Cable Asylum: Answers... by AndrewG

I hardly know whether to reply, given Thorsten's description of the mind-witheringly complex new cable (see post from him). Anyway, for what it,s worth, here's some answers...

· Instead of satellite cable (which we tested, by the way) we used a co-ax with nice soft annealed copper center conductor and air-gap dielectric.
--what's this? Solid core or stranded center (what gauge)? By "air-gap" do you mean the foamed teflon stuff, or do you have some magical coax with such a thing? What's the source of these coax cables? I have some Beldens from Jon Rische's recipe. Would these work?

A:I'm sure foamed teflon would work fine, probably better than the P.E. air gap stuff. The centre conductor is 0.9mm dia. solid-core. It's easy to choose the annealed copper, it's soft and shiny, easily bent. Dark and stiff copper is not so desirable.(this means stripping an inch of cable while no-one is looking in the shop)

Chuck everything else away
--You mean strip away the outer jacket, braid, etc to leave just the center conductor with foamed teflon around it just like Jon Risch's twisted interconnect recipe?

A:Yes

and use a 16-gauge Solo or Goertz flat copper foil speaker cable (or unroll an inductor) as the outer tubular conductor
--Goertz MI1 or 2? Do you leave the teflon jacket of Goertz intact or stripped? Do you wrap the outer tube in contact with center conductor surrounded by foam or leave a lot of air in between, just moving freely.

A: I used a Solo inductor, unwound. This leaves bare copper. Don't know about the Goertz cable, but I'm sure an inductor would be a cheaper source. NOT in contact with the centre conductor! (see later answer)

Does this cable sound that much better than Goertz MI1 or 2 by itself?

A: It sounds better than anything I've tried.

Interconnects! Temporarily forget theory. Use the same construction technique as above, but replace the center conductor with a carefully stripped length of wire-wrap wire (one strand, insulation removed). Pull this through as you extract the copper, by soldering them together first.
--This is very confusing. what gauge solid core wirewrap wire is this?
A: 30 AWG
Is it copper?
A: Silver-plated copper. From RS Components.
If you remove the insulation, wouldn't the center wire and the tubing touch each other and ruin it? How do you keep them from coming in contact? Do you purely rely on Goertz's tubing's teflon jacket by leaving that intact?

A: The wire-wrap(bare) passes though the hole left in the co-ax where you have strenuously pulled the original centre conductor out, hence, no touchies. Solder them together at the end before you pull the centre out, that way the new wire just follows it through automatically. Easy!

Souds like an interesting project. Just bizarre enough to peak my interest. Thanks.