An Interview with Tony Farinella of Evidence Audio
We would like to thank Tony for his time chatting with us and we hope our readers enjoy the wealth of information that he has to share.
RDGN: How long have you been playing guitar?
TF: Off (mostly) and on for nearly 30 years. Started with lessons when I hit 12 or 13 years old. Parted ways for other hobbies as playing guitar was just enough work for me to avoid becoming compulsive about it. I never found or made lots of personal time for it outside of scheduled lessons. Those lessons were great however. I’d cross paths with a guitar every couple of years and know just enough, or have just enough muscle memory or ear-training to take stage for a “talent” show here or there. Really just a case of me being comfortable with the instrument but not adept at it. I know most of my customers spend more time playing in one month than I have over 30 years.
RDGN: What was the first guitar that you owned?
TF: I remember shopping for it with my mom. I really wanted to play, lessons were scheduled, and it was time to get the proper tool for the job. I remember being in the shop with all the guitars hanging overhead. A salesman listened to what we needed, heard our budget (probably not to exceed $100), and he lifted a nylon string acoustic off the hooks and put it in my hands. No idea the make or model. At the time I didn’t know one from another and really was just relying on the salesman’s guidance. Which turned out quite good. It made music after all. I was happy.
RDGN: What groups inspired you to learn to play the guitar?
TF: The Jam. The Who. Lot of the mod scene for thrashing… but what sucked me in were the acoustic ballads by Paul Weller such as English Rose. It was decipherable. I loved the rock and power chords and watching Townsend do Windmills, but I couldn’t make much sense of it. Well… Iron Man I could figure out and keep up with, but to me, the guitar in most of rock music was a blur buried in rhythm. Famous solos at the time were inspiring for sure but not accessible for me to recreate as a beginner.
So really what inspired me was the finger style play of Mark Knophler, Simon and Garfunkel, Emerson Lake and Palmer… From the Beginning. Now THAT inspired me. What an amazing recording as well. I was seriously afflicted with the audiophile bug at 12 years old, and to hear stories told with acoustic guitar really moved me. Friday Night in San Francisco… John McLaughlin in general. Great stuff that.
RDGN: What was the first song that you wanted to learn to play?
TF: My instructor stuck with scales for the first month or two which probably killed my interest… but we’d dedicated the last 5 or 10 minutes of each hour on an actual song. He started me with Blackbird by The Beatles. Then Here Comes the Sun. Jim Croce’s New York’s Not My Home. Great music I could appreciate, and skills that gave me with the ability to sort out English Rose by the Jam, and more importantly the ability to create my own melodies and foster an improvisational spirit beyond alternating power chords. To take a chord and construct it, deconstruct it and reconstruct it with the right hand before changing chords is really fun to me.
RDGN: Which guitar is your favorite that you play on a regular basis and why do you like it so much?
TF: I have a few electric instruments for R&D however my favorite guitar is a Hofner classical. It appeals to me on many levels. Foremost when it comes to sound I am a minimalist. Less is more and if I have a simple volume knob to consider (let alone a complex signal path) my brain is distracted from the music. Warming up tubes? Screwing with pedals? Being too loud? Finding a pick? I can’t do it. If I have to do more than open the case I won’t bother. I like to lift that guitar out and hold it. The thing starts making music when your arm rests across it. Thumb drags along a string. It’s so alive it’s scary. Tap it and the chamber echoes your thumb 100 times louder. It’s just high strung and ready to go. You can play the body not just the strings. Thomas Leeb does this in ways that inspire me.
This guitar also suits me because as I may only play in 30 minute sessions a few times per week, the nylon strings go easy on my fingers. My hands are mess in some places from making 10 to 50 cables a day, but the calluses are in none of the places that make playing small steel strings comfortable. The extra spacing between the strings for my fat fingers is useful as well. So really I love it for being so easy to pick up and play.
Finally it suits me because it is perfectly appropriate to play the songs that inspired me 30 years ago. Yeah Yeah I still play China Grove on it or plug in an electric to show my seven year old daughter what fun guitar can be in various ways, but that guitar is my Lazy-boy in the middle of the living room.
RDGN: What inspired you to start making guitar cables?
TF: My compulsion in the hi-fi (playback) side of things led me to explore all things having an effect on audio passed through cable and I spent dozens of years experimenting and tweaking with variables in cable design, and learning how to make a cable that has as little an impact on the signal as possible. It occurred to me that what I learned had not been applied to those on the CREATION side of things, so I decided to export my knowledge of cable design to a field where people could be equally impressed at what a bad cable does to music. The interesting thing this time around is how personal an experience it is. I spend years getting musicians to sound like themselves through hi-fi systems… now it is a case of having musicians plug in their guitars and really hearing themselves before their very own ears.
RDGN: How long has Evidence Audio been around?
TF: Founded in 1997 so… 12 years. Holy crap! Seriously?
RDGN: Are there any well-known musicians that use your cables?
TF: Yes. But the last thing anyone should do is buy a music product based on hero worship. You really need to form your own opinion based on personal experience, or find someone you can trust and just do everything he says. Yes there are salesmen in music shops you can simply trust. I was lucky to have that guy help me pick out the right acoustic guitar when I was 12 years old. Perfect guidance for me at the time.
RDGN: Let’s say your a 15 year old kid jamming in your bedroom, you’re on a tight budget but you want to take the next step and buy a better quality
cable, what qualities should they look for when buying a better cable?
(We are assuming that a kid walks into a store and picks one off the shelf without trying it)
TF: 15 years old? I’m thinking tight budget. At first I want to say just go for warranty. Screw tone at this point. Just get something short so you don’t waste time untangling it or coiling it up. You probably aren’t sitting more than 10 feet from your amp anyway. Plus short cables are cheaper.
I’d hold off pushing the argument that “better tone makes you play longer and makes you play better” with 15 year olds. Yes it is true but typically at 15 no one is citing “tone” or “sound quality” as the inspiration for playing. At that age deciding to play guitar has much less to do about gear. Gear is a means to an end. At 15, the differences that result from switching from a bad sounding cable to a good one are small enough to be ignored, where the money could be spent on lessons from a good teacher or a tabs book from The Clash. There are some for whom it makes sense, but I’d rather they stick with the hobby and come around to extracting nuances from their hands via better cables after they’ve being playing for five year to the age of 20.
RDGN: Who do you design your cables for? (What audience are you targeting)
TF: I guess myself when I’m plugging in and I want to sound acoustic. Unplug an electric and play it… now imagine that amplified. As a purist I want the amplifier to perfectly recreate the acoustic inputs of that guitar into the pick-ups.
So I guess I am targeting guitarists who go for specific sounds and playing styles and want to hear everything they do. Even with acoustics. The differences with cable are much greater with acoustic guitars than with electric. Or on violins with pickups attached. The complexities of acoustic instruments can be much greater than with an electric guitar. The body of the guitar is much more alive and every pluck of the string and tap of a thumb on the body gets sent through the cable. To have any of that diminished is what I fight against.
RDGN: Do you make a $25 cable or have you considered adding one to your product line?
TF: I don’t. Actually I have a “just over $30” cable if you buy 8 feet of my cable and two plugs, and solder them on yourself.
Cables are parts and labor. While I can’t reduce the parts cost and keep my sound quality, I could have people solder them for me where labor is less expensive. But then shipping costs to ‘there and back’ would probably make keeping the price down difficult. Unless I used people chained to desks. Not interesting to me really.
RDGN: Is there really that much of a difference in a cable that costs $25 and one that costs $50 or more?
TF: There can be. Unfortunately I can quickly find you a $25 cable that sounds far better than a $150.00 cable. So I’d re-shape the suggestion that cables can sound different — but price is not a good indicator of performance.
RDGN: There are two cables that you offer that are plentiful in some of the chain music store, what are the differences between the Melody and the Lyric? and Why should I choose one over the other?
TF: Actually I don’t sell to a store with more than two locations. I build cables for Musician’s Friend, and they make the cables available through guitar-center.com, however you can’t buy the cables in any of their stores. Perhaps one day if it made sense.
The differences between the Melody and Lyric are in price and performance. The Lyric costs more to build and delivers “closer to perfect” results. I built the Melody to be the best cable for the money — but for less money than the Lyric. I cut corners that keep it from being a sort of ‘sonic benchmark’ the Lyric is… but I cut corners in a way that allow the Melody to still be a good upgrade and serve the music.
RDGN: Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers, whether it be about yourself or your cables?
TF: For those who’ve made it this far, I just offer my thanks for your interest, and encouragement to keep playing and having fun. It’s a hobby that has been very rewarding to me even with my limited skills. I’m happy to work closely with so many of you from those just beginning the journey, and with those taking it to the extreme. When you play I get to play. It means a lot to me.
RDGN: Thank you Tony, for those of you that want to check out his cables at Evidence Audio, you can go to: http://www.evidenceaudio.com/
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