Soldering TRS Cables

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Hello everyone,

Afger creating acouple cables I have learned I have been doing it slightly different. I have been taking the ground and compressing it with the cable holder thing and then soldering from there. Are all my cables messed up? Because to me they sound normal and I dont hear anything wrong
 
Electrically they'll be fine but normally you'd solder the ground part way down (there's usually a hole for that purpose) and crimping the cable holder around the ground plus the two insulated cores to act as a strain relief. Your way leaves you with a cable more likely to fail if somebody pulls on it.

Edited to add: I should say that's typical but I've seen more different TRS connector designs than I can shake a stick at and some don't allow that and/or have different forms of strains relief.
 
For me TRS (and TS) cables fall into two main groups.

Those that get plugged and unplugged almost daily and those that sit in back of a mixer/AI//patchbay/ tape machine, whatever and rarely move.

For the former, buy top quality Neutrik plugs. You will HAVE to strip out the screen for these as it only connects to a tag, cable clamping is a separate mechanism and VERY secure, unlike the cheaper varieties.....

Which can be used for the second duty. Why pay for a super rugged connector that will never be stressed? You can in fact make these inferior plugs much better by using some heatshrink sleeving to beef up the poor cable clamping design.

Another worthwhile economy is to buy smaller diameter, ~3-4mm foil screened cable. You don't want to be dragging it about a stage but for fixed site work it is fine. It uses a drain wire for shield connection and this makes cable building a dream job! And if you are making up a lot of cables buy a testmeter that beeps (or make one).

Dave.
 
The use of FST (Foil Screened Twin) is a very good suggestion. The vast majority of the "internal" cabling in my studio (and even interconnects when doing live stuff) are FST with the much heavier but easier to handle/coil stuff reserved for things that get moved a lot like mic cables.
 
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