sleeving AudioNote tonearm wiring

May I ask how you tested the wire? Are you planning on wiring the inside of the arm only, or is the wire going all the way to the preamp? I have some suggestions, but am unclear about what exactly you are doing.

If you are replacing the internal tone arm wire only, I personally would not "sleeve" it in any way. One of the beauties of this wire, as you know, is that it is extremely fine which is very desirable for the free movement of the arm at the pivot. Anything that you sleeve it with will decrease it's flexibility; not ideal.

Great wire!

That is a great way to do it. I did something similar with my ET2 air bearing arm, although with this arm I kept the wire external the entire span. With this arm the wire needs to make a loop for free lateral movement of the arm. Up to that point, the wire is not sleeved. Then, right after the loop, each channel's pair of wires is braided and then each braided pair is inserted into a length of very small diameter Teflon tubing, like is used to insulate capacitor leads. Each Teflon tube is then covered with copper mesh. Each length of copper mesh has a "pigtail" of insulated wire with a spade soldered to it at the preamp end to attach to the preamp's grounding lug. The copper mesh is then covered with polyester mesh. It is very effective and looks good. I have the wire soldered directly to the preamps circuit board, thus eliminating several solder joints and jacks for significant gains in sonic purity.

Your plan should work very well. Pay particular attention to strain relief at the point that the wire exits the arm. Perhaps you can put a small amount of silicone adhesive in the hole you will drill in the plastic cap. Do braid each pair of wires for increased RFI rejection. Good luck.

Hi Anatoliy, I bought the Teflon tube, copper and polyester mesh from Michael Percy (Michaelpercy .com). Sending the wire through the tubing was tricky. What I did was to solder the preamp end of the twisted pair to one end of a piece of uninsulated solid core steel wire a little longer than the teflon tubing, and send the steel wire through the tube, with the AN "going along for the ride". You have to be careful and make sure the steel wire (or whatever you use) has an OD smaller than the teflon's tube ID. Putting the "filled" tube through the two meshes is not difficult; they expand somewhat.

Ketchup, unfortunately, I do have problems with RFI so braiding was very helpful. Do not have RFI problems now, but can't say how the braiding affected the sound, if at all. However, since it is fairly well acknowledged that the consistency of the proximity of conductors (in general) in cable to each other is something that is optimized in most cable designs, logic tells me that since upbraided wires WILL have some contact with each other at different and unpredictable points along their span, so why not at least bring some consistency to the "design".

Anatoliy, as you know, the cable is very very thin; although not quite as fragile as we might think. However, and in spite of that, I managed to fray one conductor before I put it in Teflon, and had to replace it. On the other hand, if I did not, as I do, have multiple arm wands and not have the wire hard wired, I probably would have either left the cable alone or do what you have in mind.

Good luck.

Dear Raul, that is not correct, the insulation on the AN 300 tonearm wire is multiple coats of polyurethane, not Teflon.

Regards.