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DIY cables question

Hello,

I first dipped my toe into hifi during covid and being on a budget, I slowly bought used to build up my system including a decision to DIY my own speaker cables. I bought 20ft of Mogami 3014 wire along with some gold plated banana plug connectors and while having zero soldering experience gave it a go. To date everything works fine but I’m left questioning whether my potentially "shoddy" soldering work is my weakest link and is holding back my setup. I’ve been flip flopping back and forth on just buying some used name brand speaker cables so I can stop the torment. I guess my main question is, when wires work, is it black or white, meaning they either connect or they dont, or can bad soldering limit the max performance of the cables or furthermore my entire setup?

Aside from my DIY speakers cables everything else is name brand, I use AudioQuest Earth RCAs (TT to Pre) and AQ McKenzie XLRs (Pre to Hegel H360), and a Curious USB cable ( Stream Box S2 Ultra to Denafrips Pontus II)

Thanks in advance.



sc0rpi043

Showing 2 responses by pauly

pauly
1,012 posts
 
Not black and white, but every shade and color is possible. Not only can your solder effect the sound, it more than likely does.

But it is not necessarily bad, it may be making it more to your liking … 
pauly
1,012 posts
 
@sc0rpi

 interesting, so have you tried bare wire yourself in comparison to connectors?

Not in 20 + years. Cutting off spades / bananas from speaker cables reduces their resale a lot. 

I am not familiar with your equipment so I'm the wrong person to give advice. 

What gauge of wire are you soldering? I've had to solder a lot of high current cable to lugs, and I found a small propane torch to work best. If there is too much wire and lug a soldering iron will not get them hot enough for the solder to flow properly. I crush fit first, solder afterwards.




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