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Upgrading Turntable RCA cables?

Zonker92

Zonker92

All shiny and chrome
Below is my Luxman turntable and where the RCA cables attach. (I'm putting damping material in this area and replacing the flimsy bottom plate and feet.)

The RCA cables are annoyingly cheap and short. I can barely get them to reach the preamp in my cabinet. I have a big box full of decent shielded RCA cables; Monsters and other brands. I'm passably good at soldering and wiring and such. Can I just strip off any decent RCA cables and solder them to duplicate the originals? Are there any issues with impedance or length to beware? Thanks.

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The main thing to worry about is the cable's capacitance. I'd avoid the Monster branded stuff. If you want a really good cable set, get the upgraded Technics MK5G set from Kevin @ KAB USA. Your soldering skills has to be better than that mess I'm seeing from the factory.
 
Thanks. But there's nothing special about turntable RCA cables versus regular shielded patch cords?
 
Don't see why not...

While you're at it see if you can figure out a way to put RCA terminals at the back of your TT so then you can plug in any lenght / brand of cable without having to hard wire it to the TT again.

Don't forget a terminal for the ground.
 
Yeah, that was my other idea, although it might entail putting a bigger hole in the back of the plinth. But I could probably set it into the new bottom plate I'm planning to make.

I was also a little worried about adding another non-soldered connection to the signal path; oxidation can cause problems.
 
Howard (hakaplan) on here has a cable comparison, very detailed. I believe the gist of it is to use short as possible VIDEO component cables (Petra brand comes to mind) as they have the lowest capacitance. On my Technics SL-D3 the difference was huge.
 
Zonker92 said:
I was just a little worried about adding another non-soldered connection to the signal path; oxidation can cause problems.
Click to expand...

The Pioneer PL 71 has RCA terminals at the back of it and it is considered by many one of the top quality TTs, and is quite sought after.

Me, I would not worry about any degradation of sound. Of course many a debate has raged in these forums about such hairs being split into thinner and thinner strands, so I'm sure others will disagree and advise (based on years of engineering study, practice and experience) how this should matter to you greatly.


Such is the beauty and the siren call of this hobby :D
 
Thanks. I'm pretty skeptical about such fine distinctions. I'm more worried about gross problems, but I can use some nice gold terminals and call it good. Do I need to shield the short wires connecting the tonearm wire / terminal blocks to the RCA terminals? Seems like the answer is no, since the tonearm wires themselves are not shielded.

And then I'll need some sort of thumbscrew lug for the ground wire. Although I've heard that there's a way to wire the RCA cables so as to delete the ground wire. I've heard that some modern turntables are wired that way. How would I do that?
 
Thanks; that is a concern. How about replacing the cables with new ones; wouldn't that also degrade the value? I guess I could use some video cables that looked fairly stock, although they tend to have yellow, red, green or blue plugs.
 
Personally, I think if your main concern is resale value later rather than enjoying the TT now with better cabling, sell it now to stop worrying about resale and buy something you know you'll have for awhile. You can always solder component cables to it today, then swap the old ones back out later.
 
EDIT: I misread your post.

Unfortunately, I always worry about resale. I never keep anything more than a few years. Terrible habit. But I may keep this for some time; I think I can get it quite good with a little work. But I also have a thing about making all my mods reversible. Everything I'm doing to this one has been 100% reversible, and very cheap. I may just leave the cables alone, though; not sure.
 
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