Are these appropriate materials for DIY headphone cable?
Oct 26, 2009 at 9:43 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 18

akdmx

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I'm trying to understand the construction of a headphone cable before I start collecting materials to build my own. Is it more common to buy individual wires and run 4 of them from the jack to the y-split and then 2 on each side, or are most people using something like the canare star quad? If I go the route of running individual wires for signals and 2 grounds, would this be a suitable wire to use? It seems like it would be, but it's so much cheaper than most of the stuff I'm seeing on homegrown that I figured I aught to ask.

25 feet 20 AWG Silver Teflon Wire White 19 strands - eBay (item 230391857610 end time Nov-23-09 11:26:10 PST)

The other thing I'm trying to understand is how people get such a uniformly round shape underneath the sleeve when using individual wires? Do most people run the wires through a tube of some sort? What goes between the wires and the sleeve? And as far as the sleeve goes, are most people using the 3/8" expandable to 5/8"?
 
Oct 26, 2009 at 10:03 PM Post #2 of 18
I've used that wire for a couple recablings and a few interconnects now and I like it a lot. It's really cheap but still good quality. I feel like I noticed a little bit of improvement after recabling my k240 sextetts and k701s but that could be in my head. I would definitely recommend thinner wire for a headphone cable though. I used 26awg both times which should have about half the diameter of that 20awg wire. A lot of people use 24awg too I think. Another thing to look out for is the kapton wire which people have said is much less flexible than the plain teflon coated wire.

For the sleeving, the first time I used the expandable teflex which is like woven fishing line. It looked great but I didn't like the feel of it. It's a little bit rough. Also you get bad microphonics with teflex where if the cable rubs against something, the vibrations carry through the sleeving and you can hear rubbing sound in your headphones.

The next time I tried the not expandable nylon sleeving and I love it. It basically feels like a shoe lace -- soft and very flexible. It also does away with the microphonics. You can get both types of sleeving from the user furryletters on ebay for pretty cheap.
 
Oct 26, 2009 at 10:16 PM Post #3 of 18
19-strand 20awg is gonna be a little stiff.
 
Oct 26, 2009 at 10:29 PM Post #5 of 18
If I go with 24awg wire what size of non-expandable nylon sleeving should I go with. I want to sleeve all sections of the cable, so from the plug to the y-split there will be 4 wires, and then 2 wires to the headphones.
 
Oct 26, 2009 at 11:55 PM Post #8 of 18
Ehm I am not exactly sure what you mean. I believe people that are using 4x 24awg wires and round-braid it are using 1/8.
 
Oct 26, 2009 at 11:58 PM Post #9 of 18
what I meant to ask was if they were using 1/8th to cover the part between the jack and the y-split (4 strands) or between the headphones and the y-split (2 strands) 1/8th just seemed very small to me.
 
Oct 27, 2009 at 12:08 AM Post #10 of 18
Ah. No, it is for the part from the plug to the y.
smily_headphones1.gif
 
Oct 27, 2009 at 7:09 AM Post #13 of 18
Oh yea; I forgot to mention that my wire is still in a box in ohio. The advertisement listed the wire's outer diameter but it was much to small of a diameter to include the teflon shielding.
 
Apr 11, 2011 at 11:36 PM Post #14 of 18
I know this is an old post...
furryletters appears to no longer be around on EBay.
Anyone have another source on the soft sleeve material?
 
Thanks
 
Quote:
I've used that wire for a couple recablings and a few interconnects now and I like it a lot. It's really cheap but still good quality. I feel like I noticed a little bit of improvement after recabling my k240 sextetts and k701s but that could be in my head. I would definitely recommend thinner wire for a headphone cable though. I used 26awg both times which should have about half the diameter of that 20awg wire. A lot of people use 24awg too I think. Another thing to look out for is the kapton wire which people have said is much less flexible than the plain teflon coated wire.

For the sleeving, the first time I used the expandable teflex which is like woven fishing line. It looked great but I didn't like the feel of it. It's a little bit rough. Also you get bad microphonics with teflex where if the cable rubs against something, the vibrations carry through the sleeving and you can hear rubbing sound in your headphones.

The next time I tried the not expandable nylon sleeving and I love it. It basically feels like a shoe lace -- soft and very flexible. It also does away with the microphonics. You can get both types of sleeving from the user furryletters on ebay for pretty cheap.



 
 

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