Tonearm rewiring

@bdp24 I'm really excited to send the TT to them; I'm looking forward to what they do.
Unfortunately, the cartridge upgrade will have to wait, thanks to the "check engine" light that popped up this week on my car: a couple thousand puts the cartridge into next year; in the meantime, I'll have them reinstall the Goldring, which doesn't even have 200 hrs on it. They'll do a much better job than the online dealer I bought the MMF 7.3 from.
Audio Element will do the full Cardas rewiring of the arm, so I'm really looking forward to the upgrade I'll get.

arcamguy, this may only help you in the future, I agree with stringreen.  I've been in this hobby for decades and never abandoned vinyl playback.  In spite of most instructions to the contrary, I learned it is safer and easier to attach the wires to the cartridge pins before mounting the cartridge.  For me that is even more important with fixed headshells.  And of course leave the stylus guard on until you reach the point of setting overhang, offset, and VTF.

For the present, no doubt Berdan will do a great job.  Enjoy the results.

Get the tonearm wires from stereo-lux. Their finewire C37 cable is one of the best out there for tonearm wiring. The designer can supply you a direct continuous wire from the cartridge to phono or just a tonearm internal cable. Note that his cables are used in some of the best tonearms out there (Reed, Durand, Thomas Schick etc).

Contact mail@stereolux.de

Just had my Roksan Nima unipivot tonearm rewired with Cardas litz by Michael at Brit Audio out of North Carolina.  Beautiful job and super fast turnaround. Could not be happier. 

Rewiring a tonearm is not a casual endeavour as Matt Miller suggests. It does require a specific type of wire for both good conductivity and flexibility where it passes from the arm through the pivot and through the plinth to prevent it from causing torsional mechanical resistance to the motion of the tonearm. Also, the “p” clips that another member suggested are not suitable for this task, as they provide very tiny contact area, and are meant for applications where precision is not a requirement. 

Small-signal devices usually benefit from litz wire, where each conductor (strand) is individually insulated with a material that sublimates at soldering temperature. In my case, I’ve rewired tonearms with KAB-USA’s silicone-jacketed litz wire, which is extremely flexible. A challenge with silicone insulation is that it doesn’t readily melt when exposed to a hot soldering iron, so a 33AWG wire stripper is required, along with great care to avoid cutting any of the 37 ultra-fine strands.

With the wire successfully stripped, it must then be tinned before attempting to solder to the clips and the interconnect. For this task, I first dip the stripped end in rosin flux, the use a solder pot to simultaneously remove the litz insulation and tin the wire. Finally, I use a small amount of flux and solder the tonearm wire to each clip with 63/37 solder and then apply clear heat-shrink tubing (never use electrical tape) to reduce stress on the connection.

This method requires a very fine tip soldering iron (I use a Weller WESD-51) and a good magnifier lamp, along with a set of “helping hands” which are alligator clips attached with articulated arms to a weighted base.