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My Silver/Cotton IC DIY pages

Posted by pburke (A) on April 12, 2005 at 10:32:22

Finally I had some time to link this stuff to my web site. I built these cables over a year ago and they still are in use today. They keep impressing folks who have the big-$$$ cables in their systems but really didn't hurt my wallet that much. I think a pair of these with copper Eichmanns cost me about $50 to build, including all materials and the bare silver wire. Previously I had spent more than that on the Teflon-coated silver wire alone...

The cable is based on the original Chris Venhaus IC design, which makes for a great cable, even if you follow his instructions right down to the last dot (I did, for several cables, some of which I still use on occasion)

But being the tweaker I am, I decided to change some of the contruction parameters after encountering some "durability issues" with the originally prescribed core material. The stiff (and expensive) 1/4" Teflon tubing core he prescribed was causing my Eichmann plugs to rip from the wires due to the tension the bent Teflon tubing would tranfer through the collar of the plugs right to the fragile wire/pin connection inside. Even with minimal handling, I had to re-solder those plugs many times, cutting open heat shrink, etc. - a 1 hour job at least when I guessed right and picked the end of the wire that was actually broken.

I needed more flexibility in the wire. I tried some rope materials (I htink it was called manila rope) but that material had some oils in it and smelled like solvent once the Teflon tape turned yellow. Eventually I found a cotton clothesline material and this was just perfect for the center core material's job.

Also, the Teflon-coated wire in his original recipe was a) expensive and b) just took forever to break in. (I see he now recommends his cotton sleeved silver - should sound great and save some of the labor I went through, so if you can afford that wire you can save some time in the build process). In my build, I used 30awg bare silver from a wholesaler - I think $12 for 125 feet, which I split with a friend. They said it was 99.999% but how are you really going to know? Sounds fine to me and that's what counts. Next time I'll send the wire to a cryo shop before I build the next generation of this cable.

The cotton core basically spaces the actual insulator from the wire and because only a few fibers actually make contact with the wire, it is mostly air dielectrics around the conductors. I use Teflon tape on the outside of the wire, spaced from the conductors by another layer of cotton to seal out air and moisture (important with cotton - make sure it's nice and dry when you build these cables)

The photos and instructions in the link below were done a long time ago when I was showing a friend how to build these wires, before I added the second layer of cotton below the Teflon tape. Note the final two pages that show how I updated the cable with the cotton layer. I'm just too lazy to edit the whole gallery, plus this way you can see both versions of the cable.

Even if you're not into this specific cable design, the pages linked may help some folks figure out how to solder those fragile Eichmann plugs. My friend needed detailed instructions on those since he had bought the expensive silver version and didn't want to mess those up by overheating them, etc.

Thanks again to Chris Venhaus for sharing his design - without his DIY cable recipes, I think I'd still be listening to my Radioshack ICs :)

Peter

• cotton/Silver IC build instructions   (Open in New Window)

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