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Arm cable - soldering shield & ground? Please help

Hello Chaps,

This is my first post in this forum even though I bought and sold a few things in Audiogon. I live in the Washington, DC metro area, have been tinkering with audio for almost thirty five years but I am unsure as to what to do in this case.

I would like to replace the original tonearm cable in my Thorens TD147 Jubilee with a Van den Hul M.C. 501 silver hybrid cable that I found in my parts bin. One end has SME RCA plugs, the other is unterminated.

When I built my own cables from scratch I always cut off the shield at both ends but the Van den Hul cable comes factory assembled with the shields connected to the grounds in the RCA plugs.

My question is, do I cut the shield off at the tonearm's end [unterminated] or do I solder the shield with the ground as it has been done with the plugs?

I’m trying to avoid possible hum problems.

Please advise.

Kind regards,

Orazio
f456gt

Showing 1 response by mingles

mingles
800 posts
 
My question is, do I cut the shield off at the tonearm's end [unterminated] or do I solder the shield with the ground as it has been done with the plugs?

I’m trying to avoid possible hum problems.

You may want to try it both ways.

When I rewired an RB-300 with a single strand of Cardas 4x33, I grounded the shield that wraps the Cardas wire to the tonearm and then let it float on the RCA end (there isn't anywhere to ground it to anyway since this is DIY cable). I have a second sheath of braided stainless steel over the length of the Cardas cable and it's completely floating. It's probably overkill, but there isn't a trace of hum in my system. I also run a ground wire from the table to the phono preamp. Without that, I get hum.
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