Frustrating, but I’m glad you got there. Seems to be a lot of that “bad cable” stuff going around. I’m guessing that many guitarists don’t have a lot of TRS cables lying around.
I’ve been there so many times, I can’t count them all. For years now, there is one of those cheap Behringer testers in every guitar case, and a few multimeters in my vehicle and my shop.
It’s the simplest things that junp up & bite you. Best part about airing them out at the forum is that might help the next person to avoid the same scenario.