Duelund DCA 12ga Hookup Wire

I made a set of balanced interconnects using WE 16ga wire and it sounded "thick" or a little too full to me.  I have since made balanced ICs using Duelund 20ga wire and I like the result.  There are many ways to do things but my suggestions are;

• Twist a pair of Duelund 20ga wires (that will attach to pins 2 and 3)
• cover the twisted pair of conductors with spacing material (I use noise-reducing techflex)
• Place a tinned copper braid shield over the conductors and spacing material
• Counter-spiral a generic stranded copper ground wire of at least 20ga (I use 18ga for 20ga conductors) outside of the shield
• Connect the generic ground wire to pins 1 at both ends
• Connect the shield to pin 1 at the source end only 
• Cover with techflex and heat shrink the ends
• I like Vampire XLR connectors for lower cost applications and Furutech 600-series connectors when spending more (my personal cables use the Furutech connectors).  Others have had good luck with Xhadow connectors.

Good luck

Did you try your build with and without Flexo or the Techflex product you referred to above? I wonder if it dulled or darkened the sound in any way?

No, I have not tried it both ways so I couldn't say.  I like the idea of the vibration-damping properties of the special Flexo Noise Reduction wrap and the thickness helps space the braid shield away from the signal conductors, which is generally considered a good thing.  I know there are people who like less complexity so they don't shield their cables, and some who even think the two signal conductors are all that is needed, without even the ground.   Most manufactured cables are shielded and most of those pass ground by connecting the shield at both ends.  The idea of a "floating" shield is to draw any interference back to the source end but since the ground is connected at both ends one could argue it may be just as good to connect the shield to pin 1 at both ends and forego the ground wire.