Tweed is the best guitar cord if you’re looking for a combination of affordability, decent durability, and a classic style.
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Pros:
- Tweed vintage-style cloth wrap
- Easy access solder joints
- Good balance of value and quality
- Reliable cable, particularly when stored properly (coiled)
- Standard shielding
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GLS Audio was originally a guitar amplifier manufacturer in the mid-1960s. Now, they are recognized for producing affordable cables and accessories.
The Tweed reflects this, combining functional design with reasonable pricing.
This cable features two insulator shields. First is an OFC insulator and PVC conductive shields encased in a braided tweed cloth jacket.
However, the specific details of the shielding are not provided. This means it might not offer sufficient protection in areas with heavy interference. However, it’s still suitable for most guitar performance venues like smaller club gigs and for home practice.
The cable’s cotton tweed wrap gives it a vintage look, complementing older amplifiers. The soft exterior protects the internal wiring and reduces issues like kinking. This also makes it easy to handle and store.
The cable is solidly constructed, including its plug and solder joints.
The accessible soldering makes it easy to inspect and maintain. However, over time, the original joints may weaken depending on usage.
- Material: OFC Copper
- Shielding: Double Insulator Shielding
- Covering: Braided Tweed Cloth Jacket
- Available Lengths: 6′ | 10′ | 15′ | 20′
- Other features: Heat Shrink Strain Relief
Top Notch Quality
Mogami Gold Straight to Straight
The Mogami Gold is widely known as the best electric guitar cable for its exceptional sound fidelity and reliability. It ensures optimal signal transfer, making it a top choice for musicians.
Pros:
- High-quality construction
- Great clarity
- Excellent resistance to interference
- Minimal handling noise, even with tube amps
- Expensive
- Somewhat rigid
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Mogami is recognized for producing high-quality guitar cables, with the Mogami Gold cable being one of the brand’s top offerings.
This cable is built with an oxygen-free copper core designed for transparency in sound. Improved clarity is easily noticeable, which can enhance tonal accuracy and detail.
For noise reduction, the Mogami Gold series features a high-density spiral shield with full coverage. It is supported by a conductive polymer subshield.
It also includes carbon-impregnated PVC for dual shielding, minimizing handling noise and interference.
These features provide a quiet, interference-free performance that is suitable for live and studio environments. When used with a noise gate, it further reduces unwanted noise.
However, Mogami Gold cables do come with a higher price tag and are less flexible than standard cables due to the enhanced shielding.
But they offer a lifetime warranty, ensuring long-term reliability. They’re also known to produce the most durable guitar cable, making this a worthy investment.
- Material: 20 AWG OFC Conductor
- Shielding: Spiral Shielding
- Covering: Carbon-impregnated PVC
- Available Lengths: Available Lengths: 6′ | 10′ | 18′ | 25′
- Other features: Conductive Polymer Sub-Shield
Straight to Right Angle
A straight-to-right-angle electric guitar cord/cable has one straight and one right-angle connector. This design is useful for connecting electric guitars or basses to amplifiers or effects pedals in tight spaces. The right-angle connector helps reduce strain on the cable and keeps it from sticking out too far. It provides a reliable connection while ensuring a neat setup similar to a cable tie connection.
Durability
Boss BIC-10A
The Boss BIC-10A is designed for musicians seeking dependable guitar cable with tank-tough durability.
Pros:
- Durable exterior
- High-quality plugs and construction, similar to premium cables
- Clear and well-defined sound
- Operates quietly
- Compact design
- Not designed for user repairs
- Sealed plugs
- Tends to tangle easily
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Known for their pedals, Boss also produces this high quality instrument cable that can withstand the rigors of stage use.
The same build quality is reflected in the Boss BIC-10A. This guitar cord features a multi-strand conductor, shielded by a braided copper outer jacket and a PVC inner jacket.
The cableโs construction includes braided OFC shielding with 95% coverage and a polyethylene insulator.
This helps minimize interference, ensuring quiet operation even in tough environments.
The multi-strand conductor of this Boss instrument cable delivers a clean sound with more detail than standard, lower-cost cables.
Its multi-strand conductor and molded jacks make it difficult to repair or modify.
But, Boss offers a lifetime warranty, reflecting their confidence in the product’s longevity.
- Material: Multi-strand OFC conductor
- Shielding: High-density braided shielding
- Covering: Woven Cable Jacket
- Available Lengths: Available Lengths: 5′ | 10′ | 15′ | 20′
Overall Quality
Mogami Gold Straight to Right Angle
The Mogami Gold is the best guitar cable, offering the superior sound quality and minimal interference that Mogami is known for. Its space-saving right-angle format makes it an excellent choice for tight setups.
Pros:
- Premium quality construction
- Compact design
- Enhances instrument dynamics
- Produces clear sound
- Effectively reduces buzzes, clicks, pops, and crackles
- Comes with a lifetime warranty
- Expensive
- Slightly rigid
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Mogami cables are a top choice among musicians despite their higher price. The investment is justified by the outstanding sound quality and reliability they offer.
Switching from a standard cable to a Mogami Gold cable reveals its remarkable transparency and signal clarity.
This is thanks to its high quality oxygen-free copper conductor, which enhances tone precision and richness.
Mogami is renowned for producing high-end cables, often used by top artists like Slash, Fleetwood Mac, Pearl Jam, Prince, and Foo Fighters.
Like all the Mogami Gold variations, this cable features advanced shielding with high-density copper spirals and a carbon-impregnated PVC layer.
It’s a design that reduces interference and handling noise. This provides a top notch performance ideal for both studio and live performances.
However, the increased insulation makes them less flexible. But Mogami Gold is still the most durable guitar cable in this guide. They’re also backed by a lifetime warranty.
Though expensive, the Mogami Gold Series delivers exceptional performance and reliability. For this reason, they’re a top choice for those seeking professional-grade guitar cables.
- Material: 20 AWG OFC
- Shielding: High-Density Spiral Shielding
- Covering: Carbon-impregnated PVC Jacket
- Available Lengths: Available Lengths: 6′ | 10′ | 18′ | 25′
- Other features: Conductive Polymer Sub-Shield
Things to Consider When Buying the Best Instrument Cable
Cable Length and Capacitance
In general, the shorter the distance your guitar signal travels, the better the audio transparency. It helps prevent high-frequency loss. Ideally, you want to use the shortest cable possible to minimize capacitance without limiting your movement on stage. This not only provides a clearer guitar tone but also helps reduce cable clutter and the risk of tangling.
However, low capacitance and a clearer tone aren’t always preferred. Many classic recordings were made with older cable technology, similar to today’s inexpensive cables. Some guitar players actually prefer the slight high-end roll-off of cheaper rather than the clarity of the best cables. Longer coiled cables are also similar to cheaper cables that increase in length without adding clutter.
Keep in mind, though, that cable length and capacitance have little impact if you’re using active pickups or buffered pedals between your setup and the amplifier. This is why the experienced guitar player will often have a buffered pedal in their signal chain.
It may also be worth exploring the ABY switch, which allows you to split your input signal into two paths.
Cable Conductor
When looking at the specs of a guitar cable, the cable conductor is the most important item.
Most cables have Oxygen-free copper (OFC) conductor, which refers to a higher-purity copper commonly used in good guitar cables. The general belief is that the purer the copper, the better the signal transparency, which is why OFC cores are found in most cables. Some cables even use silver, which is more conductive than copper, but these are more expensive and impractical for guitars.
There are two main types of conductors: solid and stranded. Solid conductors are cheaper but more prone to breakage, leading to signal loss or degradation. Stranded conductors, on the other hand, are more flexible and durable. They offer better signal chain transmission even when bent. Premium cables often use finer copper strands for increased flexibility and reliability. However, this is more difficult and expensive to produce, which is where cheap cables tend to compromise.
Cable Shielding
Shielding in guitar cables protects against interference. The least expensive option is foil shielding. This is a fragile shielding and offers minimal security, even potentially affecting sound quality. Higher-end cables often use braid shielding. This is a more flexible and durable method that offers superior protection against radio frequency (RF) and electromagnetic (EM) interference.
Plug Joint
The area where the actual cable connects to the plug is prone to failure, especially in lower-quality cables. A high quality cable features better soldering, and some even have solderless joints for easier maintenance. Cheaper guitar cables, like the generic amazon cables, may have weak joints that can easily lose connection or break. Strain relief helps prevent damage from improper bending. But, it won’t protect against sudden tugs, such as tripping over the cable. Over time, even durable cables will fail at the joint. This makes serviceability a key factorโespecially if you need to cut and reattach the plug after a break.
Plug Shape and Type
Instrument cables use a TS (Tip Sleeve) Plug to transmit mono unbalanced signals. Whether you choose a straight or angled plug depends on your instrument. Straight plugs are compatible with most guitars, amps, and pedals but can be vulnerable to accidental bending. Angled plugs are more discreet and ideal for top-mounted output jacks, like those on a Gibson ES-335. Although, they may not fit recessed outputs like on a Stratocaster. Some players prefer cables with one straight and one angled plug for more flexibility. While some manufacturers claim plug material impacts tone, this is debated. All cables in the recommended list have sturdy plugs designed for durability with proper care.
Gold-plated connectors are often preferred for their superior conductivity.
Best Guitar Cables Selection Methodology
The first edition was published in 2016.
We reviewed ยผ” TS to ยผ” TS (Tip-Sleeve) instrument cables with straight-to-straight or straight-to-right-angle audio connector types, available from major online retailers in the USA. From this, we shortlisted 48 promising options to rate, which you can find in our Music Gear Database. Some popular cables that were once featured in this guide include the D’Addario Planet Waves American Stage, Evidence Audio’s Lyric HG, George L’s, Monster Cable, and the Hosa GTR cable.
Speaker cables were not included, as they serve a different purpose.
Many cables are available in various lengths. So we combined the ratings for all lengths of a given cable, from 3 feet and longer, to create a Gearank Rating applicable to all sizes, not just the 10-foot versions listed. Shorter patch cables are rated separately in another guide: Best Patch Cables & Pedal Couplers.
We gathered user feedback on 48 instrument cables from over 68,400 sources, including store ratings, reviews, and forum discussions. This data was processed using the Gearank Algorithm to generate a rating out of 100 for each cable.
Finally, we recommend the highest-rated cables in each category: Straight to straight and straight to right angle.
For details on our methods, see How Gearank Works.
About the Author and Contributors
Here are the key people and sources involved in this guide’s production – click on linked names for information about their music industry backgrounds.
Lead Author & Researcher
I haven’t had to worry about cables for a while now, thanks to the super dependable sound tech who manages our Church Sound System. He makes and maintains the custom-made cables that we use. But for my personal use, I still go for ready-made straight-to-right angle cables, and my current favorite is the Ernie Ball Braided Instrument Cable, for which I wrote an expert review.
Contributors
Jerome Arcon: Research and Supplemental Writing.
Alden Acosta: Product research.
Jason Horton: Editing and Illustrating.
Media / Image Credit
Main/Top Image: By Gearank.com compiled using images of the Mogami Gold and Musician’s Gear Tweed Straight to Right Angle cables.
The individual product images were sourced from websites, promotional materials, or supporting documentation provided by their respective manufacturers, except for the Ernie Ball Braided photos with the Gearank logo, which were taken by the author.
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Comments:
17 responses
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The following cables came off our recommended list above when we published the September 2022 Edition:
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Publication of our October 2021 Edition resulted in the following cables coming off the recommended list above:
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Our November 2020 update resulted in the following cables coming off our recommended list above, but you can still read our analysis of them:
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Today we removed the following cable due to it being discontinued: Fender Performance Series Instrument Guitar Cable.
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As a result of our October 2019 update the following cables came off the recommended list above, but you can still read our analysis of them:
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Today we removed the following cable from the recommended list above due to a lack of availability: Monster Classic Coiled Instrument Guitar Cable .
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I use Chord Company Cream Instrument cables a shielded twisted pair design rather than a coax design and are very happy I’ve changed to them.
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Same here Tone. I began using Cream Cable as a live Sound Engineer 12 years ago. I now use nothing else as they are exceptionally reliable. I’ve saved a lot of money by not replacing cables regularly.
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I have been using Chord Company Cream Instrument Cable for over 10 years. They sound exceptionally detailed and are very durable. I still use the original cables I bought over 10 years ago. They should be mentioned in my opinion.
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They certainly should be mentioned, Robin. No Brand mystique, just fit for purpose. My job made easier. What a refreshing change.
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If you move at all and looove knotted cables by all means buy the braided ones.
I build my own using Beldon cable bought in bulk and Neutrik nys224g’s.
Because $55 for a 10 ft cable is just insane.Monster makes, well, a monster cable for those solder impaired. -
Sadly not enough cables are viewed. Whatever the price, vovox, monsters, follow by high end klotz cables, are the best by a huge margin. However klotz ones seems a bit low shielded and edgy result due to low capacitance unlike monsters cut high frequency for same reasons. Hope you test some soon.
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It has been shown that capacitance is the only thing that alters tone in a cable. Everything else is sometimes subjective or for longevity, interference and various other external reasons.
It would be nice to see the Picofarads Per Foot on all these cables in the review. For example, the top rated cable is 38 Picofarads Per Foot. Even though they advertise that as “very low” is actually is not considered all that low in cables now in the digital world. Many cable makers have said 20-28 is a good place to start for guitar but everyone will hear differences dependent on their equipment used obviously. Nothing wrong with GLS cable, but did just want to point out that fact. -
As a result of our January 2018 update, the following cables were removed from our recommended list:
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Great breakdown! George L makes some of the best guitar cables around! I’m surprised it didn’t rank higher because the difference between George’s cables and the Hosa at the top of the list is night and day!
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George L guitar cables tend to polarize people, many good guitarists swear by them while others say they don’t offer enough extra value to justify the higher prices.
BTW – the list is sorted by price so Hosa isn’t at the ‘top of the list’ in terms of its ratings.
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Instrument Cables
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