hookup wire

[sewerwisp]

can anyone recommend where to get different coloured rolls of good soft, pliable, and easy to work with hookup wire? I'd like rolls of red, green, black, blue, white, etc. Not interestd in silver, I guess, unless pressured, then I wilt like a dandelion.

Thanks, Tom

 

[bob91343]

Any full line distributor or electronics part store will have what you want. Belden sells a kit of five or six rolls of hookup wire, for instance, that can be gotten from Mouser or Allied or one of those.

 

[sewerwisp]

Thank you Bob, I will look at Mouser or Allied. Have dealt with both. Also, I would like to know if my 3 feet long homemade interconnects have too high capacitance. I measured from shield to center conductor and got 0.23 nf. I have read a couple of articles, and most of the conclusions were not to worry unless you are up into the 1-5 nf range.
Any opinions? I have listened to them, and they sound OK.
Tom

 

[bob91343]

I think most shielded wire is around 30 pF per foot. Add maybe 2-5 pF for each RCA plug. That makes a 3 ft cable nearly 100 pF. Yours are double that. Yet, it's probably not too much.

The way to know that is the compute the reactance of the cable capacitance at the highest frequency of interest and compare that value to the source impedance of the driving signal. And you have to add the input capacitance of the load as well.

Once you perform this calculation a few times you will realize why people use cathode follower buffers and low impedance lines.

I wouldn't go by a rule of thumb; you don't know the assumptions and you don't know if what you have applies.