thomas997 said:
I missed the wink...
Guess there are two reasons for the omission. One, I didn't think it was important or necessary. I just assumed that type of connection was common in the computer world for data transfer. (I'm not computer savvy at all.) The other reason is shameful embarrassment.
Thanks again and happy holidays!
Hi DD,
Now that I fully understand this intended application, I have a few other suggestions for you to consider. I am not grumbling, but as thomas suggested, if you had been more specific originally, we could have got there sooner!
All of these I have done successfully with other similar connector arrangements, but not with this particular one, so you will be on your own if you try anything I suggest. Also I have been doing this kind of thing for close to 40 yrs, and have a lot of appropriate experience, and an excellent set of tools for this kind of work.
My first choice (and will give the best sonic results) would be to open the unit and solder wires directly to the PCB where the existing connector 'legs' are soldered, and run these flying leads out of the connector aperture.
Secondly, from the looks of things, if you have a suitably tipped iron (I would use a fine S/M tip) you could probably solder wires directly on to the connector tags which can be accessed from the outside, without any dissembly, although bear in mind that this might prevent the use of a 'normal' connector in future unless this solder could be fully cleaned off these tags again.
Both of these will give a better result (sonically) than any connector, and with this other guy's suggestion there is always the risk of damage by shorting something out, and, in due course, the performance will deteriorate with oxidation of bare copper unless some regular cleaning is undertaken to avoid this.
If you don't feel able or willing to take the above steps and you still wish to have a removable plug assembly, I have never (yet!) been beaten by any such connector when I took one apart and re-used it. This is the safest approach probably, especially if you already have a 'made-up' lead with a connector which you are not using anyway, as you have little to lose by investigating this possibility, and there is no risk to the device you wish to use this plug with.
All such molded plugs I have ever seen are soldered up first and then the encapsulation material is then molded around the plug/cable assembly, and you can usually see a thin molding flash (like a line or a slight groove) where the 2 halves of the mold go together.
Depending on the material used, either a razor saw, or a razor knife (Stanley or similar, but reasonably strong) can then be used to carefully separate the two halves of the plug's molded shell, but the cutting device used must not have a thick blade (especially if it is a saw) or too much material will possibly be removed to enble the separated halves to be used again. It is a fiddle, but with some care and patience you should be able to get at the point where the wires are already attached, unsolder them, and attach the new wires of your choice.
You may also need to 'relieve' the parts of the molding where the new wires will exit if they are more substantial than the originals, but then the plug halves can be super-glued (cyanoacrylate) back together again.
I wouldn't suggest this for high voltage (like mains) connectors, incidentally, as the final result will not be quite so strong or secure as the original, but it will be absolutely fine and quite safe for this kind of signal level.
I usually start any cutting at the point where the original cable entered the molding, and slowly work down towards the 'guts' of the plug. If the molding-plasic used is flexible, you can often cut only so far as to be able to access the necessary tags for soldering, without fully separating the parts entirely. The 2 sides can be wedged apart if they are flexible enough, and keep on slowly cutting a little more at a time until sufficient access has been achieved, and this is even better as the result will be stronger and better aligned when the parts are glued together again.
I hope that this helps.
Now that I fully understand this intended application, I have a few other suggestions for you to consider. I am not grumbling, but as thomas suggested, if you had been more specific originally, we could have got there sooner!
All of these I have done successfully with other similar connector arrangements, but not with this particular one, so you will be on your own if you try anything I suggest. Also I have been doing this kind of thing for close to 40 yrs, and have a lot of appropriate experience, and an excellent set of tools for this kind of work.
My first choice (and will give the best sonic results) would be to open the unit and solder wires directly to the PCB where the existing connector 'legs' are soldered, and run these flying leads out of the connector aperture.
Secondly, from the looks of things, if you have a suitably tipped iron (I would use a fine S/M tip) you could probably solder wires directly on to the connector tags which can be accessed from the outside, without any dissembly, although bear in mind that this might prevent the use of a 'normal' connector in future unless this solder could be fully cleaned off these tags again.
Both of these will give a better result (sonically) than any connector, and with this other guy's suggestion there is always the risk of damage by shorting something out, and, in due course, the performance will deteriorate with oxidation of bare copper unless some regular cleaning is undertaken to avoid this.
If you don't feel able or willing to take the above steps and you still wish to have a removable plug assembly, I have never (yet!) been beaten by any such connector when I took one apart and re-used it. This is the safest approach probably, especially if you already have a 'made-up' lead with a connector which you are not using anyway, as you have little to lose by investigating this possibility, and there is no risk to the device you wish to use this plug with.
All such molded plugs I have ever seen are soldered up first and then the encapsulation material is then molded around the plug/cable assembly, and you can usually see a thin molding flash (like a line or a slight groove) where the 2 halves of the mold go together.
Depending on the material used, either a razor saw, or a razor knife (Stanley or similar, but reasonably strong) can then be used to carefully separate the two halves of the plug's molded shell, but the cutting device used must not have a thick blade (especially if it is a saw) or too much material will possibly be removed to enble the separated halves to be used again. It is a fiddle, but with some care and patience you should be able to get at the point where the wires are already attached, unsolder them, and attach the new wires of your choice.
You may also need to 'relieve' the parts of the molding where the new wires will exit if they are more substantial than the originals, but then the plug halves can be super-glued (cyanoacrylate) back together again.
I wouldn't suggest this for high voltage (like mains) connectors, incidentally, as the final result will not be quite so strong or secure as the original, but it will be absolutely fine and quite safe for this kind of signal level.
I usually start any cutting at the point where the original cable entered the molding, and slowly work down towards the 'guts' of the plug. If the molding-plasic used is flexible, you can often cut only so far as to be able to access the necessary tags for soldering, without fully separating the parts entirely. The 2 sides can be wedged apart if they are flexible enough, and keep on slowly cutting a little more at a time until sufficient access has been achieved, and this is even better as the result will be stronger and better aligned when the parts are glued together again.
I hope that this helps.
Why would useing the original cable not work...?
You can cut it shorter and maybe solder it to some veroboard in a little box, for further connection to other peripherals....
I fear to think what would happen to the output of the playstation of the outputs were to shift and short.
I'd rather get a $3 cable off ebay.... wonderfull place that, got Final Fantasy V for Gameboy SP this week for only 6GBP...
Can't wait for it to arrive... me loves that series
You can cut it shorter and maybe solder it to some veroboard in a little box, for further connection to other peripherals....
I fear to think what would happen to the output of the playstation of the outputs were to shift and short.
I'd rather get a $3 cable off ebay.... wonderfull place that, got Final Fantasy V for Gameboy SP this week for only 6GBP...
Can't wait for it to arrive... me loves that series
Hi Nordic,
Most probably because using solid core wires will 'sound' rather better than the mundane stranded cable which I guess is used in the original cables.
I won't use anything stranded in my systems as in direct comparison there is no contest, and even using a very short piece of the original cable in a case like this will not be so good sonically, as solid core soldered directly to the plug's pins.
Seeing the illustration of the other guy's recommendation, there will be a further improvement (in my experience) if the RCA connecter is also removed from part-way along this new signal-path, and the solid core wires are taken directly to the load device.
Regards,
Most probably because using solid core wires will 'sound' rather better than the mundane stranded cable which I guess is used in the original cables.
I won't use anything stranded in my systems as in direct comparison there is no contest, and even using a very short piece of the original cable in a case like this will not be so good sonically, as solid core soldered directly to the plug's pins.
Seeing the illustration of the other guy's recommendation, there will be a further improvement (in my experience) if the RCA connecter is also removed from part-way along this new signal-path, and the solid core wires are taken directly to the load device.
Regards,
Well, we don't want to start the usual 'wars' over such a perennial subject at this time of the year, I am sure.
The most illuminating experience for me in this regard was when I re-wired a new SME Series V pickup arm some years ago.
Being such HQ arms anyway, the standard wiring is very good, but (as mentioned) I don't like what any stranded cables do for HQ sound.
I therefore re-wired the arm shortly after purchasing it, using very fine Cardas solid-core wire with no breaks in the entire path until the input RCAs at the MC head amp.
This was not an easy job, and I sweated a bit as these arms are well over the thousand GB Pounds threshold to buy, but the results were very rewarding and made the effort and risk worthwhile.
This, and many similar experiences (mainly before, but also since the SME) is why I said what I did, and why I also believe that getting rid of any superfluous connectors in the chain will usually give some improvements, too.
I am not sure quite what you meant with some of your comments, but it looks as if you have had some microphonic effects perhaps, but this is not typical of solid core wires, and in fact rather the reverse is the case in my experience.
Using thin enamelled solid wires in a made-up loom has never caused me any worries in this regard and at one time (about 35 yrs ago) I had some speaker cables made out of mulitple Kynar wire-wrap wires (30G), which were really excellent. IIRC around 20-25 separate wires in parallel were needed to cope with this highish current demand, and at that time thin single-core HQ (Oxygen-free) wire with a low dielectric covering were extremely hard to obtain, and Kynar wire-wrap was all I could find.
Over the years I have moved on from these, but the speaker cables I use now (also solid-core silver Audio-Note from Japan, not A/N UK), even purchased used, cost hundreds of times more than the Kynar types cost to make, for maybe a 5-10% improvement.
Regards,
The most illuminating experience for me in this regard was when I re-wired a new SME Series V pickup arm some years ago.
Being such HQ arms anyway, the standard wiring is very good, but (as mentioned) I don't like what any stranded cables do for HQ sound.
I therefore re-wired the arm shortly after purchasing it, using very fine Cardas solid-core wire with no breaks in the entire path until the input RCAs at the MC head amp.
This was not an easy job, and I sweated a bit as these arms are well over the thousand GB Pounds threshold to buy, but the results were very rewarding and made the effort and risk worthwhile.
This, and many similar experiences (mainly before, but also since the SME) is why I said what I did, and why I also believe that getting rid of any superfluous connectors in the chain will usually give some improvements, too.
I am not sure quite what you meant with some of your comments, but it looks as if you have had some microphonic effects perhaps, but this is not typical of solid core wires, and in fact rather the reverse is the case in my experience.
Using thin enamelled solid wires in a made-up loom has never caused me any worries in this regard and at one time (about 35 yrs ago) I had some speaker cables made out of mulitple Kynar wire-wrap wires (30G), which were really excellent. IIRC around 20-25 separate wires in parallel were needed to cope with this highish current demand, and at that time thin single-core HQ (Oxygen-free) wire with a low dielectric covering were extremely hard to obtain, and Kynar wire-wrap was all I could find.
Over the years I have moved on from these, but the speaker cables I use now (also solid-core silver Audio-Note from Japan, not A/N UK), even purchased used, cost hundreds of times more than the Kynar types cost to make, for maybe a 5-10% improvement.
Regards,
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