How to Properly Roll Guitar Cables

Are you sick and tired of constantly having to untangle knots and twists from your guitar cables every time you go to use them? In this article we will be talking about a simple technique to help keep your guitar cables tangle free. This tip actually has to do with the way initially we roll up our cables up in the first place.

​Why am I writing a post on how to roll up guitar cables, it’s pretty simple right? Well yes and no… You need to remember that guitar cables are essentially the life line between what we are playing on the guitar and what people are actually hearing. Therefore, we want to make sure we are using good quality cables, we want to take care of them and we want to spend the least amount of time possible untangling them every time we go to use them!

One very popular technique for rolling up cables (which is actually quite counterproductive when you think about it) is to slightly twist and roll the cable in the same direction between our thumb and finger in one hand as we make a sequence of loops around our other hand. While this often feels like the way our cables wants to naturally coil and we do also end up with a nice looking loop in our hand, as soon as we go to pull the coil apart from each end however, we will quickly notice we have effectively just introduced a series of twists into the guitar cable just in the process of rolling it up. So we are effectively getting our cables tangled up before we even start! The alternate method is very similar to this except that it introduces some counter-balance into every second roll of the cable so that when we go to pull it apart it unravels easily and tangle free.

​The way this works is quite simple:

• We start in the same way, with one end of our guitar lead facing in towards us being held in our left hand.
• Making sure there are no twists in the cable to start with, coil the first loop around our hand rolling the cable clockwise between the thumb and finger of our opposite hand.
• On the next loop however, we want to roll the cable in the opposite direction. Again we are wanting to slightly twist the cable between our thumb and finger but this time we are rolling it in an anti-clockwise direction so that the cable naturally loops or folds in on itself.
• We then simply repeat that process until we reach the end of the cable; creating a loop rolling the cable away from us, then folding the cable in on itself rolling towards us.
• We want to keep the overall size of the loops reasonably compact but not too tight that is put unnecessary stress on the cable. 
• Lastly, at this point we would obviously use some velcro or something to stop the cable from unraveling, ready for the next time we use it.

Try this one out for yourself. Cables kind of have a memory of sorts, so if your cable is used to being rolled in a certain way it may take a bit of time for it to behave properly, but persist with it and see how you go. Unfortunately, this technique doesn’t ensure you will never get tangles in your cables ever again but it definitely gives you a much better staring point.

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