A Better Sennheiser Cable? (56K warning)

Here's the deal. I pack up my brand new PIMETA I finished building this weekend and my Senn 580's w/ Clou Blue 212 upgraded cable (I bought them with the cable) and take them to work to show off my new amp. Everything goes fine until the end of the day when I am listening to my iPod a few minutes before I go home. The left channel on my 580's starts cutting out. I get home and the left side on my Senn's is gone completely out. I tried my Grado's and Ety's and everything worked fine. I switched the cable from the right side of my cans to the left side and it works fine. So I have a bad connection on the left side.

Clou Blue cable:




I cut the heatshrink off the left connector and was apalled by the quality of workmanship that I saw. Under the heatshrink was eletrical tape:



After peeling off the first layer of eletrical tape I found a second layer of tape. Thw wires that go into the plug are partially broken:



This is what I found when I removed the last bit of tape(you'll have to excuse the cat hairs. That tape residue attracts cat hair). The wires from the plug were barely soldered to the wire from the cable:





The BARE wires that come from the plug were really small and flimsy, about a third of the size of the wire that comes from the cable itself. It had always bothered me that the 1/4" plug would not stay straight on the cable and always was crooked. I was also not to happy with way that the cable looked under the barrel of the 1/4" plug. It looked like a rats nest.





I also noticed that there are 2 wires (they used the sheilding for the ground) on the 1/4 plug end of the cable that somehow splits into 4 wires where the plugs for the Senn's are located. That tells me that they have spliced the wires together somewhere in the cable.

I may be blowing this out of proportion, but I think that the workmanship in this cable is horrid. It makes me wonder what other cable “upgrades” are like underneath the surface. I would like to see some pics of other cables like Zu, Cardas. or Dragon’s to see what they look like. I don’t know how much Clou Blue 212 cable costs retail, but I can tell you its to much.

Making my own DIY cables has given me a lot of insight into other ”retail” cable makers. As stated by other members here, I have found that cables are WAY over priced and a manufacturer can basically say anything they want to sell cable at ridiculously high prices.

I had planned on recabling my Senn’s in the future anyway. I guess I will be doing it a little soon than I thought.

I would always prefer to do it myself because I know it will get done right and will be done to the highest stanards. I take great pride in the things that I make, and am a bit of a perfectionist. Still, I had always been curious about upgrade cables and thought about purchasing one in the future. Not anymore.

Comments welcome.

Thanks so much for the offer.

I don't have a spare but I've been itching to do my own Senn recable, and I am going to use the plugs from the Clou. I may end up making the Clou cable into a mini to RCA or something. I also have 2 pairs plugs on the way from a fellow Head-fi'er who had some left over from the group buy a while back.

I got some back-up cans too!!

This whole thread was written just to let people know that a DIY project can be as good, or in the case much better, than what you can buy. I would bet anything that there is not a cable manufacturer on this planet that puts half as much effort and TLC into making cable as I do on my DIY projects. Your signal is only as good as the weakest link in the signal path. This cable had a lot of weak links, IMHO.

I'm also don't want to come off as if everyone out there that makes and sells cables are putting out crap, either. There are a lot of companies that make some beautiful, quality cables.

I do plan on contacting the manufacturer and letting them know about this.

I have been anxious to hear your opinions, RnB180.

Fixing the cable would be no problem, but I’m not sure I want this cable back on my cans. What I am really thinking about doing is dissecting the cable and looking deep inside its construction. I can reuse the wire for another project. It would be nice to do this with other cables also, but there are few here, including myself, that have the money to spend on a cable and then destroy it to find out how well it’s put together.

I didn’t think that the cable sounded that bad. Looking back I realize that I had no point of reference. I didn’t get a stock cable when I bought these cans and I’ve never heard any other cables with these Senn’s. I do know, from reading through this forum and others, that the Clou Blue is one of the least popular replacement cables for Sennheiser. Now we know why.

I would like some other members to post pics of their cables, even if it’s just unscrewing the barrels to see the solder/shielding work underneath. I know that more than one of you out there gave their expensive cables an apprehensive glance after seeing the pics here.

I did contact the manufacturer last night, and gave them a link to this thread. I am waiting to hear back from them. I will report back. Hopefully their customer service is better than their product.

From the Clou Cable homepage. Still no reply from the company (sent email last night) Made me chuckle:

I thought of that. After I took the pics I smoothed the braid down and tried it again. No Luck. The left side signal wire is hanging by just a few strands where it comes out of the back of the plug (take a look at the third picture from the top). The wires have broken because there was no real support for that area, except for the electrical tape. A couple of layers of heat shrink would have kept this from happening. These cans were in immaculate shape when I bought them, so I'm pretty sure the previous owner did not abuse them.

I am not going to do anything else until (or if ) the manufacturer contacts me. After that I am planning on cutting open the cable and looking at it from the inside out. I can reuse the cable wires later. The cable itself seems to made of pretty good quality silver-plated copper. I can do a Litz braid with it.

I would still like to see a pictures of other cables.

I'm pretty sure it's Teflon insulation, or so the website states.

The two wires at the 1/4" plug bothers me also. Yes the sheilding is soldered to the cable clamp. That's one reason I want to cut it open. I want to know how they go from 2 wires on one end of the cable to 4 wires on the other end.