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Preferred: Diy Interconnects made from Microphone Cable
Would you prefer this cable?
This project is too the direct result from me building tube amps. At the time, when collecting and buying the parts for my Hounddog phono amp I needed some shielded cable for internal connections in the phono amp between the connectors and the input and output stage of the amp.
I decided to make use of good quality Microphone cable. It was more work than expected to connect the microphone cable to all parts as it was not nearly as flexible as I needed at that time. Anyway, I bought some 3 meters left-over microphone cable in the shop and after building the amp nearly 2 meters were still left. I decided to make a pair of interconencts from these 2 meters cable.
My goal was that i would get two good interconnects with a quality that would be better than the average wire that is shipped with your new Sony. Fortunately I succeeded in that part.
The following components are needed for making your own stereo pair of Preferred Interconnects. Two meters of this cable can be bought at almost every Electronics store. The cable is marked "Original Prefer OFC Low Moise Microphone Cable MK-106. The cable costs about € 2.50 /meter.
Total costs for building a pair of Prefer interconnects are € 12.00
Building the Preferred interconnect is a very straightforward process:
Remove the outer jacket over a distance of 2 cm. Fold the shield away from the
inner conductor and twist the shield so it is easier to solder.
Now remove the cotton from the two soloured inner conductors. Then remove the insulation from the white and blue wire over a distance of 1 to 1.5 cm (keep them short). The thin blue wire will be used for signal and the thin white wire for ground. The copper shield will be connected to ground on one side of the interconnect only. (and this side needs to be marked with crimp sleeve or something like that.
On one side of each cable cut the copper screen a short as possible and insulate with some crimp foil or tape such that the screen cannot get into contact with the metal parts of the connector (as shown on the photo above).
On the other side, the screen needs to be connected to the 
ground of the
RCA connector together with the white wire. Twist the blue wire such that it
can easlily be soldered to the central pin of the RCA connector. Keep the wires
as short as possible in order to avoid "short circuit".
The pictures above show the results after one hour of soldering. It remains a helluvajob to get the thin wires correctly in the connector especially when the screen and the jacket are not very flexible.
I use the Prefer cable as some sort of permanent stand-in or for experiments. If I want to try out something or bulding and testing new equipment I use the preferred interconnect (which is better than those standard black interconnects packed with equipment).
My Preferred has already been connected with Scratch, Hounddog and some weeks with Tweety and I must say that such a DIY interconnect is remakeably good even compared to my vdHul commercial interconnects.
I did not really do a listening test or so, but for me the Preferred was a real eye opener and will make sure that I will be very critical to commercial models and they must be very good should I spend the extra money.
The RCA connectors used in this version were difficult to work with. Soldering was pain, and for next versions I will use different (=better) ones. Also I find the MGK -226 cable of Prefer a better cable than the MK-106 used here. Difference in price (for 1.5 meters) is neglectible and therefore you might consider building the Preferred-Too interconnect (follow the link below) which is based on the MGK-226 and better connectors.
In any case, never use RCA connectors with springs like these
ones unoess you use it to connect your Guitar (or remove the springs).
| Preferred Too >> |
© Maarten&Annemarie, January 2002, 2003, 2006