Cable Building

Discussion in 'DIY' started by Skyline, Sep 30, 2015.

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  1. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    Here's a makeshift jig for holding 8 strands...
    [​IMG]


    Also, somewhere in my box of pro use cables I have a set of 35' speakon cables (about 40' before twisting). I needed 4-pole cables but the only 4-wire stuff I had was 14awg and I wanted at least 12awg, so the solution was to double up the wires and twist two long runs together (twice, because I needed a pair of them).

    Ok so each big cable has 4x14awg inside, and here I am trying to twist two together. Even working in halves holding down the middle with a stack of textbooks, I've got the wires stretched out across the basement floor and am "whipping" them across and over each other. Every four or five whips, stop and "push" the twists up to the top, then repeat. Whodathunk doing a "simple" 2-wire twist would take me a couple hours to finish.
     
  2. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    ho lee fuk that's some patience/dedication!
     
  3. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    Following up on this post regarding building the new 4.4mm TRRRS cables and, more specifically the connectors ...

    I started off using the "official" Pentaconn connector from here.

    I think I'll be using this one, via ALO Audio, going forward instead. It's less than half the price, has a conventional internal layout (still fiddly, but much harder to short the sleeve, which is easy to do inadvertently with the "official" one). It's also usefully smaller:

    Connectors.jpg

    Top is the "official" one, the bottom one is from ALO Audio.

    Only reason I can see to use the bigger one is if you need a larger cable exit diameter (which I did for my adapter for dual 3-pin XLRs).
     
  4. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    Thanks, people! Good stuff.

    Sooo.. that solder pot.. do you prefer an electric one? If so, do you use solder bar/pellets, or just the solder from a reel? Strong preferences for types of solder?

    It has been years since I soldered in anger, and that was mostly relatively simple stuff with point to point wiring on proto boards, and (weirdly) a little bit of military avionics.. never used a solder pot, though.
     
  5. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    I use a little electric solder pot. It holds about 500g of solder. I think it was $25. Takes about 10 minutes to come up to temperature. It gets fed bar-solder, and a single 500g bar will last ages.

    How specific do you want to get with solder recommendations?

    To start with, just stick to leaded stuff (60/40 or 63/37) with a flux-core. Lead-free adds complications ... and generally requires running higher temperatures which won't help in terms of avoiding melting the insulation on your connectors! 0.7mm is fine enough for the sorts of connections you'll be doing without requiring you to feed a ton of it into the joint, though 0.3mm can be easier in some cases.
     
  6. ohhgourami

    ohhgourami Friend

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    Made a pair of balanced ICs using Vampire Xhadow XLRs and Gotham GAC-4/1 cable.

    [​IMG]

    The Vampire connectors are VERY high quality. Terminals are screw-on instead of solder type and the contacts are pure copper that is silver plated. It's the first time I heard an IC made a difference in my system.
     
  7. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    Those Xhadow connectors are super nice! Grab a jar of jewelry cleaner to clean the silver plated barrel and contacts (but not the aluminum housing) - the Xhadow RCAs I had tarnished up pretty quickly, especially if connected to a dissimilar metal female jack.
     
  8. ohhgourami

    ohhgourami Friend

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    I'll have to buy some deoxit. I noticed the same thing. Plus I got them used at half price. I couldn't pass up.
     
  9. Daveheart

    Daveheart Friend

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    I've made a build or two with those Xhadows in the past, and yeah, they will tarnish on you. They're pretty solid though and working with them is easy. You should note however that for some gear (especially cheap or vintage) they can be too big to fit next to each other. I think it's really more problematic on the RCAs though.
     
  10. PoochZag

    PoochZag The Shadow knows - Friend

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    I need some general advice. I've probably made around 12 headphone cables now, but I'm in a creative rut. Most of mine have either been a standard 4 conductor round braid, splitting into twisted pairs, or a single paracord sheathed wire (like mogami quad) split into pairs after the Y.

    I want to do more of a paracord sleeved 2 independent cables thing, only held together at the amp connector and "y-split" like @Torq's cable from this recent post http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/cable-building.86/page-12#post-117233

    I'm just trying to figure out what to use for wire, and what size paracord that would fit. Something like a smaller quad like Mogami w2799 intact for each? I know that can fit in #550. Maybe flexibility won't be great?

    Just looking for ideas and experiences on what works well, nothing OCC or super fancy, just typical mogami/canare...etc type stuff for this one.
     
  11. fraggler

    fraggler A Happy & Busy Life

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    Normally, I just use a small bench vise from Dremel to do my cable building, but with more requests for IEM cables and their fiddly bits, I finally built myself a helping hand station. It is based on an Instructable from a few years ago and you can buy them on Amazon and Ebay for $35ish. Total parts cost from Amazon (tubing and alligator clips) was $13. The wood base is a scrap of 3/4" solid walnut flooring. We'll see how helpful it ends up being this weekend.
    [​IMG]
     
  12. fraggler

    fraggler A Happy & Busy Life

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    The problem with using something like Mogami or the like is that due to the shielding and/or the sheath, you will probably end up with something stiffer and heavier than you might want. The W2799 you picked out is actually more stiff than the regular, thicker mini starquad due to a much more robust outer sheath meant for pulling through consoles. You could try some W2528 which is a zip-cord style dual coax cable that you could peel apart and independently sheath. Hard to tell how flexible it will be, though. Markertek and Redco both have really good prices per foot (Markertek is free shipping, though) and you could experiment. I'd definitely be interested in what you find. I have a couple lengths of bulk cable from Oyaide that I picked while in Japan that would be perfect for you, but while reasonably priced, no where as cheap as Mogami.
     
  13. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    Standard Canare L-4E5C with the insulation removed, but with the shield still in place, will fit inside #550 paracord. You'll lose about 9-12" of measured paracord length for an 8-foot run of wire, so do 9-10 foot cuts of the sheath before you start threading it! And, as @fraggler says, keeping the shield reduces flexibility a bit ... though not too much in the case of cables for actual headphone (it wouldn't work at all for IEMs)*.

    L-4E6S will also fit in #550 cord, but you have to remove the shield as well as the insulation. It stays together pretty well even without the shield in place, so it's quite viable (and easier to get the cord over than the still-shielded L-4E5C). In this case I just cut the cord to the same length as the wire.

    When someone asks me to build a cable for them, and they don't want fancy wire (or to pay for the time it takes to wind my dual-quad-helix cores) then I generally use L-4E5C. And while the parts cost is the same doing it shielded or unshielded, the time to build goes up a fair bit due to it being much slower to get the paracord over the shielded cable - so the final cost is higher for shielded.

    --

    *This is where EBI comes in handy, though I don't bother if it's just a basic star-quad build as usually there people are looking to do things less expensively and will typically opt not to have the wire shielded as well, making it unnecessary.
     
  14. PoochZag

    PoochZag The Shadow knows - Friend

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    Thanks. I've used L-4E6S a lot, mainly stripping all the way to singles. Good to know it stays together ok without the shield, I was speculating it might. Will likely try the mini (L-4E5C) and if the shield gets too annoying to sheathe I'll remove it
     
  15. aufmerksam

    aufmerksam Friend

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    That looks purty. Especially the "reclaimed" flooring.

    It will change your life how you solder. I saw that instructable, and was going to set about building one when my wife confronted me thus:
    "what is that?"
    "its for soldering stuff"
    "and you are going to make it?"
    "yeah, they sell premade ones, but they are like $30"
    "..."
    "what?"
    "it's christmas, you have enough parts all over your desk, just buy the pre-made one".

    I did not argue (she may have used a word less polite than "parts"). It has greatly reduced my swearing. Especially on smaller connectors, I can basically match up all the tinned wires to all the leads, and then just go about joining them one by one without constantly repositioning. One thing that I will recommend: if you have some leftover coolant hose bits, fashion yourself one that ends in a strap, as opposed to an alligator clip, like this. I like it to hold the weight/slack of the cable (or whatever annoying bits) up out the the way of whatever I'm doing.
     
  16. fraggler

    fraggler A Happy & Busy Life

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    Good idea. A strap or a larger clip with lower tension should work.
     
  17. aufmerksam

    aufmerksam Friend

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    Yup. That one at Hobby Creek uses what amounts to a releasable zip tie. I think even a velcro cable management strap would be good though, and potentially tolerate a larger diameter. I was considering using a de-tensioned giant binder clip screwed through the curvy back, so you could just operate the lever arms freely.
     
  18. Grahad2

    Grahad2 Red eyes from too much anime

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    Probably simpler to use of those screw type hose clamps?
     
  19. kittenuwu

    kittenuwu Acquaintance

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    Anybody know if I'm supposed to shoot for a given resistance range when building RCA cables? I know with coax you want 50Ohm but I'm not sure what I should do for the interconnects from my DAC to amp
     
  20. Xen

    Xen Friend

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    Yes, totally agree with all of the above. When I first saw "inexpensive" custom cable prices were north of $100, I was like... "No FREAKING way! That's highway robbery!" Then I built my own 4-strand braid. That first cable took several days to complete. After some practice, I found that it still took about a day (8-10 hrs) from start (bulk wire in a spool, connectors still in their baggies) to finish (final heat shrink, testing on headphones, fixing issues). I still make stupid mistakes and have to re-work stuff (wrong way twists, bad heat shrinking, Y-split too long or short, etc). Now, I think $100 is a bargain for a straightforward custom braided cable, made with Mogami/Canare-type OFC copper wires and standard connectors.
     

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