DIY Mic Cables

J

Johnny Don't!

New member
Hello all of you extremely knowledgeable folks on this forum. I have a technical question regarding which brand of cable I should use to make my own custom mic cables for use in my small project studio, which I'm currently expanding.

Just a little relevant info on my setup: I'm not a fully pro studio; I'm not using wall boxes or even snakes, and I'm not running any lengths longer than 40' or 50'. So I don't think I need quad cables or hardcore shielding but I'm open to suggestions. I will be using Neutrik connectors.

One of the big pro studios in Chicago at which I do some work uses a GepCo cable to make their mic cables, but I have a great hookup on a website: I get a 50% family discount when I order through it. They have a few cables that "look" like they would suit my needs, but I'm here for a reason: I don't really know how to distinguish between cables in terms of their overall quality. I understand the difference in shielding; stranded copper wrap sizes & amounts (sort of); and a few other minor technical specs, but I'm not comfortable enough with my knowledge to go ahead and pull the trigger on a purchase without some input from people more knowledgeable than me.

Here are the non-GepCo options I'm considering from the website at which I receive a discount. The price points are all over the place, and please note that there are different lengths involved here; some are 300 feet and some are 100 feet. I prefer my cables to be VERY flexible and on the thinner side for ease of wrappin & storage, but a thicker cable isn't a deal-breaker for me. So please, fill me in: which of these cables do you think I should use for DIY mic cables (I'll also use it to make TRS-TRS and TRS-XLR patch cables) both in terms of quality AND cost? I've numbered the links for ease of reference:

1. Pro Power 300Ft 2C Microphone Wire 20/0.10mm Ofc Blk;Spool | 24-14440 (2414440) | Pro Power
2. Pro Power 300Ft 2C Microphone Wire 20/0.10mm Ofc Blk;Spool | 24-14435 (2414435) | Pro Power
3. Pro Power 300Ft 4C Microphone Wire 30/0.80mm2; Blk; Spool | 24-14430 (2414430) | Pro Power
4. Pro Power 300Ft 2C Microphone Wire 22Awg; 7 Str; Blk; Spool | 24-14425 (2414425) | Pro Power
5. JSC Wire & Cable 100 Ft Superior Quality Microphone Cable | 416911A-10-0100 (416911A100100) | JSC Wire & Cable
6. http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/BELDEN-8413-010100-/36F026WA

Thanks in advance for all yer help!
 
I'd not bother with any of the foil screened cables, they don't make good mic cables that get flexed and coiled a lot - the foil breaks - doesn't really cause grief because the drain does the work, but they just don't cut it for going around sharp corners. The Belden is fine but expensive, and others are simply too thin - ¼" or 6mm diameter cable is the smallest I would use. For me, cable needs to be tough and flexible, and the screen easy to connect. I like fine copper for screening that teases nicely and is easily tinned. The two cores need to be tough and resistant to soldering iron heat, so reasonably thick. I've used Canford HST here in the UK for years, but recently started using a half price cable from Thomann in Germany. It's very similar and just as easy to terminate. Here's a link to the Canford product so you can compare the specs, but it's even about the same price as the Belden. It's not crazy audiophile cable, and popular with the BBC, but the price is getting a bit steep now.

CANFORD HST CABLE 1 pair, Black

The Thomann cable that is very very similar in use is this one.
the sssnake SMK 222 PU / 100m - Thomann UK
 
Wow, thanks a lot, mate! Great info. MUCH appreciated. If I can ask, why do you prefer the cables to be at least 1/4"? is there a sonic reason for this?
 
All decent cables sound fine. It's just that the thinner ones are great for installs, or inside multis, but they are not strong enough. A 3mm cable can be snapped quite easily if you move one way and somebody stands on it, or trips over. quarter inch cable also fits securely into Neutriks, and lets the cable grips function. 3mm tends to rip out, and of course the inner conductors are all correspondingly weaker too.

I've never, ever heard a cable sound better than another - apart from on very long lengths used on guitars when the HF does roll off due to the extra capacitance. One of your cables in the list was four core - any reason why? I did use star quad on stage for a while, because of the interference reducing feature - but it didn't seem to be worth the expense for my usage. My own criteria are mainly with it laying flat, being easy to coil and surviving flight cases wheels without crushing!
 
Yup, with Rob on this one. Never been proved that cables make any difference to audio except where the source impedance is relatively high and complex, i.e. electric guitar.

I also agree that foil screened cable is unsuited to mic or other vigorous usage tho' it is very good for "static" jobs, say loom to a patch bay.

There is also two sorts of other screens. Lapped and braided. Lapped is ok for mild duty but tends to "unwind" if treated brutally such as kinking. Braided screens are much tougher but more of a PITA to strip and unpick.

BTW, mic cable makes excellent guitar cables. Just tie the "cold" core to the screen, the resulting capacitance is as low as most single core git leads and the cold core tends to cut out microphonic "clanking".

Dave.
 
Once again: thank you both SO much for taking the time to share some of your insight & experience with me; it's deeply appreciated.

That being said: Rob, you asked why I put a quad-core cable in my list of possibilities. I didn't mean to. T'was a mistake. I know for a fact that quad-cable would be MASSIVE overkill for my needs. And there won't be any flight case-crushing going on: these cables are for my own personal studio, which is pretty small, so it's relatively easy to keep an eye on things to prevent that sort of damage. And I rarely do full-band live recordings in my space; if I have a need for that, I typically call in a favor or two and go to one of the pro studios here in Chicago at which I do random work.

Ecc: will you please go into a bit more detail regarding using the mic cable as a guitar cable? I'm really interested in that. I'm not a complete noob by any means; I have a lot of experience with electronics/cabling/soldering/etc. My question here was more about verifying what I already knew than it was me asking from a blank slate, so I can follow you if you clarify a few things for me:

1. When you say "cold core," to what are you referring?
2. When you say "screen," I assume you mean (based on contextual info you provided earlier in your response) the cable's shielding, be it braided or whatever. Correct?

Thank you both again SO MUCH. I really appreciate the info. Maybe I'll send you both a coupla' free cables once I start making them. That is, if yer interested in myhumble way of showing my gratitude. ;)
 
Just to continue on with/agree with what has been said before, probably the most important part of choosing a mic cable (once you get to ones that fit the general specification) will be the handling characteristics. Thin cable will fail when it's in a use where it's in an environment where it's moved around a lot. Even thicker cables can become a problem if the outer is stiff and "plasticy" while the better stuff will coil and uncoil easily.

If you can find a show room with the same cable you're thinking of ordering, quite seriously I'd ask to "feel it" and see how it handles.

Now what connectors are you going to order? I have some cables I made in 1983 using Neutrik XLRs that are still going strong; some much more recent ones where I tried some cheaper ones are in a pile waiting to be fixed. Just sayin'!
 
What he means is soldering one of the two conductors to the screen, so the 'hot' goes to the jack tip, and the other, the 'cold' goes to the sleeve AND the screening.

For what it is worth, my usual supplier of bits and pieces sent me a special offers list. Mainly Chinese sourced cables, leads, connectors. One was a jack to jack, 6m long. Two pounds! So I ordered a couple. The connectors look like Neutriks but of course aren't, but they are solid and strong. The cable is up branded, but tough and chunky. It costs less than I could buy the parts for. It's distinguishable in performance sonically (of course) and mechanically, and if some thief steals it at a gig, or more likely, I leave it behind, who cares!
 
Yeah, Rob's got it but on the basis that a picture's worth a fousand....?

Drawing B shows what I chose to call "shielded return". This can be very useful in the presence of high RF fields.

It is unbalanced and the cold core is connected to braid as above but at the other end the braid is not connected at all and "return" is made via the cold core.
The theory is that since RF current cannot flow in the shield they cannot induce currents in the live core.

"HS" is heat shrink sleeving and is optional but I am a bit anal about cables and use it like confetti!

Other cable tip, label the XLRs each end. I use a Brother "Dymo" strip printer (AND HS!)

And...DON'T send these guys cables! If they are anything like me they have a bag (bin, room VAN?!) FULL of wires they fully intend to sort out One Day! No, donate any spare kit to schools etc. I gave a 200W bass cab to our local Labour club where impecunious musos hang out and jam.

Dave.
 

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Thanks again, gents; you've outdone yerselves. :)

Ok, I agree with Bobbsy's point about the handling characteristics, but most of the cables I like the feel of are a bit thinner than 1/4" (or 6mm), like this cable from GepCo. It's the exact cable one of the pro studios in Chicago I work at most often uses for their mic cables, except they use some tube shrink wrap near the solder points and then along the cable about 4-5 inches, which their tech says adds enough girth to the cable's diameter such that the Neutrik connectors' "grip" on the cable can function (Rob mentioned this in a comment about, I believe.)

So Rob (and anyone else), does the tube shrink "trick" hold water in your opinion? Is the proper tube shrink (the tech also specified he uses a certain size tube shrink with a consistent final thickness) at the ends of the cables a functional workaround in terms of the Neutrik "grip" on the cables? (Oh yeah: thanks for the explanation of converting a balanced cable to an unbalanced one; that coupled with Ecc's excellent image and explanation really helped me understand. I think I knew what you meant, but I wanted to be sure. And now I am. So thanks a bunch to ya both.)

Just for example, the cable I linked above is .194" outer diameter, so I'd find some tube shrink with a final thickness of .03" (yes, it exists; I looked...haha). Multiply that by two (one for each "side" of the cable) and add it to the OD of the cable itself and voila! We have a cable with an OD of .254", a tiny fraction thicker than the .25" recommended by Neutrik.

So whaddaya think??
 
Not to be that guy, but usually if you're going to actually use quality connectors and especially if you value your time at all, DIY cables are not cheaper than pre-made. Maybe if you're making enough that you can really buy in bulk and get the big discounts that manufacturers get, but not in even tens or twenties. Just not worth the time and hassle. I will DIY specialty cables out of parts that I have around, or occasionally repair something that's broken, but for mic cables I just go search around for the best deal I can find on cables with decent connectors.
 
Sadly I've also found that to be true.

I make my own patch cables for the back of the patchbay, but thats about it. The cable from Thomann is decent enough for project studio usage.

Really good info here, bet a bunch of people would also find it useful if it were pinned/kept alive somwhere.
 
Hmmmm...maybe I'm doing something wrong with my calculations or maybe something has changed since you guys last tried making yer own cables, but according to what I've figured, the base price for me to make my own cable (before the family discount I'm getting from this website) is about $7.30 for a one-foot cable. For a ten-footer it would be $11.70. For a 25-footer it would be $19.20. This is with high-quality Belden cable and Neutrik XX connectors. if I include the family discount I'm getting, those numbers go down by about 40%. (these numbers do not include the cost of my time.)

So either I'm shopping in the wrong place for pre-made, quality cables and paying WAY too much, or things have changed since you guys last priced out DIY cables. Or something else I'm not thinking of.
 
I honestly wouldn't pay much more than what you've quoted there for cables. I personally value my time more than $0/hour, so it still leaves me buying rather than building.

I'm not saying it's easy to beat those prices. You do have to shop around and sometimes look for package deals. I suppose if I put a price on that time... But I can do that at work where I'm already getting paid. ;)
 
I agree with Ashcat et al that there is little economic advantage in rolling you own cables but!
I would not like to dissuade the newcomer to audio from having a go!

You only have to see how very, very infrequently the DIY section of HR changes to see that hands on electronics (if you can CALL cable making electronics?) is a dying activity and anything that gets the newb even thinking about "The Process" has to be a good thing in my book.

Actually, I am one of those weird people that LUUUURVES making cables! I was never so happy as when sat down at the bench with a reel of whatever and a bag of connectors from R S Components and the more complicated the cables the better! 15pin D multiways were Nirvana.

Dave.
 
Oh, yeah! If you're just starting out and want to learn how to solder, cable making is about the best first project I can think of. If you value learning a new skill, that kind of offsets the whole time thing. When you've been doing it for 20 years and are fairly confident with anything short of SMD, though...
 
You guys are awesome. Thanks again.

First, just to be clear: I'm not a noob. At all. Not to music, recording/studios, or electronics. I built my own CRT TV when I was 15. No joke. Granted it was from a kit, but still...that's A LOT of soldering. Haha. I've been a professional musician for over a decade now. I started at 5 with piano and quickly expanded to guitar, voice, bass, all the brass instruments, percussion, drum set, and a few other random instruments I've picked up over the years. I put out my first "album" when I was 13 and wrote, arranged, recorded, produced, & released it myself. I interned at a Chicago studio for two summers when I was 18 & 19 and then attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. I've been signed to Virgin Records and have played on/produced/arranged over 70 albums.

That being said, my reasoning for making my own cables is dual-fold: first, I am sick of paying overinflated prices for cabling; Ashcat, if you could point me to where yer buying yer cables at prices & quality comparable to the ones I'm building, maybe I'll rethink my idea here. Second, I need some pretty random lengths in my oddly-shaped personal studio, and I *hate* using more cable than is necessary (like using a 25-foot cable for a 7-foot run because it's the only one long enough to do it).

I'm also planning on using the leftover cable on the spool for permanent, hard-wired patchbay installation. I am building some DIY patch-thru bays with XLR/TRS combo inputs/outputs for ease-of-access to my interface's ins & outs, as well as the ins & outs on my preamps/compressors/etc. I *could* use some suggestions on which TRS patchbay I should use; my main issue is that my gear is split just about 50/50 between XLR ins & outs and TRS ins & outs. What's the best way to get around that problem? Using adapter cables, like XLR-to-TRS? Or should I take the DIY patchbay route a step further and make my own hard-wired TRS patchbay? (It would be less of a pass-thru setup like the XLR patchbay I described above; more "traditional" patching, but I'm fairly certain that my connections would be best suited to a fully de-normalled patchbay.)

Ashcat: when you say "SMD," I assume you mean "standard microcircuit drawing," yes? Just curious. Also, I agree with you about the time it takes to make a cable versus the cost of buying a premade one, but there are a few other things to consider as well: the first thing that pops into my mind is if I make the cable(s) myself, I *know* the quality of the solder points & all other variables which contribute to a shoddy cable are in good form because I've done it all myself. Also, as a professional musician, I have little money and little free time, but I definitely have more free time than money. So it's definitely worth it to me...unless you can point me to wherever it is you are buying cables at such great prices. ;)
 
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Cost effective or not, I prefer making my own cables.

1) I can assure the highest quality in materials.

2) I can make custom lengths

3) I am assured of the quality of the final product.

4) I can get the product I need within minutes

5) it comes with the best warranty in the business. In case of manufacturing error, there is no place I have to send it nor a wait time. I just put it back on the bench and repair it.
:-)
 
What RFR said.

Yes, I can (and have) bought cables cheaper than I can make them using quality materials but they are never entirely satisfactory. Connectors give up the ghost, I waste time coiling them because they don't handle well (yeah, I'm OCD about how I coil cables) and so on.

Making your own DOES work out to be cost effective if you compare like with like...and, for that matter, I could probably buy cheap cable and connectors and be competitive that way.

Don't underestimate RFR's item 2 by the way...less so with mic cables but in the studio it can keep things much tidier if you make a cable 4'8" long when that's what you need.

Finally, when I'm in the right mood, soldering can be a relaxing way to spend an afternoon...cup of coffee or a cold beer by my side, favourite radio station playing and I'm set. Think of it as knitting for nerds!
 
I agree with RFR and Bob to a large degree but there are people who will make you what you want at competitive prices, we have Kabl cables over here.

Note to noobs. IF you are contemplating a big batch you will need a quick, reliable tester not just for continuity but also "phase". The latter you can get wrong (especially after several beers!). You can buy a tester but it is a good intellectual 'tronics project to make one.

Dave.

---------- Update ----------

I agree with RFR and Bob to a large degree but there are people who will make you what you want at competitive prices, we have Kabl cables over here.

Note to noobs. IF you are contemplating a big batch you will need a quick, reliable tester not just for continuity but also "phase". The latter you can get wrong (especially after several beers!). You can buy a tester but it is a good intellectual 'tronics project to make one.

Dave.
 
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