I made a set of balanced interconnects using WE 16ga wire and it sounded "thick" or a little too full to me. I have since made balanced ICs using Duelund 20ga wire and I like the result. There are many ways to do things but my suggestions are;
- Twist a pair of Duelund 20ga wires (that will attach to pins 2 and 3)
- cover the twisted pair of conductors with spacing material (I use noise-reducing techflex)
- Place a tinned copper braid shield over the conductors and spacing material
-
Counter-spiral a generic stranded copper ground wire of at least 20ga (I use 18ga for 20ga conductors) outside of the shield
- Connect the generic ground wire to pins 1 at both ends
- Connect the shield to pin 1 at the source end only
- Cover with techflex and heat shrink the ends
- I like Vampire XLR connectors for lower cost applications and Furutech 600-series connectors when spending more (my personal cables use the Furutech connectors). Others have had good luck with Xhadow connectors.
Good luck
