[unl3a5h3d]

I finally made my first cable. I think I have started a new addiction.

 

[FraGGleR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by unl3a5h3d /img/forum/go_quote.gif I finally made my first cable. I think I have started a new addiction.

Welcome to the clinic.. I mean club. Nice job. What materials did you use? I see some Neutrik RCAs.

 

[aj-kun]

looks like ALO sxc cryo

 

[drummerdimitri]

Here is a mini-RCA cable i made using radioshack plugs and some extra copper speaker cable.

 

[unl3a5h3d]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FraGGleR /img/forum/go_quote.gif Welcome to the clinic.. I mean club. Nice job. What materials did you use? I see some Neutrik RCAs.

I used Neutric RCA's. (Which I will rant about in a minute) And I used solid core silver wire, 24 awg. Teflon insulated. I got it from Qables with my dock connector.

But about the RCA's. I used the cheap ones I guess and the solder would not stick to the RCA. I was trying to do the ground, (I forgot to mention this was my first time soldering, ever lol) but it wouldn't stick. In fact I had it done and went to test it out and the ground solder came off. So I took it back apart and drilled a whole in the long ground thing and wrapped the wire through and then soldered. Maybe it will hold...

 

[LingLing1337]

Not bad for a first cable at all! I know it looks better than mine did.

 

[jageur272]

Quote:

Originally Posted by unl3a5h3d /img/forum/go_quote.gif But about the RCA's. I used the cheap ones I guess and the solder would not stick to the RCA. I was trying to do the ground, (I forgot to mention this was my first time soldering, ever lol) but it wouldn't stick. In fact I had it done and went to test it out and the ground solder came off. So I took it back apart and drilled a whole in the long ground thing and wrapped the wire through and then soldered. Maybe it will hold...

The solder should've sticked. If it wasn't, that means that you had a cold joint. Were you heating up both the wire AND the ground connection of the plug? Solder adheres to the hot surfaces. You can't just put a gigantic gob of solder on top of the wire and hope it'll stick. It's not quite like glue (unfortunately

). Just practice a bit more and you'll get the hang of it

 

[unl3a5h3d]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jageur272 /img/forum/go_quote.gif The solder should've sticked. If it wasn't, that means that you had a cold joint. Were you heating up both the wire AND the ground connection of the plug? Solder adheres to the hot surfaces. You can't just put a gigantic gob of solder on top of the wire and hope it'll stick. It's not quite like glue (unfortunately ). Just practice a bit more and you'll get the hang of it

Yeah I held the tip of the gun to the underside of the ground for about 2 minutes an then finally got it to stick. Thanks for the info though, it would have been good to know before hand lol.

I have about 3 feet of wire left over, I think I am going to make a LOD. What do you guys think?

 

[stellablues]

This may not be the appropriate thread, but I built a DIY headphone cable for my Sennheiser HD600 (Photos to come) and I am not happy with the sound of the cable.

I seem to have lost a lot of the body of the music, the midrange and midbass are not as full and have lost some detail and harmonics which give the music its structure. I am also hearing a bit more sibilant high frequencies with a loss of harmonics and room acoustic informatoin. Overall it seems like I am loosing a lot of harmonics and overtones throughout the frequency spectrum compared to the standard cable.

Do you think that the 28awg 19 strand cable is too skinny for this purpose? Should I have used 24-26awg? Is it the silver coated copper?

Ingredients:
Cardas Senn plugs
ViaBlue 1/4 phono jack
28awg 19 strand Silver coated Copper w/teflon cover purchased from ebay.
soft techflex
heatshrink

Topology:
Twisted pair for channel/ground and then twisted l/r together.

 

[El_Doug]

My bet would be some bad soldering, or a weak contact between the connector and headphone

 

[skyline889]

28awg is fine for headphones, a little thinner than I like to work with but that has to do with build and not sound quality. Pick up a MM and test for continuity and inspect the solder joints.

 

[stellablues]

It might be the solder job at the plug end but definitely not on the cardas plugs end, those are clean and nice. When my neutrik plug comes I will rewire it more cleanly. I was not at all impressed by the viablue plug which has very poor strain relief and the ground pin broke clean off with no encouragement.

Would you feel a cold solder joint could cause this partial loss of information? or is it a crosstalk issue where two solder joints are sharing some information?

I am not talking dramatic difference, but I would has these cables are 80% percent as good as the originals but definitely not as good or better. These cables make my Senn much more bright and threadbare than my K701 which now seem warm and inviting by comparison....

 

[drummerdimitri]

Here is my first attempt to create my own USB cable. I kept the connectors of an old USB cable, and used CAT5e wires for the job. It somehow worked and put a smile on my face when I plugged it to my creative X-Fi sound card.

 

[.Sup]

do you have any schematics on how to make a USB cable? Also no shielding?

 

[drummerdimitri]

No, I just used all the information I found on Wikipedia. Just type in USB and It will give you the pin numbering so that you can match the cables on both connectors. And no, I did not use any shielding as it doesn't seem to be necessary in my opinion.