RCA Cable Polarity (1 Viewer)

[Eric Portelance]

I'm posting this message for a friend who does have an account here.

"I just bought a nice Acoustic Research stereo RCA cable to replace the borked one on my old Thorens turntable.

I have to solder them inside the turntable, so I stripped the endings on one side, and this is what a single channel cable looks like stripped :

xxx.geekrants.com/eric/rca_stripped.jpg

My question is, which wire is which?

Don't have a pic of the old RCA cable but it looked like this:

xxx.geekrants.com/eric/rca_old.jpg

Old one had only two conductors inside, one which was inside another plastic shielding, and one which was free directly under the rca cable itself. So only 2 wires.

My new one has 3, and I did tests, and found that the only ones for the signal are the red and white ones. No idea what the free flowing cable is for.. But now I gotta know the polarity of the old cable and the new one, to have the right signal going to the center pin and outside woven (or whatever).

Thanks"

Since I've posted less than 15 times, it won't allow me to post a link, so just change the "xxx" to "www" and it'll work.

 

[Lee Bailey]

The 'free flowing' cable inside is for the ground shield. It should probably be hooked up at the turntable ground, since you said it shows no continuity back to the RCA connector. Should help reduce induced noise.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Use a multimeter on the AR cables to determine which wire (red or white) is the one that goes to the center pin of the RCA. That will be signal (+) and it will connect to the center conductor of the original cable (i.e., the one with the insulated jacket).

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt