Question about DIY Interconnects (1 Viewer)

[Dillon Poole]

I'm planning on building a set or two of interconnects here soon for my car audio. I've been through 1 or 2 of the sites that people have put up but it never answered a question of mine. The tools, are they absolutely necessary? I understand they make it alot easier to do but what if I'm not going to make alot of cables and its really not a time critical project?

In the future I'm planning on making all the cables for my home theater, but not till I upgrade my receiver and some other stuff so its not a concern right now. I plan to buy the tools then, but just wanted to know the necessity of them...

Thanks in advance.

 

[Nathan Smith]

as long as your not going with crimp style connectors and use somthing along the lines of WBT clones u should be ok...

well u will probably need a wire stripper and a soldering iron..[so what is that 10-15bux if u dont already have them]


good luck check out the dayton locking rca's on partsexprss.com they are cheap soldering type

 

[Brett DiMichele]

The Dayton Locking RCA Barrels are well made WBT knock off's

The only problem is that they are a Pain to solder.. Could
just be that I don't have a hot enough iron!

 

[Dillon Poole]

I have some mean wire strippers for 4 guage speaker wire...couldn't I just strip the wire down to what the Canare strippers do? I mean all they really do is fold back the layers to a certain point for the crimp style connectors to hold right? I don't really see why I couldn't do that manually...then again, thats why I'm here lol

 

[Brett DiMichele]

You don't use speaker wire for interconnects.

Patch Cables (Whether they be unbalanced RCA or Balanced XLR)
use coaxial cable which contains a center conductor that is
encased in PVC or PTFE surrounded by a metal braid. The
Braid is the Negative and the center conductor is Positive.

You can't use speaker wire because one wire is only one
conductor. Plus it's far heavier of a gauge than needed for
line level signals.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

I just re-read your post. You mean use speaker cable
strippers to strip coaxial type cables?

I guess you may be able to do it but you may cut off the
sheilding in the process. I just use a good sharp razor
knife and carefuly roll the wire on a flat surface and cut
just through the jacket. It's more tedious but it works for
me.

 

[Dillon Poole]

Thats what I was getting at. I'm gonna be buying a bunch of the cable and experiment with it so if I mess it up I'm not gonna lose any sleep....I'm just trying to get a feel for how tough and/or thick the wire and its shielding is...think I'll go out today and experiment with it.

Quick question, any resources out there for custom heat shrink? Like custom logos and what not?

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

Dillon, I suggest you buy a good coax cable stripper. You're going to need one eventually when you do your HT interconnects. I use this Radio Shack $12.99 one on Canare and Belden cable:
http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...5Fid=278%2D248

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Blah..

Panty Wastes... Can't do it the ol fashioned way with the
good ol Number 11 X-Acto? I got the deep cuts to prove it!

And aye strip em with me teeth!

Heh