home made silver interconnect cables


I'm planning to make my own interconnect cables and I have on hand 23 awg solid core pure silver wires. The length of the cable I intend to make will be quite short, about 2 feet. I would highly appreciate advise from anyone. My questions are as follows:
1. Since the wires are a bit small, do I use 2 for the signal and another 2 for the ground?
2. Will I get better results if I mix silver with copper wires like 2 silver wires for the signal and 2 copper wires (taken from kimber 4TC) for the ground?

Thank you.
tntt

Showing 1 response by 1953

I made some VERY nice cables using the Home Grown silver & copper wire. It's what I believe is called a "balanced, twisted pair" . I twisted together about 20' of the silver & copper wire using a variable speed drill. I paid attention to the direction of the wire coming off of the spools. I tightened one end of both wires into the drill bit chuck while the other ends were socked down into the binding post of one channel of an old amp I had sitting around. I made sure the wires were parallel and pulled fairly tight. I started the drill and SLOWLY began twisting the two wires together until I got a nice tight twist (Notice that when you get done and release the drill chuck, the wire will "snake" around a little bit as some tension is relieved).

I then cut the wisted wire into 4, five foot sections. Again, paying attention to the direction of the wire, I stripped the coating off of the conductors. Using two of the 5'pieces side by side, I twisted together the two silver conductors and soldered them to the hot lead of the phono plug. The two copper leads were likewise then twisted together and soldered to the ground tab on the plug. I then picked one end of my new interconnect as my downstream end and marked it, being consistant with that direction for the other interconnect.

It took me about an hour, with settup & clean-up, to make the pair.

And they sound great!! Cheap too. They look kinda strange but you can put the two wires inside some sort of jacket if the looks and wondering wires bothers you.

You also, like any other silver wire, need to run them in for a good 100 hours or so.

Good luck!