DIY tonearm cable

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#2
FWIW here's how I do it.
1. Get rid of as many connections as possible between cartridge and phone stage. I have a single run of cable terminated with cartridge clips one end, the other end is terminated with 3.5mm TRS plugs that plug directly into my balances phone amp. Feel free to use RCA plugs or whatever else fits your phone amp.
2. Wire is unshielded twisted pair (one twisted pair per channel), enameled winding wire 0.125mm diameter. It's surprisingly robust, sounds fantastic.
3. Put phone amp as close as possible to TT to minimize cable length.

Good luck
Hazard
 
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#4
Hi,

on my website You can find a description about how I did it with ny tonearms.

The cabling as a tweak for Tonearms is the topic of many threads in respective forums .....
Cable tweaking is rumored to grant close to magical capabilities.
The more so if manufactured as single-piece and manufactured from exotic or precious materials.
Single-piece in this case means, that the thin wires, originally intended only for internal use within he Arm, don´t terminate at a connector at the Arm and the signal is further handled by decent coax cables, but they are elongated to the input of the Phono-preamplifier.
Each single connector contact point is regarded as evil and everything less than monocrystalline, multi-cryogenized pure silver wire is crap.
The protagonist nonchalantly ignore thereby the rather flimsy headshell screw contacts as well as the additional headshell connector cables, the shielding problem of the external to the Arm part of the wire, and losses from the comparably high copper resistance of the thin wires.
Click to expand...
HF-Litz wire has proven to be useable as strands, e.g. silk-spun 7x0.05mm, of which I twist two together for a single strand.
The plus- and minus strands of each stereo channel are then twisted together also.
Done this way the strands are low enough in ohmic resistance and mechanically very flexible.
The twisting does increase the capacitance of the strands, but the resulting 50-60pf present no issue.
In my opinion the advantages outweigh the small disadvantage that the twisting generates.
Both stereo channels are clean separately positioned in the armtube to avoid interchannel crosstalk.
The bottom of the arm shaft holds a connector that is a variant of the DIN-connector. A locking nut and sensibly designed contacts guarantee for a safe and sane connection.
As cable between arm and phono-preamplifier either a a well screened low-capacitance coax cable, or a balanced coax cable is used.
Click to expand...

jauu
Calvin
 
#7
By tonearm cable do you mean
internal arm cable, from cart through arm tube to socket/terminals?
or
from the thin internal wires to rca going to preamp?

For internal I like
Litz wire 10/44 Single layer insulation, 200'

For making rca ended turntable cables I use something like
STRAIGHTWIRE-SILVER-S-2-Meter can't find the specs any more but from memory its low capacitance, well shielded, figure 8 (so you can divide it) and flexible, also as its a S-video cable they are cheap hell as nobody wants them so why not up-cycle?

lots of other s-video cable on ebay cheap, just choose one you like or can find the specs of and suits
 
#8
Chaps, thanks for the great tips. Sorry for the confusion, I was looking for DIY interconnects.

What do I think has changed in the last nine years? Driverless cars, artificial intelligence, smart watches, 3D printed body parts, gene therapy, synthetic and reprogrammed T cells, mitochondrial replacement therapy, bionic eyes, almost everything has changed, the future is truly upon us.
 
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#9
355F1 said:
Chaps, thanks for the great tips. Sorry for the confusion, I was looking for DIY interconnects.

What do I think has changed in the last nine years? Driverless cars, artificial intelligence, smart watches, 3D printed body parts, gene therapy, synthetic and reprogrammed T cells, mitochondrial replacement therapy, bionic eyes, almost everything has changed, the future is truly upon us.
Click to expand...

And you think some or all of those impact interconnects?
 
#11
I am going to make a DIN to balance phono cable. The wires I am going to use are Neotech NEI-2002 and Cardas 4x33 shielded. The construction is based upon Ayre's. The Neotech wire is not cheap but it is still acceptable. The length of the cable will be about 4 feet long. Each channel gets 3 feet of Neotech wire and a foot of Cardas wire. Any suggestions are welcome.
 

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