Monster Cable: Not With a Bang but a Whimper

[mtrycrafts]

I love BJC!! Hey when are u guys going to start making power cables...?

Why do you need one? The dog chewed yours to bits?

 

[fmw]

Wow. That one wins my 2008 BIA (Breathtaking Inanity Award).

It also makes my point, as I have said in a couple of places now, that there is no point in being afraid to be sued. One can get sued for the silliest of reasons--the thing to fear is not litigation, but meritorious litigation.

Sorry, I've got to disagree with you there. Litigation is expensive whether the suit has merit or not. I was sued last year. My lawyer told me he was 95% sure I would win the suite because it had no merit. Unfortunately, litigating it would cost more than the amount of the suit. The complainant and his lawyer knew exactly how to play the game. I settled out of court for money that I had already paid the complainant. Indeed, be very afraid of litigation.

 

[jamie2112]

Sorry, I've got to disagree with you there. Litigation is expensive whether the suit has merit or not. I was sued last year. My lawyer told me he was 95% sure I would win the suite because it had no merit. Unfortunately, litigating it would cost more than the amount of the suit. The complainant and his lawyer knew exactly how to play the game. I settled out of court for money that I had already paid the complainant. Indeed, be very afraid of litigation.

Do you know what Kurt used to do in his former life? He was a lawyer, have you read his response? If anyone has the knowledge to take down that lame a@# company its Kurt.........Get Up Stand Up........

 

[mtrycrafts]

Do you know what Kurt used to do in his former life? He was a lawyer, have you read his response? If anyone has the knowledge to take down that lame a@# company its Kurt.........Get Up Stand Up........

I am sure fms has read Kurt's posts and his past career. Fms is talking to the average joe 6pack who might be intimidated, like he was. Defending yourself has a price tag. One reason so many frivolous suits are settled and not taken to court, costs less no matter how right one may be, unless he has the deep pocket, or is in Kurt's shoes, is a lawyer or has good layer friends

 

[KurtBJC]

Indeed, be very afraid of litigation.

Well, it's sometimes worthwhile to settle litigation because of high costs of defense. But that doesn't justify being afraid of the prospect of litigation. Frivolous litigation can happen to anyone, at any time. My point isn't that vexatious litigation isn't vexatious; my point is that a cool head makes better decisions.

Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable

 

[Ixian]

Been thinking about the power cables question, and it seems the main issue is making claims about performance as if one cable will provide better electricity or lose less in transit or make less noise interference. All of those are BS claims, however to sell them based on reliability such as your mentioned ultrasonic-welding instead of solder/twist-down connection could keep the stink off while still being marketable to people who care are power cords not coming apart at the joints.

Extra functionality would also be a selling point that stays away from voodoo BS, for example a pair of LED's, one at each end, that light up when plugged in so you can know power is going all the way through the cable. It makes troubleshooting easier when something doesn't turn on if you can confirm power is getting to it at a glance, as I've seen enough times where the problem was a dead plug/surge protector/cable/point-of-failure-not-in-the-room so everything visually looked fine and working. Also if it's feasible, a breaker set-up like a surge protector uses could be good as it gives protection for the audio system even if it has to be plugged straight into the wall for some reason and gives an extra barrier if it is already plugged into a surge protector. Having extra points of protection between the wall and the electronics can only help if the lines do get hit hard by lightning. I haven't personally seen any proof, but I have had friends tell me about computers they've seen when they worked at a repair shop that had parts fry despite being on a surge protector (at least that's what the people claimed when they brought the system in, and there wasn't any reason not to believe them). Next, if the system does use an external AC adapter, extra and/or higher quality capacitors will reduce noise in the DC power, so adding a few more than competitors do will let you honestly claim a more stable and noise free power source. This will raise the costs some, but anyone who has taken some electronics classes or has some passing interest in the field will know that you're not speaking the typical voodoo BS other power cable makers engage in. The last value add-in I can think of possibly having in a power cable is to include a battery back up, aimed at people who's audio systems are akin to dedicated audio computers, like the systems that can store and play MP3's or digital video on their own or memorize CDs and keep CD playlists or remember things like where you stopped playing a disk last time and start up there next time it comes up. This last suggestion obviously would raise the cable price a lot, but I have thought at times that it would be nice for some of my more sensitive electronics to have a personal battery back up even when they're already plugged into a UPS.

The battery would be cheaper and easier in the cable with an AC adapter before it and would be even better than extra capacitors if set up right (I believe it would be batteries in parallel with capacitors so the capacitors can act as shunts for the extra power beyond what the batteries can handle). Done in parallel with good capacitors the batteries wouldn't even need to be that big to provide enough time to turn the system off before they die. Likewise, if one way is going to be cheaper and easier, the other must be harder and more expensive. I'm not really sure it would be feasible to put the charger, battery, inverter, and amplifier all together on a cable. The battery would have to be bigger to deal with the loss an inverter introduces, inverters aren't small either, and then it'd have to be run through an amplifier to get the voltage back up to the level the audio system needs to take it. At the least it'd probably mean the cable would have a sort of "blister" where it pops out into a fair sized case housing all the electronics needed to provide the back up power, which would probably be unappealing to aesthetically minded buyers such as the ones that like to get their cables sized accurately down to the inch (not that I'm against that, personally I wish I'd been able to do that with my own electronics on every cable that doesn't goto the UPS, but a number of factors got in the way so I've got a mess of cables behind all my electronics, my thing is I just don't see people that focused on perfect set up being interested in having a cable 2'-6' longer so it can have a hard-case full of weighty electronics down on the ground provide a power back up).

Wow, that was long, sorry bout that, honestly didn't even know I still had all that in me since it's been a long time since I had anything to do with working on circuits/electronics-whatnot. Up-side/Down-side of being able to look up circuit layouts of devices I'd not looked at before while taking too long thinking about the cables.

 

[markw]

Extra functionality would also be a selling point that stays away from voodoo BS, for example a pair of LED's, one at each end, that light up when plugged in so you can know power is going all the way through the cable. It makes troubleshooting easier when something doesn't turn on if you can confirm power is getting to it at a glance, as I've seen enough times where the problem was a dead plug/surge protector/cable/point-of-failure-not-in-the-room so everything visually looked fine and working. Also if it's feasible, a breaker set-up like a surge protector uses could be good as it gives protection for the audio system even if it has to be plugged straight into the wall for some reason and gives an extra barrier if it is already plugged into a surge protector. Having extra points of protection between the wall and the electronics can only help if the lines do get hit hard by lightning. I haven't personally seen any proof, but I have had friends tell me about computers they've seen when they worked at a repair shop that had parts fry despite being on a surge protector (at least that's what the people claimed when they brought the system in, and there wasn't any reason not to believe them). Next, if the system does use an external AC adapter, extra and/or higher quality capacitors will reduce noise in the DC power, so adding a few more than competitors do will let you honestly claim a more stable and noise free power source. This will raise the costs some, but anyone who has taken some electronics classes or has some passing interest in the field will know that you're not speaking the typical voodoo BS other power cable makers engage in. The last value add-in I can think of possibly having in a power cable is to include a battery back up, aimed at people who's audio systems are akin to dedicated audio computers, like the systems that can store and play MP3's or digital video on their own or memorize CDs and keep CD playlists or remember things like where you stopped playing a disk last time and start up there next time it comes up. This last suggestion obviously would raise the cable price a lot, but I have thought at times that it would be nice for some of my more sensitive electronics to have a personal battery back up even when they're already plugged into a UPS.

The battery would be cheaper and easier in the cable with an AC adapter before it and would be even better than extra capacitors if set up right (I believe it would be batteries in parallel with capacitors so the capacitors can act as shunts for the extra power beyond what the batteries can handle). Done in parallel with good capacitors the batteries wouldn't even need to be that big to provide enough time to turn the system off before they die. Likewise, if one way is going to be cheaper and easier, the other must be harder and more expensive. I'm not really sure it would be feasible to put the charger, battery, inverter, and amplifier all together on a cable. The battery would have to be bigger to deal with the loss an inverter introduces, inverters aren't small either, and then it'd have to be run through an amplifier to get the voltage back up to the level the audio system needs to take it. At the least it'd probably mean the cable would have a sort of "blister" where it pops out into a fair sized case housing all the electronics needed to provide the back up power, which would probably be unappealing to aesthetically minded buyers such as the ones that like to get their cables sized accurately down to the inch (not that I'm against that, personally I wish I'd been able to do that with my own electronics on every cable that doesn't goto the UPS, but a number of factors got in the way so I've got a mess of cables behind all my electronics, my thing is I just don't see people that focused on perfect set up being interested in having a cable 2'-6' longer so it can have a hard-case full of weighty electronics down on the ground provide a power back up).

this is a joke, right?

 

[Halon451]

Been thinking about the power cables question

Very good

....to sell them based on reliability while still being marketable to people who care are power cords not coming apart at the joints.

That's about where you should have stopped thinking. What the hell was the rest of that all about??

 

[jamie2112]

What the hell are you talking about Ixian??????

 

[Jack Hammer]

I've come home hammered a few times and typed a lengthy reply that seemed logical as I wrote it. Luckily, I've been fortunate to have re-read it before I posted it and made it public. At which point I decided it'd be better to make a reply when I woke up.

Long night Ixian?

Jack

 

[fmw]

I can't help but wonder if the reputation problem lawyers have isn't related to style rather than substance. Obviously we need laws and people to enforce, interpret and apply them. What we don't need is intimidation and use of the law as a power base.

It was about 4 years ago, if I remember correctly, that I got an intimidating letter from a law firm in Switzerland. Apparently, I was selling a product on one of my web sites that represented a patent infringement of their client's product. Understand, I didn't infringe the patent. I didn't manufacture the product, nor did I import it. I bought it as a retailer for resale. Intimidating me is pretty senseless in this case. My response to the letter was simply a question asking them if they needed the contact information for our local district court so they could bring whatever lawsuit suited their fancy.

They got angry as a flight of hornets whose nest was disturbed and sent all kinds of upgraded intimidation. I ignored it. A couple of weeks later I got a call from a woman at the law firm. She told me they had determined that I wasn't the villain but they wanted me to help them track the product flow back to the origin. I explained to her that, if they had simply asked me to do that in the beginning, I would have been happy to help out. But instead, their rudeness and attempted intimidation made them enemies and I was not interested in helping them at all. I suggested that she talk to the lawyers about manners and human relations and hung up.

Law is a profession. If the lawyers behaved more professionally their profession's standing would improve among the general public. Sorry for the rant. Maybe a lawyer will read it and treat someone with respect. Not likely, though.

 

[KurtBJC]

fmw: I think that it's true that lawyers often harm how they are viewed by being overbearing. Unfortunately, that's sometimes hard to completely avoid as it's often important, when asserting legal rights, to be --well-- assertive.

In the present situation, however, that's not what's going on. Monster Cable filed frivolous litigation against Monster Mini Golf, and if they used all the politeness and grace in the world while doing it, it wouldn't really make the situation any better. It'd be like having a vandal say "excuse me" before spraying graffiti on your property--more polite, but no more pleasant.

Incidentally, if anyone is wondering: Monster still has said and done exactly nothing in response to my April 14 letter. It looks as though they really have just walked away, which certainly is the smart thing to do. But what on earth are they doing in this mini-golf situation? Sheesh!

Ixian: a lot of what you suggest isn't really quite technically feasible. Capacitors, for example, aren't ordinarily put on the power line (where they wouldn't do much other than drain a bit of current), but are on the filter circuits on the DC end of the power supply after the rectifiers, internal and isolated from the power line. Battery backup is nice, but there's no way to run DC battery backup onto an AC cord without having a whole inverter circuit to generate 117 VAC--in other words, the only thing that'd do what you're suggesting would be to build a whole UPS in-line with the cord. There is, unfortunately, too, no way to back up the power for small-current DC uses while not backing up the main flow to the power supply--the only way to do that would, again, be internal to the power supply circuitry.

I think that given how many good companies with expertise there are in the UPS, surge protector, and power conditioner business, we wouldn't look to enter that segment of the market directly because we don't have the expertise or the volume to compete. If we did something along those lines, it would be to carry a product from, say, Tripp-Lite (who, by the way, are currently being sued by Monster Cable--I don't know much about the case but it does not sound to me like Monster has a valid claim), or Furman, or one of the handful of other names in that industry.

On my short list of "things to do" right now is to contact Volex. Volex was the Belden power cord manufacturing division, until it was spun off as a separate company some years ago. I've been meaning to give them a call and see if they would make us some short rack-length cords and the like--nothing exotic, but just a handy sort of product that can help clean up a messy installation. I'll see what they can do for us...

Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable

 

[Beans]

On my short list of "things to do" right now is to contact Volex. Volex was the Belden power cord manufacturing division, until it was spun off as a separate company some years ago. I've been meaning to give them a call and see if they would make us some short rack-length cords and the like--nothing exotic, but just a handy sort of product that can help clean up a messy installation. I'll see what they can do for us...

Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable

Custom length is all I would need in a power cord and it would motivate me enough to replace my stock cords. You might as well make them look good too since power cords (at least for me) are the ones which can not be hidden 100%.

I may get flamed for this, but I have always been of the mind set that what I see in my home has to have function AND form.

 

[mtrycrafts]

...
I may get flamed for this, but I have always been of the mind set that what I see in my home has to have function AND form.

Not around here, not for such preferences and needs.
In fact, that is a valid reason for custom cables

 

[itschris]

I bought several heavy duty, 14/3 and 12/3 power cords last year after a amp I bought came with a high-end heavy gauge thick cord. Performance wise I couldn't tell any difference at all, but I really liked the way it looked. So I spent ~$50 on heavy duty shielded power cords for all my stuff. The funny part is I cant see them or hear any difference, but I like knowing that if I go behind my stuff it'll totally look cool.

Jack

You and brother. That's what cables are all about! We don't buy BFSC (Big Fat Stupid Cables) because they sound better, we buy them because they're cool... even when we can't see them!

 

[itschris]

Speaking of power cords, I have a question that will probably cause most to roll their eyes prior to giving me the obvious answer but...

To replace the power cord, does it need to be removable? I'd like to replace the power cords on my Def Techs. I made my own BFSC's (see explanation of such above) but I have this stupid zip cord for the power. I'd love to swap them out. I'm thinking you're modifying the equipment for use with the new cords... yes?

Neither my amp (Sunfire) or my Receiver (Pioneer Elite) have detachable cords. I'd swap them out too.

 

[Geno]

Speaking of power cords, I have a question that will probably cause most to roll their eyes prior to giving me the obvious answer but...

To replace the power cord, does it need to be removable? I'd like to replace the power cords on my Def Techs. I made my own BFSC's (see explanation of such above) but I have this stupid zip cord for the power. I'd love to swap them out. I'm thinking you're modifying the equipment for use with the new cords... yes?

Neither my amp (Sunfire) or my Receiver (Pioneer Elite) have detachable cords. I'd swap them out too.

You can do it if you have some basic wiring/soldering skills, but you'd be voiding the warranty. All you have to do is get an IEC bulkhead connector, open the case of your equipment, remove the power cord's strain relief, cut a hole in the rear panel of your device to the size of the IEC connector, then solder the power leads from your device to the rear of the IEC connector. The hard part is cutting a neat hole in the rear panel. I've done this to a couple of my devices, because I wanted a custom-length detachable cord for these devices.

 

[itschris]

Sounds like a project once my warranty is up. it'll give me time to hone my soldering skills!

thanks.

 

[highfigh]

fmw: I think that it's true that lawyers often harm how they are viewed by being overbearing. Unfortunately, that's sometimes hard to completely avoid as it's often important, when asserting legal rights, to be --well-- assertive.

In the present situation, however, that's not what's going on. Monster Cable filed frivolous litigation against Monster Mini Golf, and if they used all the politeness and grace in the world while doing it, it wouldn't really make the situation any better. It'd be like having a vandal say "excuse me" before spraying graffiti on your property--more polite, but no more pleasant.

Incidentally, if anyone is wondering: Monster still has said and done exactly nothing in response to my April 14 letter. It looks as though they really have just walked away, which certainly is the smart thing to do. But what on earth are they doing in this mini-golf situation? Sheesh!

Ixian: a lot of what you suggest isn't really quite technically feasible. Capacitors, for example, aren't ordinarily put on the power line (where they wouldn't do much other than drain a bit of current), but are on the filter circuits on the DC end of the power supply after the rectifiers, internal and isolated from the power line. Battery backup is nice, but there's no way to run DC battery backup onto an AC cord without having a whole inverter circuit to generate 117 VAC--in other words, the only thing that'd do what you're suggesting would be to build a whole UPS in-line with the cord. There is, unfortunately, too, no way to back up the power for small-current DC uses while not backing up the main flow to the power supply--the only way to do that would, again, be internal to the power supply circuitry.

I think that given how many good companies with expertise there are in the UPS, surge protector, and power conditioner business, we wouldn't look to enter that segment of the market directly because we don't have the expertise or the volume to compete. If we did something along those lines, it would be to carry a product from, say, Tripp-Lite (who, by the way, are currently being sued by Monster Cable--I don't know much about the case but it does not sound to me like Monster has a valid claim), or Furman, or one of the handful of other names in that industry.

On my short list of "things to do" right now is to contact Volex. Volex was the Belden power cord manufacturing division, until it was spun off as a separate company some years ago. I've been meaning to give them a call and see if they would make us some short rack-length cords and the like--nothing exotic, but just a handy sort of product that can help clean up a messy installation. I'll see what they can do for us...

Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable

What's happening with the power cables? Some cheap ones are out there (Hoya) and sold at music stores, too. I called Tripp Lite about them because I wanted something to put behind plasma and LCD displays because, and I'm typing this in bold caps for the display manufacturers, YOU DON'T NEED AN 8 FOOT CABLE TO WALL MOUNT A DISPLAY WHEN THE OUTLET IS WITHIN A FOOT OF WHERE IT PLUGS INTO THE DISPLAY!!!!!!!!!!

Keep us posted.

 

[Exit]

Do they still have monster trucks or did they get hammered too?