DIY interconnects

My first post here though I've been lurking around for some time. I plan to make my own Red dawn IC, going to buy a length of speaker cable but still looking for good connectors and technical advices when soldering the cable. I therefore would like to seek your helps on the matter, could you please recommend some names and tools?
Thanks a bunch.

 

Silver solder's always a good idea and people seem to rate Eichmann bullet plugs highly although they're rather expensive.
Good luck.

 

the eichmanns are good, also consider the silver tipped LOK plugs from home grown audio in the states, or www.hollandlink.nl, they beat the bullet plugs on build quality, though they do have more metal in them.

 

I much prefer solid core ...so I don't think speaker cable will make great ic cables .....you can get excellent results from magnet wire [wire wrap] but use a small gauge.

A good cheap plug is the NY series Neutrik [the baby pro plug]

 

Thanks for your advices, much appreciated. If cable speaker can't make good IC cable then what do they use in the Red dawn IC? And what cable do you use normally, to meet that level of Red dawn?

 

I don't remember hearing red dawn either as speaker cable or ic ...

I don't think its the same looking at various photo's ...but I'd need to examine both to be certain.

are you proposing to use red dawn or an other cable ?

I personally use a silver gold cable of my own design ..its a solid core signal with a ribbon based return.....some people think it sounds ok.

I can't see any mileage in buying expensive cable to butcher ! I build from basic components ....an 0.75m ic can cost as little as £10 for the parts [thats silver].

red dawn silver plated 8 nines [can you have that many ?] copper approx £70/m [if my maths is right....$999 for 20']......how can it be pure copper if you've dipped it in silver, still that advertising ??

seems an expensive route ......but have no idea how it would sound.....

looking at the pic of their cables the ic's have two pairs of three conductors ...the speaker have two pairs of six ....so you can make two ic per unit length.

Do the ic have two conductors to the signal and one to the ground or the reverse ?

Don't think I'm trying to dissuade you ....just offering a few alternative ideas........

 

Thanks for the advices, zanash. Yes, I plan to use Nordost Red dawn cable to make interconnects. I wonder if it makes any difference when I braid 1 pure silver wire with 2 silver plated OFC wires for an interconnect. As I understand, silver interconnect will help with the HF while copper wire certainly helps with the bass. Do you think pure silver interconnects are better than those made of silver plated OFC?

I'll have a look when the red dawn arrives and examine the situation.

 

The copper in my experience will give a bass bloom[not a typo] just listening to some copper ic's today they had a definate muck and blurred bottom end thats often confused for deeper bass.

I stay away from silver plated ...provides the worst aspect of copper and silver.... sharp bright bass bloom....

pure copper or pure silver are imo superior ...but don't let my advice sway you ...make both and see.

if the conductors in the speaker cable are to be cut into single leave a parralel pair and make an ic from them for comparision you can always cut it down after.

 

Now that my Red Dawn cable has arrived and yes it has 10 silver-plated copper strands in each line, and there are 4 lines in total. It seems that I have ordered the wrong one, it's a speaker cable and probably not suitable for IC. I also ordered a length of 99.997% pure silver, possibly will start my work soon. Do you think soldering the cable will make significant difference? I'll try silver speaker cables as well.

 

It's really hard to strip Nordost Red Dawn speaker cable without breaking the fine wires. One can buy a special stripping tool from Madison in the USA but the tool itself is not very accurately made and it is still rather difficult to use. One can use a sharp craft knife to strip each of the fine wires individually but it is rather painstaking, and if one breaks just one of the wires out of the many for each signal path, one needs to start the whole lot again to get usable equal lengths. IOW it is a total pain in the arse to terminate oneself, whether speaker or signal.

You could perhaps split the speaker cable down the middle to give 10 strands per line for signal cable, but do you really want to be stripping 80 of those fine strands perfectly to make one pair of signal cables? I appreciate it looks like there can be a considerable saving over buying ready-made Red Dawn i/c, but I advise you to do something else. Rather than think that you need Red Dawn throughout, I suggest you accept one of the off the reel wires or ready-made cable alternatives. For instance, one can buy silver wire and teflon sleeving separately, which will surely be pretty much the same electrically, IMHO.