It's alway's a good idea to use high quality cables. My chain consists of 5 pedals. I use 2 10' (sometimes a 20' if the length is needed) Georg L. cables from guitar to pedals and pedals to amp. I use Livewire cables between the pedals. The difference between plugging straight in with a 10' cable between my guitar and amp, and the full chain is noticable, but not enough to matter (at least to me). I actually preffer the full chain tone to straight in. Straight in, I have to roll off the presence a bit. When going through everything, all I have to do is boost the presence a bit, and I get the same tone as straight in.