DIY balanced interconnects

Tvad, you got that right. I've not watched the solid state part of the market, but I know that Roland did support the 600 ohm standard. Generally its fairly easy for semiconductors. Wadia supported it in the old days- I've not kept up with them though.

As far as tubes- in high end to the best of my knowledge we are the only ones that support the standard. There are others that can drive 600 ohms, but there will be a loss of bass response- the output impedance issues I mentioned earlier, IOW the 600 ohm load combined with the output coupling cap will produce a rolloff. There are certain transformer-coupled tube products, like Modwright, that may well support the standard too (if they have a 600 ohm secondary on the output transformer), you would have to check with them to be sure.

The reason we support the standard is we had a lot of exposure to recording/broadcast gear prior to the introduction of the MP-1, and we saw the results. I remember seeing a local recording engineer set up the mics a good 150 feet from the recorder, and the recording was fabulous. Years later I had that event in mind in setting the goal to support the same operation. I think a lot of high end companies got in for other reasons and without that exposure.

The new Rowland preamps, Criterion and Capri, put out much less than 600 ohms.

Ralph, thaks for the respone and you may have saved me some money. I was going to order the Vampire cable and XLRs from Michael Percy, but I can get no response from him by phone nor email. I can get the Mogami and Neutrik for much less money from Markertek.
The components I want to connect are a BAT VK30 preamp,Pass Labs aleph amp, Cary CD, and theta gen V DAC. I feel pretty confident they all meet fully balanced criteria and probably 600 ohms (if not let me know please).
I assumed to use the braided shield to pin 1,(Thats the way the present KCAG cables are connected as they have no shield), but just to be sure, I guess I should not tie either end to the ground on the XLR cover?
I also will build an AES/EBU cable, do you have a specifc recomendation for the 110 ohm standard?
thanks again!

Another good value is Belden 8412 - this is the professional standard microphone cable. It doesn't reject hum quite as well as star-quad configurations, but has a lower capacitance, which is a good tradeoff for most line-level interconnect applications as well. It works perfectly with the strain-releifs on both the Neutrik and Switchcraft connectors, both of which I like as well.

Some cable manufacturers do indeed tie pin #1 to the shell, but I don't like this practice - it can create ground loops within the equipment (though if it's properly designed this shouldn't happen). Also, if done at the male (destination) end, it will usually defeat the operation of an input ground-lift switch, if the equipment has one.