How to measure the capacitance from guitar cable - Custom Boards pedalboard builder's guide (2018)

Video is shot and edited by Marco Menestrina.

[GabrielSkolderblad]

Can you measure the total capacitance of the pedal board? I did this today to figure out where to put my buffer in my board. I placed my buffer at the end of the chain and measured the end of the cable that came out of the buffer which is supposed to have an output of 100ohms. The capacitance was so high I couldn't measure it with my meter. Is it supposed to be a really high capacitance right after the buffer?

[basickarl]

Is a higher or lower nF value better, I find it weird noone ever mentions this.

[ZacGear]

For the curious minds - the 4.06 nF his meter reads = 4060 pF or 4044± minus the initial buffer, about 161.7± pF/m. 46% increase over the 1m cable. . . or 3900% total increase. I've only started building gear and from my tests as well it seems interesting to note the exponential differences in capacitance over cable lengths even given the same cable.

[waynegram]

If you disconnect the shield on only one end of the cable does the capacitance go UP or down? this is called directional guitar cables when you do this

[vyoufinder]

Ok, only one thing you don't tell me that I need to know in this fine video: how do I setup my multimeter to do this? Or do I need a special capacitance meter? For people like me, learning electronics decades too late, how to setup for testing? Nobody's telling that part on YouTube. I guess it's assumed you know basics about elecronics already. And since I can't read... How about a quick video showing us that part?

What about cable wire gauge? Does it affect the capacitance? quad core vs. dual core? IF I know wtf I am doing, I can test this myself.

[donamac]

wrong.
in the short lengths you're testing here, the two plugs can easily have more capacitance than high grade cable. -hence your similar readings from different types of cable ;-) a more realistic procedure: -measure a cable, with and without (identical !) plugs to determine the plugs effect, then subtract that from your cable measurements. b, then use at least 5-6 meters of cable to measure capacitance more accurately ;-)

[taab]

Sorry, I've never ever heard of "cents" as a unit of of measurement for length. Did you mean centimetres? To the best of my knowledge, cents is a unit of measurement for pitch and intonation of a musical note when using a guitar tuner (and also as a denomination of monetary currency), but not a term for measurement of length in the metric system. This video just doesn't make 'sense'.