Home Cable Asylum

Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

DIY vs. factory termination

Seadog,

I'm not sure if they still do it, but at one time, you could send your cables to AQ for shortening and retermination.

There are instructions for DIY retermination on the Blue Jeans Cable site and of course our fellow inmate Jon Risch has a site devoted to this. However, I don't know if the kinds of coax cable have remotely the same concstruction as the AQ wire and the instructions would apply. The "connection of the shield at only one end" does have a familiar ring to it however.

I'm not sure, but don't Cardas RCAs require a special crimping tool to attach? You do mention solder, so I'm probably mistaken.

Personally, without experience and possible proprietary tools, I'd strongly consider paying for retermination. Everytime I've compared DIY and factory terminations, the difference is usually obvious. I shortened and reterminated my Kimber 4TCs and noticed a negative loss of dynamics right away ( with Oracle III> ARC SP10> D115> Vandersteen 2 ). I eventually ended up buying new 8TC- professionally terminated.

The Diamondback is the second to the top (King Cobra) non-DBS copper IC- expensive wires- and I think the careful design and execution of the original terminations must have a value- can we at home get results to the standard of the original cable? Of course, the Cardas plugs you bought may well be a significant improvement to the Dimaondbacks' originals, but is there a loss through small errors in attaching them? If there an effect of introducing a new set of materials- different metals with different resistance- in the chain?

My impression is that it takes care and craftsmanship. I experimented with DIY speaker cables with the famoud home Depot "HD-14" and just getting a good connection with spades on each end proved to be trouble as I was crimping with a vise-grips holding two tiny inserted dies I made to fold the metal evenly. -Before I cut up and degrade expensive wires again, I'm going to make a couple of cables with Jon Risch designs to get experience with the craft techniques.


Perhaps you can get three slightly sub .5M cables from each 1.5M Diamondback. However, I like to see 4"-6" straight out from the preamp or source and very gradual bends. My suggestion is not to make things impossibly tight to save a few inches length. Plus, you may shift stuff around and a few inches may make a difference when new equipment has the jacks on the far side of the chassis for example. Also, in 2012 when you're replacing these with Argon-filled flexible ceramic conduit Gallium/Rhodium cables, the Diamondbacks can go down the line to the HT system.

I tried Diamondbacks in the office system [CA 640C/McIntosh MR67> ARC LS3 > ARC D130 > Infinity 360}, buying used for a temporary situation- and they were very very good- miles up on my early 90's top line ARC- and AQs. I did however decide on King Cobra for the audio and Sidewinder (4.5M) for the recording ICs. [- -Can't improve on the Kimber 4TC and 8TC for the speakers though. The 4TC must be among the best value speaker cables around.]


Cheers,

Bambi B


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