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Is nylon sheathing for DIY cables just window dressing?

Hi, quick question. Looking to make my own calbles, like the Mogami W3104 -12AWG 4 Conductor Speaker Cable material. It seems relatively easy to cut, strip cables into 2 separate right / left leads and add banana plugs. But every time I look for a little DIY u-tube education they all add the shrink wrap tubing and nylon sheathing to the assembly process. Is this really necessary? I can see where maybe using shrink wrap from the casing edge that was cut exposing the 4 individual leads and also having shrink wrap tubing over banana plugs to keep out air, but do you really need the fancy nylon sheathing? It adds about another $50-100 to the total cost. Thanks
phill55
erik_squires
16,726 posts
 
Yes, more or less. They prevent the cable from looking bad when it abrades, but also the shrink wrap that does the transition from the nylon flex wrap to inside the jacks adds some strain relief, reducing the likelihood of a kink which impairs performance.
phill55's avatar
phill55 OP
142 posts
 
Understood, thank you for your response. The  Mogami W3104 -12AWG 4 Conductor Speaker Cable material is solid rubber with plastic sheathing underneath separating the 4 rubber coated conductor wires, so I thought I would jut shrink wrap tube the four two conductor wires into two and shrink wrap the banana plug to the wires to keep air out. This speaker cable seems to be really good quality at roughly $6 per foot. I think leaving the nylon sheathing would save me another $100 or so, given I need a 25' length from stereo to speakers. 
scar972's avatar
scar972
231 posts
 
No, you don't need the fancy nylon braided sleeving, they are just cable dress up. A lot of high-end cable manufacturers use them to disguise the cable used underneath or to protect their method of construction and the material used, this is especially true when a cable is advertised as being hand-built or hand-made. The heat shrink used does provide strain relief where the connectors are terminated to the cable.
dgarretson
2,614 posts
 
Most of my DIY cables use tinned copper braid wrap for shielding and damping.  The tinned coatings rub off on your hands unless covered by Tekflex plastic braid.  Tekflex also looks nice and is relatively cheap from MacMaster Carr on-line.  Not much money in the scheme of things. 
phill55's avatar
phill55 OP
142 posts
 
Thanks for everyone's responses -  The Mogami W3104 -12AWG 4 Conductor Speaker Cable is not cheap at $4-6 per linear foot, but I compared them to my Cullen cable cross over series and these are as good, with a little more tightness in the bass. And as god as the Cullen cables are, they run about $30 per linear foot. BUT, for those of you looking to use standard banana plugs (like SIlverbacks) be careful as this wire is so thick, that twisting the 4 leads into 2 will barely go into standard banana plugs - you have to use the kind with the screws that go outside of the cable housing. I should know, I had to grind down the screws on the silverback banana plugs - was a pain in the a_ _ but it worked. Overall, very impressed with the sound of these cables. 
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