Help with making unbalanced patch cables

  • Thread starter Thread starter lo.fi.love
  • Start date Start date
lo.fi.love

lo.fi.love

Functionally obsessed.
Hey folks,

I need to make a ton of RCA patch cables, and I need some suggestions on the cabling itself.

I'm interested in radio interference rejection and such, and I'm not sure what I should do. Two-conductor cable? Two-conductor cable with shield? Ehhh? How do I wire it up?

I've made plenty of cables, but it was usually just one or two cables at a time and I wasn't too concerned about quality. I'm preparing to spend maybe $200-300 on bulk cable and Canare RCA connectors, so I want to make sure I'm doing this right.

Thanks!!
 
I get my bulk cable and connectors from Redco Audio. For snakes I use the Gepco Cable. Sometimes I've even found it cheaper at Full Compass. I use the GepFlex cable. That's the black jacketed 24AWG cable. No reason to use the blue-jacketed 22AWG cable for the shorter unbalanced runs. It is balanced cable BTW, but the outer jacket has a foil shield and the individual pairs (with ground) are foil shielded as well. You obviously don't need the 3rd conductor, but its there and it is hard to find shielded unbalanced snake cable. I typically solder the ground and cold (black) wire to the connector shield, and the hot (red) wire to the connector pin. Pretty sure that's conventional when wiring balanced cable to an unbalanced connector. I've been really happy with the Gepco stuff.

Sometimes you can find stuff at Parts Express too. They carry ProCo and Belden snake cable.

I have a ton of TRS-TRS snakes I made up before I had my analog epiphany and now those sit in a pile...:rolleyes:...I was so tired of making cables at that point that I went shopping for used HOSA and Tascam RCA-RCA snakes in decent shape. Yes, sweetbeats has his limits. :p
 
Great! Thanks for the recommendations. What you suggested is pretty much in line with what I had in mind.

I got to thinking about the cabling issue today because I found 16 3'-long two-conductor cables with shields poking out the dumpster in front of my office building today. I think it was left over from installing the security system for the building next door, which is currently being renovated. I was thinking about using it for making patches on my PB-64 patchbays. It looks to be about the same gauge as the Gepco snake cables.
 
Would there be any discernable benefit to using high-grade coax cable instead? Take a look at this, for example.

Overkill? Its durability might make it good for 1.5' patch cables, but would it be a waste of money to make snakes with this stuff?
 
I wouldn't use video coax for audio runs...if for no other reason than the capacitance of that cable...pretty high AFAIC.
 
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