DIY IC ideas

Tanx for that links Scott & Mark. A lot of impressive cables...Looking forward for some pix.

if you remember the first pair i made, i used shrink tubing for the entire length of the IC's. i did this because the silver wire is so fragile (so it seems to me) that i though it needed something to protect it and i used what i had on hand. i still wanted something to cover the wire, but the amount of sleeving i was going to need would blow the budget. enter Larry with 100ft of 1/2in OD shrink tube. this turned out to be perfect for my purposes.

i imagine that the following will be useful only to those like me, who are unfamiliar with IC construction. here's a quick detail of the assembly sequence with a few pic's. after cutting the wire to length, i cut lengths of the shrink tube, 3/4in shorter than the wire runs, which allows for 3/8in at each end. apply the heat gun to the tubing and its ready to go. here's it is before and after shrinking.

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after running the wire into the tubing, slide the RCA plug collar's and signal wire insulator over each end of the tubing. slide them far enough down the tube to allow room to work. in order to solder the connections, and adequate amount of the wire needs to be exposed. i found the best way to do this was to simpy burn off the insulation with the soldering iron (just had to make sure the tip was clean before soldering the connections). here's a pic with the signal wire connected and signal insulator ready to be placed (the RCA plug is further up the tube).


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now slide the signal wire insulator forward, completely shielding the signal wire connection making sure the ground wire stays on the outside of the insulator (you can see the insulator was trimmed in order to be clear of the crimp). carefully crimp the RCA plug ground connector onto the tubing, taking care to not crimp the wire inside. this way any stress put on the IC is absorbed by the tubing instead of the wire and soldered connections.

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next the ground wire is soldered in place and excess wire is trimmed.

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repeat the process for the other end and add the color coded tubing on the base of the RCA plug collar. i did this to secure the collar, preventing it from coming loose. thats all there is to it.

i know there are better ways to make your own IC's and there are much costlier materials you can use. i figure i have about $25 into each pair of silver IC's, with the silver wire alone taking up about $20 of that. i have three more pair of the silvers to assemble and then i'll start putting all copper wire IC's together. the all copper will come to about $6 a pair so it will be interesting to see how it compares to the silver.

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Nice job Scott.

Did you make a pair with silver wire for the signal and the ground?

doing so would push the cost to about $45 for the pair. i could, maybe give it a good listen and if they sound the same as the other, pull them apart and make another pair out of it.

Very neat work, Scott.

I envy your patience. I can see myself working my way through a couple of those, but making more than that would have to be a long term project.

Jorge

so far i havent done more than two in a day.

Congrats. Very nice & clean work and also nice pix.

thanks Alvaro, the most time consuming part is putting the heat to the 3ft lengths of shrink tubing.

i just finished up the last of the silvers. i did them all the same (silver wire for the signal and copper magnet wire for the ground). i did this mainly because this was intended to be a total budget project, the silver wire just kind of made its way into mix. the main part of the project comes next when i assemble the all copper magnet wire IC's and test them against the silvers.

I doubt that it makes an audible difference whether the ground wire is copper or silver.

I just plugged my set in yesterday. they need to break in if that is really true. they sure look nice. scott did a nice job. I watched and didnt help one bit. probably why they turned out nice.

elroy