blueoak
New member
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- #1
Hi all,
Today - in spirit of complete overkill, but mainly wanted pretty, custom length fit - I started an experiment to create audiophile-grade 3.5mm +12V trigger and McIntosh data cables. I really got tired of generic TRS cables from Amazon that never really fit my system. It also isn't apparent which cable is which (data vs. trigger), because they're all black and a spaghetti mess.
I ordered 20' of Canare L-4E6S cable. Both in red and blue.
I decided to use red for +12V trigger cables and blue for data cables, because Ethernet carries data and the standard color is blue. Just made sense for me.
The Canare L-4E6S is the little brother of the Canare 4S11 speaker cable. The Canare L-4E6S also uses the star quad design and has stainless shielding for the ground connection.
The TRS connectors are Canare F12 stereo jacks. Very solid and durable construction with bend radius springs.
You'll need quite a bit of tools to create these 3.5mm TRS cables. They're a PITA because you have to have steady hands, magnifying glass, and solder very small wires.
The first step is to take off the satin finished outer sheath. You will want to unwrap the shield into its own wire and tin it with your soldering iron.
The next step is to cut the other wires to length so that they fit into the Canare F12 jack perfectly. Now tin them. The white goes with white and the blue goes with blue. The reason behind this is that the wires are twisted into a star quad pattern throughout the cable to balance things out.
Now you simply solder the pairs of wires to the Canare F12 tips. I decided to solder the blue pair to the center pin and the white pair to the outer pin. Obviously the shielding will attach to the outer leg that supports the crimp.
What you're left with is a very nice TRS connector with very durable construction. Best part is that you can measure exactly how much length you need between components and achieve perfect cable management.
What do you guys think? I think it's beautiful.
Here is the new trigger cable plugged into my McIntosh MC275.
Finally here is the new trigger cable plugged into the rear of my McIntosh C2600.
All in all it's great to have top-shelf build quality and perfect length trigger cables in my system. It takes about an hour per cable, so if you need to make a lot of cables, be prepared to spend all day knocking this project out.
Hope to see more of you getting into DIY and sharing with the forum.
Today - in spirit of complete overkill, but mainly wanted pretty, custom length fit - I started an experiment to create audiophile-grade 3.5mm +12V trigger and McIntosh data cables. I really got tired of generic TRS cables from Amazon that never really fit my system. It also isn't apparent which cable is which (data vs. trigger), because they're all black and a spaghetti mess.
I ordered 20' of Canare L-4E6S cable. Both in red and blue.
I decided to use red for +12V trigger cables and blue for data cables, because Ethernet carries data and the standard color is blue. Just made sense for me.
The Canare L-4E6S is the little brother of the Canare 4S11 speaker cable. The Canare L-4E6S also uses the star quad design and has stainless shielding for the ground connection.
The TRS connectors are Canare F12 stereo jacks. Very solid and durable construction with bend radius springs.
You'll need quite a bit of tools to create these 3.5mm TRS cables. They're a PITA because you have to have steady hands, magnifying glass, and solder very small wires.
The first step is to take off the satin finished outer sheath. You will want to unwrap the shield into its own wire and tin it with your soldering iron.
The next step is to cut the other wires to length so that they fit into the Canare F12 jack perfectly. Now tin them. The white goes with white and the blue goes with blue. The reason behind this is that the wires are twisted into a star quad pattern throughout the cable to balance things out.
Now you simply solder the pairs of wires to the Canare F12 tips. I decided to solder the blue pair to the center pin and the white pair to the outer pin. Obviously the shielding will attach to the outer leg that supports the crimp.
What you're left with is a very nice TRS connector with very durable construction. Best part is that you can measure exactly how much length you need between components and achieve perfect cable management.
What do you guys think? I think it's beautiful.
Here is the new trigger cable plugged into my McIntosh MC275.
Finally here is the new trigger cable plugged into the rear of my McIntosh C2600.
All in all it's great to have top-shelf build quality and perfect length trigger cables in my system. It takes about an hour per cable, so if you need to make a lot of cables, be prepared to spend all day knocking this project out.
Hope to see more of you getting into DIY and sharing with the forum.
