Anyone interested in buying custom-ordered cable?

[~X.T.~]

Hi Guys!

I'm currently a student in NTU; I dabble in various pro audio/live sound work and I'm looking to start a small cable-making business to earn some money to fund my audio work.

Just want to gauge interest as to whether or not you all would be interested in purchasing audio cables that are made-to-order.
That is, I will offer a selection of cables and connectors for you all to mix and match, so you can spec out your own cables (brand/length etc.) and choose what kind of connectors you want on both ends for your own customization.

Some background on myself: I'm currently a mechanical engineering student and I having been doing live-sound work since 2009. Both of these factors mean that I place a lot of importance on the durability and reliability of my equipment. Too often have I been let down by the shoddy construction of imitation-brand connectors and/or bad soldering jobs. I now personally make my own cables for use in all my critical audio applications.

I hope to extend my services to you all as both an advocate of using rugged and reliably-assembled cabling, and also as a small side-income opportunity to fund my ventures in live audio work.

The parts I will work with are all pro-audio grade parts from reliable manufacturers, i.e:
Connectors - Neutrik, Switchcraft, Amphenol etc.
Cables - Canare, Mogami, Klotz, Belden etc.

The parts from these manufacturers are all meant to take the harsh conditions of live-sound work (being thrown around, stepped on, yanked forcibily out etc.) while still giving their best performance, and are stuff that I will willingly put my money on.

If you are on a tight budget, I will be willing to work with some of the sub-brands of the above manufacturers i.e. REAN/Yongsheng from Neutrik etc.
This will save you some cost at a slight drop in durability, but I prefer not to touch anything else below those.

Hope to hear from you guys on whether you all might be interested! More details and pics of my work to come if I can get enough interest in this endeavor.

Cheers,
XT

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[an2]

That's a good idea, and I don't personally mind having some cables done. But do note that stores like TY Music do offer the same service, with a lifetime warranty attached to it. So you're either going to have to do something special or make the price really competitive.

 

[~X.T.~]

Yup! Thanks for the feedback an2! More to come in an update!

I'll be showing some of my work once I collate suitable pics of them.
Much as I would like to earn some money, it's service first and business second for me. Definitely will try to make it a good deal for you guys!

Stay Tuned!

 

[blueprintstudios]

hi there, pmed you

 

[~X.T.~]

Hi guys, apologies for the delay. Been busy with an event over the weekend. Anyway, here are some photos of my equipment and work.

This is my main workhorse, a Hakko FX888D temperature-controlled iron. A much more reliable iron compared to a standard fixed-power iron. Especially when one has to make mass cables.

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Here's one of a pair of XLR interconnects I made recently for a friend of mine.

Cable is Canare 4E6S star-quad cable terminated in Neutrik XX-series Male and Female 3-pin XLRs.

I promised him my best workmanship for these and so I had all three pins heat-shrinked for maximum redundancy.
Also you can see a signature of my work here: I use transparent heat shrink on the solder joints for easy inspection post-assembly.

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Here's another piece of mine, a 2-meter 3.5mm TRS interconnect.
Cable is Eurocable LK02N4.5 twisted-pair cable terminated in Amphenol K-series 3.5mm TRS male connectors.

These are my favourite 3.5mm connectors, very nicely designed and built. The cable too, is a great cable for 3.5mm connectors. Nice and supple with good flexibility. I also build these interconnects with Mogami 2552 and other suitable cable.

The same transparent heat shrink here too, I go to great lengths to ensure these go on. If you've assembled 3.5mm cables you will know how much of a nuisance the 3.5mm connectors are to solder.

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One more piece over here, now this one is a particular favourite of mine. It's extremely useful in live-sound work.

Looks very straightforward no? It is, but with a twist. Let me explain:

Many times people want to plug in their phone or laptop into the system. Now these devices all output stereo on a 3.5mm TRS connector, so they get a normal 3.5mm cable and realize that the mixers take in only 1/4" connectors.

The number one mistake made by countless people (even some sound engineers!) is to get a 3.5mm to 1/4" adaptor and plug that sucker right in. Now if the mixer is worth it's salt, it's gonna mangle your audio and turn that input signal into some crappy sounding audio.

This is because each 1/4" input on a professional mixer, although they are TRS, are NOT stereo inputs!

They are balanced inputs, which in layman terms means that they are supposed to take in a certain type of mono signal and will shred up any stereo signal you try to put in. No more details or this will turn in to a long tech rant, I can explain separately if anyone is interested.

So back to this particular cable, what this does is it combines the left and right channels of your input into a mono, unbalanced output that is now suitable for use with the inputs on the mixer.

On one end is my usual 3.5 mm work. But the other end is where the stuff happens.

It isn't good enough to just solder your left and right channels together as this could potentially cause damage to your playback device because the left channel tries to drive the right channel and vice versa.

What I've done here is I've soldered a resistive summing network right into the connector (Neutrik X-series 1/4" TS male). This one is one of my earlier attempts, in my more recent ones I've managed to lay the resistors in a more compact manner.

The bottom line is that this cable allows you to bridge the gap between the stereo output of consumer devices and the balanced inputs of professional audio devices. You can also plug this into any sort of 1/4" input without fear of incompatibility.

There are other ways of getting your signal across, of course, some simpler, some more complex, but this is one of my offering of solutions to that problem.

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Phew that was a load of stuff for one post...

Anyway, I take pride in my soldering skills and will offer a lifetime personal warranty on all my solder joints. That is, if any of the cables fail due to my fault in assembly e.g. bad solder joint, shorted contacts etc. bring it back to me and I will fix/replace it at no cost. (=