DIY Y-Cables?

[Unclewai]

I want to share my source to my headphone amp and integrated amp.
I currently have a pair of magwires naked.
Can I just cut them in half and solder the two halves together to a rca plug to form a Y-cable?
What kind of effects will the y-cables have on the quality of the sound?

[Budgie]

Yes you can do that. Usually it works okay to do that, but will possibly have some audible side effects. It would be better to use a small switch box to select which amp to drive.

better idea-
Another possibility is to feed the source to the input of the integrated, and connect the "tape out" of the integrated to the head amp input, presuming your head amp has it's own volume control (tape out is a line level signal). If your integrated has a "record" selector switch, the head amp will get whatever signal the switch selects. I do this in my system and it works very well for me. I can have my main system playing one source, and my head amp playing a different source at the same time, also. Very flexible.