Meter for measuring cable capacitance


Hello! I looking for a recommendation for a suitable capacitance meter. I own a Fluke 117 and although it has settings to measure capacitance, it doesn’t read cable(guitar cable) capacitance. Just reads “1” regardless of cable length. Not sure if this is because it doesn’t have a pico farad setting. Not sure. 
 

Thanks in advance!

ajd7531

Measure by putting a known capacitor (value) across the end of the cable and subtracting its value from the total.

I use an Excelvan M6013 for measuring capacitance of both guitar and audio cables.  It is inexpensive and available from Amazon.

The meter is a useful tool.  I’ve found guitar cable capacitance to noticeable affect the sound, especially direct into an amp. For reference, I primarily play a Telecaster into Fender amps.

@ajd7531 -

       One nice thing about Amazon: if it doesn't work for you, whatever the reason, you can return it.                                    

My question is: Why be concerned about only capacitance? Why not overall impedance, especially since capacitance’s effect on the sound of your instrument is likely to be only one factor in an RLC circuit formed by your cabling, electronics & instrument.

I’d guess -- and this is just a SWAG - that in the OP's use case, even guitar pickups could have a relatively high value of inductance that overwhelms the effect of differences in capacitance.

Maybe! It could easily work the other way. But without hard numbers for all three components of the impedance that your amp sees, it’s all a crap shoot. You may hear various differences when you vary certain elements in the signal path, but a real engineer’s approach would be to quantify the relevant parameters before trying to infer, from empirical results only, a model that has predictive capabilities.