Custom Cable Making Guide

[ryan]

A number of users had expressed interest in a guide for making custom cables. My previous guide on where to find custom cable materials can be found here.

What do you need
In order to make a cable, you will need some parts obviously.

1. Cable.
   This is the most necessary part for obvious reasons. This is what actually transmits the electronic signal from point A to point B. This cable will not be seen so try and get the highest quality cable, without concern over looks. The best cable I have found is microphone cable which comes with three conductors standard. Whether you are creating single wire braids or using the cable on its own this is the best cable to use.
2. Connectors.
   Before you start you should have an idea of what you would like to connect. In this tutorial I am making a standard 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable so I will need two male 3.5mm connectors. Make sure you get good connectors from reputable sources as this piece not only provides invaluable function to your cable but will also be seen. The connector must look good and perform well.
3. Cable sleeve.
   This is purely for looks and you can use whatever you would like to give your cables a custom look. I have used paracord and tech flex in the past. This piece is mostly used for looks but if your cable is not properly shielded cable wraps might introduce extra noise to your wire. Paracord is non-microphonic so it is good for smaller, non-shielded cables. Techflex is fairly microphonic and should be used with well shielded cables.
4. Heat shrink.
   This will be used to clean up connections and is pretty widely available.
5. Tools
   a. Strippers
   b. Pliers
   c. Snippers
   d. Soldering Iron. I’m not a soldering expert (as you will see) so unfortunately I cannot give any good recommendations except for the one I use. (Amazon link)
   e. Soldering helping hands (not necessary but they help!)
   f. Heat gun or blow dryer
6. Light.
   I used to make cables with limited light, and this is by far the most under appreciated tool at your disposal. More light makes everything WAY easier, especially when trying to put together small electronics. Get yourself a work lamp like this to help light your station.

Anatomy of a cable
The cable below is what we will try to replicate today, albeit much prettier.

To keep it simple the cable will consist of three parts. Connector A, cable, and Connector B. It is pretty simple to see how these parts flow in the picture above. Connector A connects to the cable which connects to Connector B. It is important to understand this as we head into the actual build.

Construction
Stripping cables
Lets start with the cables. In order to create single wire braided cables we will need to start with single wires. If you are going to be using microphone wire as a whole you can skip to the sleeving section.

Today we are using paracord to wrap our cables. As seen above. First lets strip the microphone cable down to its individual parts. As you can see below the cable is made up of 5 parts. Two individually sleeved cables, shielding, the ground wire, and the outer sleeve. We are only going to be using the two individually shielded wires for now. Cut the cable to length first then cut open the cable and extract these two wires.

We will need three wires (Left right and ground) for the final build so we will need to do this once again, only taking one wire from the cable now.

Sleeving
Great, now we have 3 individual cables. Next we must sleeve these cables. Choose your paracord colors (For this build we will be using orange blue and black). The paracord has a thin rope in the middle which helps with rigidity, this will need to be removed first.

Once this is removed you can begin “inch worming” the individual cable through. Push the paracord that is in front of the cable to make it expand, then push the cable into the paracord and repeat until it is all the way through. This method takes a while but once you start you’ll get the hang of it. Make sure you remember which cable is going into which paracord. Sometimes it is helpful to match like hues to make it easier to remember which cable is L, R, and G. For this build orange is right, blue is left, and black is ground.

If you are using the full microphone cable, you will need a thicker sleeve but you can use the same technique as described here to sleeve the cable.

Connecting the connectors
Get your soldering iron warmed up because it is time to solder. Place the connector and wire into your helping hands. Line up the wires you have designated as LRG to the connectors LR and G pins. Pin outs of most connectors can be found online. The one we are using is below.

I will not be going into specifics on how to solder as I myself am not an expert, but make sure no connections are touching and you should be fine. Once you have completed the soldering on connector A we can start braiding

Braiding
Place your connector under a brace to keep it steady and then braid the three wires all the way to the other end, then place a piece of tape on it to hold it together. Braiding tutorials for various numbers of wires can be found online. Once you have completed the braiding we can place the heat shield on.

Heat shielding
Place the heat shielding onto the other end of the cable and feed it down to the soldered connector. Place the heat shielding as few millimeters from the screw point of the connector. Apply even heat for a few seconds to bond the heat shrink to your connector.

Feed the connector screw down the wire and screw it onto the connector to complete this side.

Now we just must complete the other side of the cable by attaching the connector, make sure to place the heat shielding and connector screw onto the wire before soldering or else you can never get them onto the wire. Feed them to the other side of the wire to keep them out of the way. Solder the connections to connector B, then apply the heat shielding the same way as done on connector A. Then screw the cap onto connector B.

Congratulations we are done! Your cable looks excellent and you can wow your friends with the cable that probably costed way more and took way more time than you expected! But in the end isn’t it worth it!

[Carmantom]

Beautiful job Ryan. I’ve never made a cable but your guide has giving me motivation to make some.

[pwjazz]

This is quite possibly the best cable making guide I’ve seen!

[prfallon69]

Great job Ryan. Thank you.

-Paul-

[ryan]

Thanks guys!

[z0rk]

@ryan This is totally awesome!

[Ling]

Hello there: )
I had made several 3.5 to 3.5 cables as well as some 4.4 balance ones. But now I have some problems. There aren’t enough silver plating wires, so I decide to make a mixed cable.
So my question is, is there any difference between using bronze or silver wire as common ground? thx

[ryan]

If I am understanding your question correctly, you were making cables with silver core cable but ran out. You are asking if copper (never heard of bronze used as a conductor) is a good substitute. Also if you can mix cables

Copper and silver are pretty much exchangeable when it comes to cable making. Some say there is audible differences between one cable core and another, usually silver is more top heavy and copper is more bass heavy. I have heard this in a few cables, and sometimes chalk it up to less material being used in the silver cables due to cost. Sometimes however there is an audible difference. Personally I prefer copper to silver as a conductor.

Long story short, no it does not matter if you can’t hear the difference, they are both suitable for the task if you are making the cable 100% with one conductor.

I would suggest staying away from combining the two in one design. Both have different conducting capabilities and could knock your cable out of phase. I’ve never done this, and never have done research into this so I could be completely wrong, but I wouldn’t try it.

[Ling]

Oh, thank you very much for your detailed replying : )
I just wanted to say a ‘Cu’ wire LoL… I am not a native speaker of English. I abandon the idea to make a mixed cable after reading your advice.
But my roommate shows interest in mixed cable and he made a gold(plated)deliver(plated) cable.
I haven’t try that yet, but my roommate said he prefer this mixed cable to his original cooper cable which is much longer.
There does exist difference between different material of cables. I did some double-blind test with my roommates on a HD600, and cooper and silver cables are distinguishable.

[pennstac]

First, I appreciate the difficulty a non-native speaker of English has in writing and contributing to this forum. Your written English is very good, and your effort is welcomed.

I’m not aware of gold plating of cables, but silver plating of copper is common. Gold is very resistant to corrosion and oxidation, but silver is the better conductor of electricity. I like the idea of double-blind testing. It would be interesting to know what controls and measurements there are on the cable. Are they the same gauge? Most silver cables are also thinner due to the cost. The same length? Do they measure the same resistance? Is the construction the same - multi strand, litz, or single strand?

There are so many factors - including the quality of the connectors - that come into play. One reason that I’m of the school that thinks a properly-made, high quality cable will be hard to distinguish from another properly made high quality cable.

Unless, of course, it’s made from unobtainium, and plated with unicorn horn at -3 degrees Kelvin.

[Paladin]

Very nice photos.

I skimmed most of this but I have a couple comments that might help. Most all paracord is nylon based and it took me a long time to find cotton based materials that will do a better job with microphony. Cotton is neutral and along with silk, can make some very good sheething.

I also try never to use the 3.5 mm connectors with the round posts separated by plastic, companies like Neutrik, Amphenol, and even Switchcraft make connectors with proper solder lugs. If you do end up with the barrel type connectors, it often helps to use extra liquid rosin flux to insure a good solder joint before the plastic between connections starts to melt.

Another point is that when using twisted pair, all twists should match, oftentimes I will use heat shrink tubing to make sure the twists stay in place. Companies like Belden make bonded twisted pair just for that reason.

Personally I like Weller solder stations but have Hakko as well, both are good brands. I often replace the solder inside Russian tube pins so it is always nice to be able to change solder iron tip size when needed.

Twisted pair is a form of shielding and braiding cable can serve the same purpose, my people do four and eight wire braids on occasion but four is most standard since it can be used for balanced or TRS connections.

One trick I like to use on a four wire braid is to use pigtails for 3.5 mm, 1/4 inch or four pin balanced connectors. I use Neutrik (Rean) four pin mini XLR;s so I can just swap out the ends as needed without having to unplug the headphone plugs each time. This technique is not for the novice builder but I generally add it to all of the headphone cables I use at home.

This is an example of some of my work with purple, cotton based mesh, a favorite of @TylersEclectic, I may have gifted him some a while back. I custom built the USB cable, cheap cables are lucky to run 15 feet, with proper cable I can get 20 feet and longer.

[cpp]

I sure would like to try this with Duelund cable , for RCA’s and speaker cable https://www.partsconnexion.com/ then search for Duelund

[Paladin]

I could not get that link to work but I did look up Duelund on the site. I have access to most wire and cable made but I am not familiar with that brand. I am more apt to use high end wire for headphone cables and internal wiring of Class A tube amps I designed. At $60 a foot for such wire, it is not too costly to use it for short runs.

[cpp]

Just changed the link, I could not get it to work either, The brand is known in DIY circles for components. I know a lot of high end system owners that use their RCA and speaker cables. Thought I might give hem a try. I was always handy with a soldering iron.

[Paladin]

My employees do a lot of custom work I direct for the audio industry, and customers are more interested in quality and durability. I have also run a lot of blind tests with wire and connectors. This will sound mean but I have yet to have anyone actually show me they can hear an audible difference between connectors, wire can be a different matter and one young lady I work with does not know OCC from solid silver yet she can consistently pick one from the other in blind testing with eight wire types used, She is few and far between though.

I have been in a few wagers involving components. One claim a cable burner makes an incredible difference in AC power cords. I borrowed the exact same cable burner and offered to send five cables burned and five unburned to let the gentleman tell me which were which lol and he could keep the cables when done. A very easy blind test to set up but alas the gentleman was too busy, and it really takes hours of listening to hear the difference, and why was I asking this in the first place lol. Oh well. I do believe the device helped headphone cables but I doubt I could pick those out in blind testing myself.

[cpp]

Well never said I wanted to hear a difference, I just want to try to make my own cables. LOL ,

[Paladin]

If you need any help with equipment suggestions or technique please let me know. I have taught soldering as well as cable building and I hope I know what I am talking about lol. It is not uncommon for my employees to build 1,000 cables at a time.

[cpp]

Thanks, I do have 37 1/2 years in the Telco business management in Research and Design. ( Western Electric, AT&T, Lucent a few others). Retired now

[Paladin]

Very cool, if I mention a butterfly tool for 50 wire cable you will know what I am talking about lol.

We ended up selling a bunch of that cable to a guy down in Tennessee who does fireworks displays on a national level.

The cotton mesh I use is not the easiest thing to find but you can PM me if you want to get ahold of any of that.

[Inkey31]

Hello, does the ohm ratting of the cable you make matter, it does correct? You would ensure this by using the proper gauge?

Say, the HD800s comes with a cable that is measured at 1Ohm, then you make a cable at .8Ohm, you are now pumping in more power, correct? Which could change the sound signature.

So, when making a cable you would want to ensure that it matches the stock rating? I am thinking about making my own cables but I am bit worried as I want to ensure I am using the proper gauge, soldier, type of copper, etc.

Or am I way off?