CUTTING DOWN A TONEARM CABLE

Canare connectors?

I read/feared tales of ideal length for tonearm cables - something to do with capacitance

@lohanimal A good tonearm cable will be low capacitance. But I would not be concerned about shortening one, because when you reduce the capacitance (which will happen when the cable is shorter) you reduce the problem which the capacitance causes.

If you want to know more, in a nutshell the capacitance of the cable interacts with the inductance of the cartridge to cause a high frequency resonance. If you have a moving magnet high output cartridge, this resonance can be just inside the audio band (causing brightness) or just above it (causing phase shift, which the ear interprets as brightness, so essentially the same thing). By reducing the capacitance of the cable, that resonance is shifted to a higher frequency and so becomes less audible.

If the cartridge is a low output moving coil, then the resonance is so high as to be considered radio frequencies- and so shortening the cable will have no audible effect.

Either way you're better off, so if you can solder well, have at it!

Dear @lohanimal :  The reason or reasons is only common sense: in any audio system  cables should be as shorter as the system audio items permits.

Through a cm. or inch that the audio signal musts pass exist degradation of that audio signal as longer the cables as worst that degradation.

Capacitance?, who cares. What's important is that the audio signal " trip " to our ears been the shorter we can achieve.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

Get Audio Note connectors if you shorten the cable this will be better.

I just had the honor of rewiring/repairing two different tonearm cables. In short, patience and thinking ahead pays off. This is delicate work to be sure, yet I am happy with the results. The former installer of both of these cables made poor solder connections, broke headshell clips and more. I didn't want to have to do this job, but there are times when it is just easier to do it yourself. Stripping the fine wire was all about feel. I only lost one fine hair of a conductor during the process.