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Using interconnect wire for headphone recable?

post #1 of 8
11/16/09 at 6:06pm
Thread Starter 
From what I've read while lurking on the forum, the majority of people seem to be using 22-26 awg silver plated copper from ebay resellers or quad star for their headphone recable jobs. Would there be anything unwise with me just re-purposing interconnect cable for my first recable job? It seems like most of it is roughly the same gauge as the headphone cable & it already has a connector at the end that plugs into the amplifier.

I have one of these (monster studiolink 1/4 trs stereo to dual 1/4 trs mono) that I was thinking of using to do a dual entry rewire on my Beyerdynamic dt770-80. I figured I would just cut the mono tips off, strip the wire & shove it into the headphones.

Apart from the wire being seemingly overpriced, is there anything bad / unwise with what I'm considering? Am I overlooking something? This doesn't seem to be a popular option.
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post #2 of 8
11/16/09 at 6:50pm
as long as it isn't too stiff and has two conductors for each side, you should be ok ..
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post #3 of 8
11/16/09 at 7:49pm
Perfect,just slide some techflex over it for looks and you have a $300 recable job.
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post #4 of 8
11/17/09 at 8:05am
You should be fine for that sort of can, you only need to be cautious if you're using some cans with stupidly high power draw. My current cans officially max out before a standard line out does (50ohm, 2000mv)
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post #5 of 8
11/17/09 at 8:46am
Someone used Cardas Golden Reference for their HD-800 cable and reckoned it seriously trumped other aftermarket cables. Would be interesting to try something like that I reckon.
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post #6 of 8
11/17/09 at 8:47am
A 1/4 TRS can not ever be mono. It would be a TS (tip, sleeve) connector then.

And fwiw, you can use any wire you want. I would just recommend getting some Mogami/Canare or SPC from ebay for your recabling project. It is cheap.
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post #7 of 8
11/17/09 at 1:33pm
Thread Starter 
I did the project last night using the studiolink patch... It worked well. The wire had a very thick thick rubber (soft plastic?) insulator, then a copper braided shield & then 2 wires, that seemed to be around 21 AWG. It was thicker than the navships 22 SPC that I got from ebay, but not thick enough to strip on the 20 setting on my cheapo wire strippers. Everything metal was copper inside the wire.

The only thing is that I had to scrap the rubber thing that the standard cable slides through on the left cup. I was expecting to reuse it. Now there's a big square hole around the wire as it enters the cup. I'm going to have to seal the bottom of the cup with some hot glue or silicone caulk.
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post #8 of 8
11/17/09 at 4:00pm
I just recabled my Senn HD650's with professional microphone cable with 3 OFC conductors plus double shield (grounds get joined at the headphone jack anyway...).
Very robust, just 5.2mm in diameter and excellent sounding!
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