Guitar Cable Unfair Torture Test: D'Addario Planet Waves American Stage vs Klotz LaGrange vs Mogami Gold

Who doesn't love to see competitive products destructively test side-by-side in a video torture test?  We know we do!  So the cable geeks here at Metro DC Music got out the popcorn to watch this short video from D'Addario, but quickly realized that this wasn't a fair test.  Here's why:

D'Addario Planet Waves makes the high-quality American Stage line of cables with a solder connection they call HelioFused™ soldering, which is their unique inline soldering method that builds the strain relief into the solder connection.

"Strain relief" is the feature of a cable that keeps the force of tugs on the cable from being applied to the soldered connections.  Solder joints are used for electrical connections and not generally for a mechanical connection.  Other cables get their strain relief from a ground clamp that is crimped to the jacket and shielding so that tugging forces are transferred to the connector barrel and not the solder joint.  Other connectors use a Neutrik-style clutch that tightens gripping points into the jacket of the cable to do the same job. 

But Planet Waves is now doing both the electrical and mechanical connection with their HelioFusing.  Which is fine per se, or maybe even a significant advancement (time will tell) but when they tested against two competitors they removed the strain relief systems those cables use.  So in this test you'll see the Klotz LaGrange  and the Mogami Gold cables are tested without their connector barrels, so the pulling force is being applied directly to the solder-joints.  So as you'll see the Planet Waves HelioFused solder joint is mechanically stronger than a traditional solder method, but a real test would have been with all three cables having their strain-relief systems in place to see which can withstand the greatest tugging force. 

OK here's the video, you've been educated about how to interpret this: