While the Platinum and Gold cables have a few important internal differences (notably, the Platinum’s silver soldered connections), it’s their jacket material that’s the immediate identity clue. Platinums get a beautifully woven nylon over-braid while the Golds are ensconced in rugged cloth-like PVC. Of the two, the Gold cables seemed more suitable for heavy stage and road use, while the Platinums gave off a stark studio-chic vibe. The construction was superb on each, with tough-feeling connectors and precise assembly. Each cable is directional, meaning the shield is not a conductor (as in conventional cables) and thus must only be connected to the amplifier end. Proponents of this design tout its improved noise resistance and fidelity. To demarcate the correct orientation the Platinum and Gold plugs are labeled, but even more obviously, the right-angle ends plug into a bass.
I A/B’d the cables against a variety of similarly priced cables (as well as a few big-ticket items) in real-time and on record. While differences between the cables were mostly subtle, the Fenders performed excellently against the competition, at least matching, and occasionally besting, their tone and dynamic response. The Platinums are perhaps slightly smoother in the lows with a touch more top-end response than the Golds, but boy is it tough to tell the difference. As expected, cable length was the biggest tone determinant with passive basses. Passive instruments are detrimentally affected by the capacitance and signal-loss presented by long cable runs. Active instruments, with their impedance and gain buffered outputs, are much less vulnerable to these consequences. In practice, the 20-footers were less treble extended with passive basses than the 12’s.
While each cable looks, feels, and sounds slick, a few playing situations revealed a slight amount of triboelectric noise in the Platinum, likely due to the hard nylon jacket rubbing against itself. It manifested as a low-volume scratching sound, but was only evident in roughly half the testing situations.
The Fenders are wanting for little. If you’ve already dropped major dough on a sweet rig, don’t blow it using crap cable orphaned in some long-forgotten rehearsal space. If price has been the barrier, the Fenders killed that excuse.