[rodentmacbeastie]

I am looking at designing and manufacturing Sennheiser connector plugs for DIY cable design. The constuction would be nearly identical to the HD650 connectors with the addition of longer removable pins for ease of soldering and removable strain relief so you are able to remove the pins to solder. Price would be dependant on the interest and demand so vote for the construction you would prefer ONLY if you would be interested in buying them. I want to get an idea of how many would want them.

 

[Thaddy]

Also, those that vote should include some reasons for choosing what they did

 

[hYdrociTy]

Well I chose rhodium, obviously for its durability. Yes there are strain reliefs, and there is the plastic or whatever housing itself, but the pins do bend, if not on a supersmall scale. All the materials you listed are pretty soft in its pure form, with the exception of spc and gpc, the former which I use extensively, and even if it gets worn will still be useful. In the case of gold and silver plating the copper, I would rather not since the plating will get worn with usage and doesnt make sense, while the rhodium wont wear off even with constant friction, making it much more suitible. No we are not going to be pluggin and unplugging this, but its better than having the gold or silver plate material slowly come off, then you are left with solid copper, which is soft and eventually will shrink, thus loosing contact. my two cents

 

[Epicurean]

I voted rhodium since it should be the most durable but I could do with gold plated copper if the rhodium is much more expensive.

 

[rodentmacbeastie]

That is the main reason I put Rhodium in the list, durability. Gold plated copper is my second for durability. Not as durable, but I love the sound of the gold plated gold/silver/copper alloy wire I have been using in my DIY. The problems is it is quite plyable and very hard to find. The easiest to find and make would be the gold plated copper, but if there is enough interest I will hunt down a Rhodium plater and find out how much. I think these are the best two options. I am also considering making a couple of variations of my headphone cable. I don't a camera to show anyone, but after two hundred hours of burn in with my DIY plugs and Senn pins, gold alloy wire, cotton insulation, Neutrik Rhodium TRS I was impressed! So much so that I sold my Equinox cable that very same day! That is one of the reasons I want to make plugs, so I can toy around with different cable designs. One problem is that it cost me as much to build my cable as it did to buy the Equinox and I don't know how many canheads would pay around $400 for a cable.

 

[hYdrociTy]

Hey, if you do well, remember that you can sell you plugs to the "cable makers" who are still splicing, like the equinox ones.. Then you really have demand there...

 

[rodentmacbeastie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hYdrociTy Hey, if you do well, remember that you can sell you plugs to the "cable makers" who are still splicing, like the equinox ones.. Then you really have demand there...

Not a bad idea, I was thinking of doing it for our community. But that might even make it profitable! I am still a long way off, just getting on my feet again after a half a year off work do to dengue fever and a bad motorcycle accident and about 10 small ones in Thailand. I should correct myself, it was a hell of a good year for the most part except the above. I spent a total of four months bed ridden and lots of time listening to my cans and thinking, significant amounts of herb helped with the soundstaging and being crazy bored! Fell in love with a beautiful woman, spent half of that year teaching SCUBA, partied like it was the end of the world and re-evaluated my whole life and to my surprise I have no regrets. A monumental year, none the less it nearly killed me twice! After four months in bed without income before I could even fly home I realized that I would love to experiment more with cable designs and active speaker set-ups. I am not talking about a little two way iPod thing with fake black ash finish and 10w of crappy power that cost $100. I am talking parabolic, four foot high, 480w/speaker, 3-way with bass down to 20Hz and treble up to 30000Hz and a finish that would make your heart melt. I am one of the best laquer finshers in Canada and although soon will never do it commercially again, I think I could do it on these. I am in the process of designing them as we speak with the help of an enclosure designer(even though I think mine will be competely sealed, not ported) to work everything out. They will be ready next year sometime and if they sound as good as he predicts, I may begin selling them as a kit and in finished form with whatever finish your little heart desires. However, space in ultra tight right now and money is hard to come by, so the pins have been moved into the research arena for now. I am still working on a power supply for the amps with another engineer friend of mine. I am a bit of visionary(thinker) and while I lack the technical training in this field, my friends don't. I hope that I can take a differnt road altogether instead of reinventing the wheel again and again. As with my headphone cable, and my approach to life, I look to nature for guidance. A couple of billion years of evolution has made most everything near perfect, exept for us!

 

[tourmaline]

I agree that rhodium is the best for durability. I have a high end powercable i made with the furutech rhodium plated plugs and i allready took them in and out of the sockets couple of times but no trace of degradation at all. It seems that rhodium is as good or better as silver for conducting as well, so my vote would be copper plated rhodium.

 

[rodentmacbeastie]

I prefer the Rhodium for durability as well. Gold plating is just a LOT easier to come by. I do think that it would be worth searching out a Rhodium plater if these plug come to be.

 

[choariwap]

one thing with rhodium... is it harder than gold?

since the jack on the senn phones are gold plated, if rhodium is harder than gold, then wouldnt it strip the plating off the cans over time?

 

[rodentmacbeastie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by choariwap one thing with rhodium... is it harder than gold? since the jack on the senn phones are gold plated, if rhodium is harder than gold, then wouldnt it strip the plating off the cans over time?

Another valid point. It would be easier to get new connectors than to replate the inside of the cans.

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

I'd rather not have rhodium plated, you generally have to get the solder to a higher temperature than gold to get it to stick which would lead to a number of melted plugs. I'd say gold plated with a 60-70% pure copper base, that way it would be fairly conductive but still pretty durable. A cheaper alternative is beryllium copper which is still about 7% more conductive than brass.

 

[rodentmacbeastie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HiGHFLYiN9 I'd rather not have rhodium plated, you generally have to get the solder to a higher temperature than gold to get it to stick which would lead to a number of melted plugs. I'd say gold plated with a 60-70% pure copper base, that way it would be fairly conductive but still pretty durable. A cheaper alternative is beryllium copper which is still about 7% more conductive than brass.

Good point with temp.

Gold plated will probably win out. The Rhodium makes a nice TRS phone plug though. As for the cost of copper, with the amount of metal in these pins and the nature of it being an upgraded pin I think I would go all out on the quality of the components. This would make them a good upgrade even for upgraded cables. I hate the fact that most cables are beautiful right up to where they are soldered to the tiny Senn wire coming out of the plug. My personal DIY is a custom plug with the cable soldered directly to the pins, not the wire. I may also make them a crimp style. This would eliminate soldering unless you wanted to. Soldering my pins while in the platic plug was a nightmare.

 

[rsaavedra]

Any updates on the availability of these connectors?

 

[JLR64]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rodentmacbeastie /img/forum/go_quote.gif ...significant amounts of herb... helped with the soundstaging and being crazy bored!

Fair to say it helped you write that manifesto of a post as well

Best of luck in your attempts.