UnderTone Audio introduces the Vari-Cap Cable, an instrument cable that lets you adjust cable capacitance in realtime.
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The ability to change cable capacitance lets you virtually change the length of your cable as you perform, which ultimately translates into distinctive changes to the resulting tone.
Being a manufacturer of recording consoles, mic preamps and equalizers, UnderTone Audio knows the importance and effect of cables in the audio equation. And so they came up with a way to give guitarists real-time control over the cable’s capacitance, which is conventionally fixed based on its length.
The press release goes: “After years of frustration trying to match the right cable with a particular guitar and amp combination to really make everything ‘sing’, producer/engineer Eric Valentine and circuit designer Larry Jasper devised a revolutionary solution which allows guitarists to vary the amount of capacitance imparted by the cable, resulting in a MASSIVE influence on the overall tone.”
Getting tone variation from a cable maybe overkill for some but it can be valuable in making subtle tone adjustments especially when you’re playing at different venues. I can see it being used to add warmth, or to reduce brightness without using EQ and the like.
The Vari-Cap cable comes with a switching mechanism that lets you select between 16 different cable “tones” via a rotary switch. This capacitance variation interacts with the inductance of the pickups of your instrument, which results in noticeable tone changes. Undertone Audio designed Vari-Cap to switch from low 150pF to 1,650 pF, in 100 pF increments.
Check out the Vari-Cap Cable in action below:
The Vari-Cap Cable is currently retailing for $99.95, and it features Neutrik 1/4″ connectors. For more information and to place your order, you can visit Undertone Audio.
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