Is nylon sheathing for DIY cables just window dressing?


Hi, quick question. Looking to make my own calbles, like the Mogami W3104 -12AWG 4 Conductor Speaker Cable material. It seems relatively easy to cut, strip cables into 2 separate right / left leads and add banana plugs. But every time I look for a little DIY u-tube education they all add the shrink wrap tubing and nylon sheathing to the assembly process. Is this really necessary? I can see where maybe using shrink wrap from the casing edge that was cut exposing the 4 individual leads and also having shrink wrap tubing over banana plugs to keep out air, but do you really need the fancy nylon sheathing? It adds about another $50-100 to the total cost. Thanks
phill55

Showing 2 responses by dgarretson

Most of my DIY cables use tinned copper braid wrap for shielding and damping.  The tinned coatings rub off on your hands unless covered by Tekflex plastic braid.  Tekflex also looks nice and is relatively cheap from MacMaster Carr on-line.  Not much money in the scheme of things. 
Hello Eric.  Yes, I shield the DIY speaker cables.  At the amp end I solder a pigtail to the cable's braided shield and connect the wire to earth ground.  At the speaker end of the cable, pigtails fan out from the cable shield to the metal baskets of the drivers and the ground post on a supertweeter. :})