Just wondered if anyone else is building any cables at the moment. Not just power cables but interconnects or speaker cables would love to hear, see, what you are all putting together and your experience with different cable types and what connecter's are good to use and easy to work with.
Martin
Hi Martin,
I've been dabbling with interconnects for the past six months or so, having heard the EXCELLENT solid-core interconnects made by Aurealis Audio here in Australia (no affiliation!).
Initially, my components of choice were 24AWG solid core pure copper or pure silver, teflon tubing, techflex-style sheathing, and either the KLE Copper Harmony or Aurealis 'Star' RCA connectors.
The Aurealis 'Star' RCAs (available from various ebay sellers these days for around $30 for four) are basically a copy of the old ETI Eichmann RCAs, featuring low mass tellurium copper conductors. They are very easy to solder (as are the KLEs).
Some of the first interconnects that I made up (the black sheath is pure copper, the grey sheath is milspec silver-plated solid core copper):
This is the first pure silver cable that I made:
I note that none of these cables had any shielding whatsoever and performed flawlessly in my system with no induced noise.
The latest cable was constructed using 26AWG OCC silver from partsconnexion for the signal wires, and 24AWG copper for a drain wire which is grounded at one end of the interconnects only (delineated by a black band of heatshrink). The wires run inside oversized teflon tubes in a fairly loose three-wire braid. I didn't apply any techflex sheathing on this set of interconnects. I really, really like their sound! Going from a good quality copper to good quality silver interconnect is certainly an eye-opener - superb clarity but no harshness.
I've also made a USB cable with solid silver data lines, a separate copper ground, and no +5V connection as my DAC does not require it.