Who uses home brew cables?

Wire, materials, geometry and connectors are four things DIY cables have in common with manufactured cables. After making cables for my own use for the past 15 years, and comparing with pretty good and somewhat expensive manufactured cables, I believe you can do well wrt SQ by building your own but.....probably not on your first or second attempt. You can get close to the sound of some high priced offerings by using the high quality, bulk cables available and terminating them with first rate connectors - a good bang for the buck option but not inexpensive.

I find the Cardas solder easy to work with. A Hakko soldering station helps too.

I agree with you on both counts and would add that a hydraulic crimper is also a good tool to have for SCs.

John421 - I have just finished (today) re-working my silver cables and as a result they now perform better and cost less - the new version cost around $110 for a 3ft pair - but they perform as good as some very expensive boutique brands

Parts List
- 1/10" dia Teflon tube - 6 ft
- 6 ft of CAT6 wire
- 1/4" heatshrink tube - 1 ft
- 1/2" Heatshrink tube - 1 ft
- 6ft of 24guage solid Silver wire
- 8ft of nylon stretch nylon cable sleeve (ptional)
- set of 4 Copper/Silver/Pure Harmony RCA's

How to:
- strip the sleeve off the CAT6 cable and obtain ONE conductor (there are 4 twisted pairs inside)
- wind conductor around Teflon tube with about 1/4" spacing between winds - this is the neutral wire - trim any excess.
- secure conductor on Teflon tube with 4 pieces of 1/4" heatshrink - on ends and equally spaced down cable
- insert the CAT6 wrapped Teflon tube into cable sleeve and secure with 1/2" heatshrink
- you may need to add a couple of layers of heatshrink on the ends to act as a strain reflief for the RCA.
- insert silver wire into Teflon tube
- attach RCA's

The choice of RCA is yours, but the Harmony line is an excellent performer and is priced as follows:
- Copper Harmony - $60 for 4
- Silver Harmony - $90 for 4
- Pure Harmony - $120 for 4

I've used this design with the Silver Harmony and Pure Harmony, which has a slight edge over the Silver Harmony.

For a lower budget version - use a second piece of CAT6 for the centre conductor instead of the silver - you'll be very surprised at how good it is. This version would probably cost around $75 for a 3ft pair

It took me around 2 hours to build 1 set

Nice little project for a winter evening :-)

As an addendum to the post above - I have now tried this design for a power cable with excellent results

I used a high quality copper wire for the live conductor and two pieces of romex for the Ground and Neutral conductors.

The ground and neutral conductors were first wound around a wooden dowel in a spiral configuration. Being romex they held the spiral shape - but were quite flexible

I then inserted the live conductor down the centre of the two preformed ground/neutral conductors, attached the mains/IEC connectors and viola!

The improvements were across the board - everything got better.

You might want to add some heat-shrink around each conductor and an expandable outer nylon sleeve for better protection of the conductors

Try it :-)