Wire selection

JoshuaT · 10-08-2003, 09:17 AM

What cable is everyone using in their soldered DIY cables? I am looking for a source, but I don't want to use junk mic. cable!

Darren_T · 10-08-2003, 09:46 AM

What kind of cables are you looking for? Check out Belden and Canare coaxial. I use Belden for my interconnects and coaxial digital connections.

You might want to check out these sites:

http://www.bus.ucf.edu/cwhite/theater/diycable.htm
http://www.mindspring.com/~pmbenn/cables.htm
http://www.tubeaholic.com/projects/page.view?RowId=66
http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/index2.htm

Darren

Michael R Price · 10-08-2003, 03:01 PM

For speaker cable, 9 or 27 braided Cat5 pairs works very well and it's really cheap albeit time consuming. I haven't gotten around to DIY interconnects, but it looks like a good simple solution is Belden 89259 coax cable soldered directly to RCA's. You could do some more elaborate construction if you want, Jon Risch seems to have it covered.

Darren_T · 10-08-2003, 03:23 PM

Quote:

For speaker cable, 9 or 27 braided Cat5 pairs works very well

Be careful with this. Some recipes for Cat5 can have much too high capacitance for certain amplifiers.

Michael R Price · 10-08-2003, 05:13 PM

Darren,

That's correct though I think with the usual conservatively designed solid state amplifier it shouldn't be a problem. Also, you have to be careful to use the right kind of wires - regular Cat5 without teflon insulation sounded worse to me than plain copper wire.

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Chris Tsutsui · 10-09-2003, 12:17 PM

What's wrong with microphone cable? I spent $20 on a 100ft roll of "pro" signal cable from parts express. It's flexible like a wet noodle, has copper twist shield and 22ga center copper strands.

Sounds good to me, and i'm using $1 neutrik gold/nickel RCA connectors.

The whole idea of spending $1 per foot on belden coax really turned me off, plus I'd have to get a better connector cause it wouldn't "feel" right in the end.

JoshuaT · 10-09-2003, 01:24 PM

Chris,

How does the sound of your cables compare to any others you have auditioned?

Anyone else going to chime in?

~josh

Wayne A. Pflughaupt · 10-10-2003, 01:17 PM

Joshua,

Don’t be so quick to dismiss mic cable. Don’t know what you’ve seen as “cheap” mic cable, but surely you know there is “cheap” in any type of cable. Mogami, Canare and Belden all make high-end mic cable with oxygen-free copper that I’d put up against anything on the market in terms of build quality.

For instance, Canare’s braided shield is so strong and finely-woven I can’t imagine any negligence in the home environment that would penetrate it and damage the center conductors. Even the lower lines Mogami and Canare offer are far superior to the cabling used in stuff like Radio Shack’s Gold cables.

Compared to single-ended cable, mic cable offers better reliability or enhanced interference rejection, depending on how you configure it.

For improved reliability, tie the two center conductors together at both ends. This way even if one of the conductors somehow gets damaged or broken, the other one will continue to carry the signal. Not to mention, with most mic cable combining the two center conductors will give the equivalent of heavy-duty 20ga wire.

The center conductors are typically twisted, a configuration well know for its interference rejection properties. To utilize this attribute, one of the center conductors would be tied to the shield.

You asked what people here used for their soldered DIY cables – I used both Mogami and Canare mic cable for mine.

For connectors, I’ve already recommend Parts Express’ heavy-duty Dayton Super RCAs in one of your earlier threads.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

TimForman · 10-11-2003, 09:25 AM

It seems everyone is always recommending Belden and Canare, yet when I was researching I found Gepco to have better specs, a solid copper conducter, flexibility and a lower price. Check out the VSD2001 from Markertek for interconnects. You can buy it by the foot which is nice also.