I first dipped my toe into hifi during covid and being on a budget, I slowly bought used to build up my system including a decision to DIY my own speaker cables. I bought 20ft of Mogami 3014 wire along with some gold plated banana plug connectors and while having zero soldering experience gave it a go. To date everything works fine but I’m left questioning whether my potentially "shoddy" soldering work is my weakest link and is holding back my setup. I’ve been flip flopping back and forth on just buying some used name brand speaker cables so I can stop the torment. I guess my main question is, when wires work, is it black or white, meaning they either connect or they dont, or can bad soldering limit the max performance of the cables or furthermore my entire setup?
Aside from my DIY speakers cables everything else is name brand, I use AudioQuest Earth RCAs (TT to Pre) and AQ McKenzie XLRs (Pre to Hegel H360), and a Curious USB cable ( Stream Box S2 Ultra to Denafrips Pontus II)
I’d recommend re terminating your cable but don’t solder the ends.
Strip the ends back mechanically join the strands together.
Split the number of strands in 1/2, then 1/2 them again. Twist all 4 equal parts clockwise. Then join two of the 4 and twist them clockwise. Then take the two that were made from 4 and twist them clockwise holding the base of the wire VERY tight.
You are ready to insert the wire into the terminal end. Dip or treat the bare end of the wire after you’ve joined it with contact enhancer.
I use red copper, copper, gold plated copper or silver plated copper terminal ends with Allen head set screws and red Loctite. No brass, rhodium, nickel or any of that.. GOOD terminal ends..
The same way with crimped cable terminal ends. They requires a tool to crimp it or a hammer die.. Either is fine. Armor and shrink tube.... Cold welding though has it’s qualities. Very tough to beat..
That is the professional way to make speaker cables. You can "tin" the end, but tinning is NOT soldering NOR does it effect the wire end the same way if it’s "TINNED" correctly. Bare wire (with enhancers) has the better signature in my opinion.. "Key to the kingdom" "Pearls" my friend..
Then buy someone else’s JUNK and compare it yours..
Borrow someone super duper cables and compare.. You might be surprised.
To make a good solder joint first the parts to be joined must be absolutely clean to shiny bare metal. Then crimped or joined together mechanically to the point the connection is secure and done. Finally, heat with the iron from one side until heat flows through melting the solder which is held on the other side of the joint so that the heat draws the solder through. Use a quality solder such as Cardas Quad Eutetic rosin core solder.
How bad can a bad solder joint be? I had one channel gradually deteriorate to the point it was intermittently cutting out. This was eventually tracked down to a very expensive professionally built RCA that had a cold solder joint.
Soldering is just one aspect of DIY, and not even the most important one. Every single bit of the wire affects the sound. If making a professional quality cable was as easy as soldering connectors on the end of wire off a spool rest assured someone would have discovered this and be doing it. The profit margins guarantee it. Forget everything else, this one simple fact is all the proof anyone should need to know DIY cables are a good way to go only for people who enjoy building DIY cables.
I tried, and had a friend who tried for 30 years. Dismal failure. I know precisely one exception, and Lubos is making $5k cables for $2500, $20k for $10k.
Unless you are Lubos I highly recommend you take whatever your budget is and research and buy some good used and professionally made cables. Synergistic is my go-to in your price range. My bet is you will be staggered how much better they are.
Good learning experience and for the cost of some terminal ends. Try them my way. Try them MCs way.. You’ll like one way more. I like no solder. BUT soldered ends are tough to pull apart.
The better way over both is to cold weld or use a hammer dye.. 10-20 tons with heavy hammer strikes. LOL They don’t come loose and they don’t grow green when you use enhancers.. Graphite dust is perfect. Ops! another pearl.. Keep going I’ll show you just how to make a 10k cable.. for 300 dollars or so and some sore fingers. Signature wooden blocks are optional for an additional 100.00 usd
I have a cable or two. "The Clydesdale", "The Mule" and "The Donkey" My creations.. Pony series are speaker cables.. NO I don’t share. BUT weaves and ribbons sure work well TOGETHER. hint hint!! ops! another pearl!!
Viborg, remember that name, it did something special for my MB columns. A helix twist in a clear air tube, Ops another pearl!! OFC copper to boot.. They have an OCC and a tinned version too (not a big fan only on bonding).
I rewired some Rythmik (GRs mod) servo plates for a OB servo speaker set up.. It made a LOT of difference. Two different people modified the plates you could see it in the workmanship.
I made them the same (visually) and voiced them differently than the factory.. SC OCC copper with PTFE in a few spots.. I did that 30 days or so ago. Man that did make a difference, really lighten my pocket book.. LOL.
I also checked how the wire was pulled through the dye, OPS that was a big one and then conditioned 4 spools of wire and some SC lengths for 21 days on a cooker..
HOW you do your work is just a mater of practice. BUT I’ll bet if you look at someone do it correctly you could walk over and do the same thing..
BTW handle your cables like they could be broken and they won’t get broken.. I handle cable with extreme care.. Antistatic bags. ZERO compromise there.. Off the floor. The longer they work the better they sound.. LEAVE them alone..
QUIT worrying and do it.. :-)
THEN borrow or rent some fancy cables to compare with.. It’s fun!!
There are some very talented dyi cable members on the site, e.g. wig, grannyring, williewonka , etc check out the FORUM thread below to find them. I assume that they would be willing to give you guidance that you need on your own build. And, based upon my experience with one of those member’s cables, there are very good sounding and manufacturer competitive dyi cables aside from the sole one mentioned above
Making a good proper pair of cables for audio are not easy. You can make some cheap DIY cables and they can sound decent. I've done that before using Cat5/or Goertz foils. But they won't be as good as good as a well engineered pair of cables.
It also depends on the overall level of your system. If you have some budget system, DIY cables are probably alright. But if you have some high-end system, then DIY probably are not good enough.
The audio cable industry is filled with imitators so you have to be careful with that too. I would stick with some well known brands. There are too many bad actors that give the industry a bad name.
I'm no expert but if your solder joint is gray or looks like a bubble gum blob you may want to resolder. Solder joint should be shiny or mirror like. A solder sucker is your friend. I've always found when you tin stranded wire it should be totally soldered through out the wire but should be able to see each strand of wire, place a small amount of solder in cup heat cup up, place tinned wire in cup let it become one still able to see each strand of wire, pull on wire for durability and your done.
Ive made my own wire for ten years or more some can sound very nice but never have been able to compete with high end wire. I've used stranded, solid silver, solid and stranded copper, magnets, vibration control but it's very tricky to make wire that can compete with $1000 and up cable. Power cables seem to be the easiest to make sound good. Use nice quality connectors good wire and some clamps and vibration control and they can sound pretty good for what they are.
For speaker wire wire I use bare wire. In one system I have speaker wire hard wired to amp and outboard crossover. No bulky big copper binding post.
Thanks for taking the time to provide such detail, seems like the consensus is no solder w/connectors or go bare wire all the way. IF I can find the time I will give it a go, just been spread so thin lately, its hard to even sit down and listen to some tunes.
I actually came across a speaker cable company who sold their wire with the recommendation to go bare, interesting for sure, makes sense to cut the middle man out.
Get a spool of 5-9’s fine silver 18 AWG and some PTFE tubing with an ID large enough to accommodate your wire. Terminate them with hard-drawn 8 AWG fine silver wire pin terminals. Better than any commercial cables no matter the price.
I think this may be my sweet spot between time savings (busy life),cost savings, without sacrificing quality. Do you mind revealing who you ultimately chose to make you cables? Thank you for providing the link too, every here seems so helpful its awesome.
interesting, so have you tried bare wire yourself in comparison to connectors? I think my setup is fairly cold and analytical, Im looking for anything to warm it up slightly over neutral. My Hegel with the Quad z3s I have seem wonderful with jazz and strings but cold with pop, rock, reggae and hip hop.
Hey Paul, the problem was, after I tinned the wires, the banana I used had a gold tube the wire slid into and I almost had to feed the solder down the tube out of my eyes view so while the cable was sturdy, I just could quite see down in there to see what the finished product looked like. If anything, probably put too much solder down the connection point which Im assuming was far from a "clean" job.
First thing: do you live in a humid climate near the sea? If so, do NOT try to use unterminated cabling. The reason is that the salt air will oxidize the copper wire; if there is any air pollution, the problem will be worse. Your only recourse is to put solder right up the end of the insulation to protect those delicate wires and seal with shrink-wrap.
Some people use vaseline on the unterminated ends. It can work for a time, but I don't recommend it.
Second, with all the money you've saved with buying DIY cables and connectors, you've got enough left over to get decent tools. Make sure that you crimp before you solder, use the lowest temperature audio solder you can find (that's resin flux core, not acid flux core - I like WBT). and shrink-wrap the ends to retard oxidation.
To solder, put the soldering tip on one side of the connector and feed solder onto the connector where it meets the wire, ideally inside the connector itself, and then onto the wire wherever it's exposed. A good solder joint is shiny. If yours is not shiny, cut it off and try again with a new connector.
Take care to do this in a very well ventilated place, or better, outside. Keep your work at eye level to avoid the fumes. Be careful to NOT solder teflon insulated wire, because teflon decomposes into really nasty gasses. Leave that to people with special facilities. Mogami, if I remember correctly, does not use teflon.
interesting, so have you tried bare wire yourself in comparison to connectors?
Not in 20 + years. Cutting off spades / bananas from speaker cables reduces their resale a lot.
I am not familiar with your equipment so I'm the wrong person to give advice.
What gauge of wire are you soldering? I've had to solder a lot of high current cable to lugs, and I found a small propane torch to work best. If there is too much wire and lug a soldering iron will not get them hot enough for the solder to flow properly. I crush fit first, solder afterwards.
I guess my main question is, when wires work, is it black or white,
meaning they either connect or they dont, or can bad soldering limit the
max performance of the cables or furthermore my entire setup?
Scorpio43, if you don't have a third hand go to Harbor Freight there $5 and angle tube towards you or level so solder doesn't disappear down tube on you. You can get 3 solder suckers for $10 shipped on amazon. A quality solder iron was also key for me the $50 orange Weller iron didn't work for me. I had to spend $100 on Hako and it changed everything for a beginner like myself. It was almost impossible to melt solder on a Cardas copper binding post with cheap Weller but took a few seconds with Hako iron. Once you have a nice Iron and few necessary tools soldering becomes very easy.
I now instead of selling and buying new gear I first try to add better parts to components and crossovers. Which most of the time stops the need to have a revolving door of audio gear.
Back during the wild CB craze in which everyone who had a CB radio had to pump their power up to grossly illegal levels. I was just starting my quest for high end audio back then. My neighbor across the street was one of the those 1KW+ homebrew transmitters. Needless to say it bled into my system big time. I kept working with some of the RF engineers at work, as I worked in military avionics back then. Eventually, I solved the problem - I found some 16 gauge coax wire with a full shield and I used it for my speaker leads. The 16g center conductor was for the speaker and the shield was tied to earth, so four pieces of coax did the job for the two speakers. It turns out that the CB transmitter power was bleeding into my power amp via the speaker leads. Since the amplifier output is also the input via feedback, that is how the RF was getting in. Once I had the speaker wire shielded, it worked fine. As for the dude with the illegal transmitter, about 6 months later the FCC descended like a hawk and arrested about 200 illegal CB's in the area. End of problem.
Paul makes a good point...same has happened to me watching solder disappear some were...ohhh duh.Cables still worked and seemed fine but haunted by my lousy soldering i ended up at harbour freight and bought the portable anvil.It is just more stable for my use and as adjustable.Also something to plug connector in to cushion heat is good.I use double female connector.
A friend asked me doing this diy is there a point were your going to be fine even if your not the best solder pro...im still not great but have learned a little more on tips,y tube...all my interconnects test out and sound great...i do wish i had a place instead of my computer desk though to do this.
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