Description
This is the most flexible cable we build, and it isn’t close. Part of it is the jacket — Van Damme uses a PVC and neoprene composite rather than straight PVC — and part of it is the stranding. Both the conductor and the bare OFC spiral shield are made up of a high count of very fine strands, and a bundle of fine strands bends far more easily than fewer thick ones — as does a spiral shield compared to a braid. At 0.236″ (6mm) it’s also the thinnest cable in our range. It doesn’t hold coil memory and it won’t tangle in a gig bag. If you’ve ever fought a cable across a stage, this is the one that stops doing that.
A spiral shield on its own would be prone to handling noise. Flex any cable and the shield rubs against the dielectric underneath, generating a static charge that a guitar’s high output impedance turns into audible crackles and pops. The XKE’s conductive thermoplastic screen sits between the two layers and bleeds that charge away, which is how a cable built to move this freely stays quiet while you move with it. The conductor is 24AWG silver-plated oxygen-free copper over a foam PE dielectric, and capacitance sits at 27.4 pF/ft (90 pF/m).
We stock the XKE in seven colours — black, white, grey, red, green, violet and brown — which makes it the practical choice if you want to colour-code a rig or tell your cables apart from everyone else’s on a shared backline. Terminated with Neutrik PX series connectors in black and gold, hand-soldered with lead-free ROHS-compliant silver solder, built to order and tested before it ships. Backed by our lifetime warranty.
The Silent Series runs this same XKE with Neutrik silent plugs, so you can swap guitars mid-set without the pop. Or if you want it sleeved, the Grand Blue and Berrylicious both build on the XKE in MDPC.
