[Joe Bloggs]

Well it was messy! It took me two tries to complete the cable and even now I wonder how long I can use it for before it falls apart

and yep I used heatshrink to wrap the cable from head to foot--not the most elegant solution there is, I'd say

I originally composed this as a reply to a thread about DIY Clou Clones and I'm too lazy to modify it, so refer to that thread when reading this post.

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I'm wondering how your DIY cable project went? I just finished making my first DIY IC. (male mini to mini) Basic plan was much the same as your Clou clone, except I didn't braid the wires (and of course, I was making an IC, not a HD5/6xx cable). As I was making an attenuator cable it was quite a bit of hassle (wiring the resistors in the middle took up half the time

). At the stage when I had just wrapped the wire in foil, it looked really hilarious--like I was wrapping up a turkey to put in the oven to cook or something

Of course there's no foil wide enough to wrap the whole wire in one go, so I wrapped it in 3 or 4 sections. I put one layer of heatshrink between the signal wires and the foil to increase separation and hopefully decrease capacitance.

I tried testing its RFI rejection by turning on and off a mobile phone next to the cable while playing music--I noticed no significant difference between when the cable was grounded and ungrounded. If anything, it seemed better before it was grounded, but I really don't know, because I only tried it once, and in any case, it's all wrapped up in heatshrink tubing and hard-wired to connect to ground on one side.

The end product is so stiff I feel like tying the two ends of the IC together with string and using it as a bow!

Well that's a bit of an exaggeration but it *is* not so easy to even make the IC loop in on itself! LOL I wonder if Clous are anything like this!

On a side note I used regular copper cable, 26AWG, and the wires are stranded, which made it rather hard to work with (I keep breaking half the strands when exposing the wire from the insulation and when bending it to solder to the plugs. Even now half the strands are broken on one plug and I wonder how long it would last

)

I also wonder how important the continuity of the foil shielding is to its effectiveness as shield. On the foil I measure negligible resistance from one end of the cable to the other (<10 ohms) but I can only imagine that if the shielding does not consist of one solid conducting cylinder it is harder for magnetic fields and such to induce the smooth circular(-ish) currents in the shield...

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Yep, back to square one--I found that when I was heating the heatshrink near the connectors, one of the two plastic rings at one of the plugs expanded under the heat, and now that side can no longer be inserted into any audio input / output.

Oh well, another lesson learned: never apply heat near the connectors.

Third try...

I REALLY should be asking Jan about just plain damn changing the gain on my Porta Corda, shouldn't I?

 

[Budgie]

Its gets easier after several sets of cables. I build all my own cables, now.

 

[Nezer]

Quote:

Originally posted by Joe Bloggs I REALLY should be asking Jan about just plain damn changing the gain on my Porta Corda, shouldn't I?

Should be a simple matter of changing 4 resistors. The hard part is figuring out what gain you want. Start by finding out the current gain and decide if you want more or less and use the calculate at www.tangentsoft.net/audio/meta42 to get the values of the new resistors you'll need for the gain.

The resistors you want to change should be hanging off the feedback loop. I don't believe Jan has published the schematic for the PC yet so you may want to trace the circuitry around the opamps. I'd bet the topology is *very* similar to the Corda but tweaked with portablility in-mind.

 

[ppl]

I was thinking about DIY cables a few days ago i have some small peices of Kimber AG-3 that i would like to make into a Mini 1/8" Male to RCA Plugs, Stereo of course. what do ya think should i leave the braid? how would be the best way to bring out the RCA ends with only one Ground?

 

[puppyslugg]

hi ppl,

I recently made a similar adaptor. I grounded the braid at the 'source' end and floated the braid at the other end. In the past, I have made rca interconnects with no braid and one end without the ground connected. This was all to eliminate any ground loops. I guess it works, I've had no problem with rf, hum, etc.

 

[KR...]

Quote:

The end product is so stiff I feel like tying the two ends of the IC together with string and using it as a bow! Well that's a bit of an exaggeration but it *is* not so easy to even make the IC loop in on itself! LOL I wonder if Clous are anything like this!

no it's not, I can wrap it around my hand without much effort, it's just stiff when compared to the stock.

 

[ppl]

The Kimber Ag has no shield just Three wires in Kimbers braid. this stuff is spendy (Silver wire/ Clear teflon Insulation) and i have several scrap Peices left over from other Projects so i was thinking of making a stereo Mini Phone Plug to two RCA Stereo interconnect for portable Audio use. grounding at the source and one RCA with the Other RCA ungrounded with a wire but it would be grounded by the Jack it is inserted into. the question of the Kimber's braiding might reduce seperation. http://www.kimber.com/kcag.htm

 

[Budgie]

Doesn't the Kimbers wires cross each other at almost 90 degrees? I am gonna guess the cross talk won't be much, but it would be interesting to find out. Let us know if you build it. _How about a short piece of wire to jumper ground between the rca's? Just long enough to make the "bend" at the "y" at the end of the braid.

 

[ppl]

Hi Budgie> That was my concern also. I might have two peices long enought to make a short cable with. I like the fact the cable is small since the Monster cable i am using is Big and not practical to move around, or shall i say not very portable. the Radio shack Gold cable has the same problem and the Mini Plug it uses has sutch a large Dia. barrel it will not Properly fit into the line out of my portable DC player since the line out jack on the SL-SW860 is recessed and a smaller Barel is needed. radio shack makes a Gold 1/8's Mini Plug that fits and this along with the matching RCA's is what i am going to use. Ill Keep you posted.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Hey, I might be giving this a third try but I think I may running into a problem...

I used gold plugs for my first two tries, but I believe they are out of stock now. For my third try, I'd have to use silver / nickel plugs... but *that* isn't the main problem. The main problem is that they have plastic er... caps or whatever you call them. I had to wrap my aluminium foil *after* screwing on the caps. With the gold plugs I could then ground it by wrapping it around the metal cap. How do I do it with a plastic cap?