Building balanced headphone cables

[royewest]

I have Sennheiser 650s and recently purchased Cardas plugs so I can try building a balanced replacement cable to use with a Lavry DA10.

The plugs have two connectors of course. Presumably I can wire them to pins 2 & 3 of an XLR connector. Any point in trying to do something with pin 1, such as connecting it to shielded tubing?

I assume I should take care to get the orientation of the Cardas connections to 2/3 the same for both ears, but I wonder if there's a reason to try to pick which orientation w/r/t the Cardas connector.

I've also thought that the simplest approach might be to purchase balanced cables from my local pro audio shop (Leo's in Oakland) and solder one end to the Cardas plugs.

I'd appreciate any other suggestions folks might have for this project (e.g., regarding kinds and sources for wire, connectors, threads where this is all answered if only I were better with the search tool, etc.).

I've tried to to my homework, but let me confess: I am a writer, not an engineer, so thanks in advance for anyone's patience and help with this topic.

[royewest]

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