DIY Interconnects

[RyanW]

Interested in making a high quality interconnect for cheap. Can a person use coaxial cable with RCA plugs? Seems that this would be cheaper than expensive Monster cable. There are a lot of reviews regarding silver and solid strand etc... but not much discussion about good quality, cheap DIY interconnects.

[vinylkid58]

Can a person use coaxial cable with RCA plugs?

Sure. I have some diy RG8 coax interconnects, RCA to XLR, which sound fine IMHO. I made some Cat5 Plenum grade RCA-RCA interconnects for my phono stage, which also sound fine. They have cheap gold plated plugs on them.
Just google "DIY Cat5 interconnects" and there should be lots of info/sites.

Jeff

[serengetiplains]

Get some Belden foamed teflon dielectric twisted pair wire, keep the twisted pair, chuck the rest, *including* the shielding .... second only to bare silver wire. Solder directly if you can. Avoid connectors.

[KHashmi316]

Originally posted by RyanW
Interested in making a high quality interconnect for cheap. Can a person use coaxial cable with RCA plugs? Seems that this would be cheaper than expensive Monster cable. There are a lot of reviews regarding silver and solid strand etc... but not much discussion about good quality, cheap DIY interconnects.

Coax may indeed be the best-sounding option -- period -- if you can live with the stiffness of solid-core. Some brands/models that stick out are:

Belden BL-1694A, Belden 1505F and Canare LV-77S.

[RyanW]

Great input!

What is your opinion on cheap Radioshack grade coax? Further, I am building a pair of GB300D's and SKPre's. Would this be an appropriate material to use within the pre-amp and amp cases for all of the low level signal wiring?

[serengetiplains]

Belden 89182, Belden 89182!

[audio-kraut]

*including* the shielding ....

don't try this on connectors from your tt to the phono preamp.

[Nordic]

Yeah, old Rudi dosn't post here that often anymore, but he sent me my first sample of RG8.. certainly made an improvement to my amp at that stage. Just wish the stuff was not so unwieldy and rigid.

[AndrewT]

Hi,
aerial cable @ 6 to 9mm diameter is too stiff for internal wiring.

If your case is non conducting then shielded microphone cable should be OK @ 3 to 4mm diameter. Shielded down to 1.2mm is available, but difficult to source at the smaller end.

For a shielded type case you may get away with unshielded between stages or even twisted pairs (0.6mm solid core or 1pair from CAT5).

There may be more advantage in twisting the HIGH current conductors to reduce the fields emanating from them than protecting the low current conductors.

[dfdye]

I personally like guitar cable + RCA plugs. It is made to be flexible and it is pretty well shielded. It has benefits of shielded coax while being a lot easier to work with and bend around equipment. That being said, I also have a bunch of RG8 for BNC connectors, and it works great for audio too.

My concern with Radio Shack cable would be A) it wouldn't fit standard RCA plugs, and b) that stuff is really hit or miss. I would rather go to Lowes/Home Depot and get some of the high grade coax if you are going to use "TV Cable" coax.

Just my $0.02