DIY Instrument Lead Mini-Tutorial

[DrNomis_44]

Hi Everyone,

Since I'm making some XLR to XLR leads for a good mate of mine and I'm going to be doing some repair work on some of my own leads today, I thought that it would be a good excuse for me to do a mini-tutorial thread about making your own DIY instrument leads, and show you how I go about making them.

I'm going to be documenting the process with some pics as well as a write up.

To start the ball rolling, here's a quick re-cap of the four steps for preparing the leads prior to soldering the plugs onto them, they are:


1, Cut.....Cut the cable to the required length.

2, Strip...Strip the plastic insulation off the cable and the inner-conductors.

3, Twist...Twist the individual strands of shielding braid together so that it forms one neat bundle, do the same for the strands of the inner conductors.

And finally....

4, Tin.....Tin the neat bundles of strands by coating them with solder, they should look shiny once you're done.


I will be going into each step in more detail and adding pics soon so stay tuned....

[JohnH]

Good idea for a thread Doc, I reckon there’s more than a few people on the forum who’d be interested to try this.

[Marcel]

Many prefer to 'tin' the lead ends before taking them to the plug/socket to be soldered on to the pins. This does make the actual soldering a lot easier and often makes for a more reliable solder joint.

For myself I prefer to fit the wire into its intended final location on the pin first, and then apply/use solder to secure the joint. On a TRS or TS plug this allows me to put the wire neatly through the tiny hole to give added mechanical strength to the final joint, and on a XLR allows me to ensure the wire is fully inside the cup at the end of the pin before solder is applied. Down side is if the wire is at all dirty or has any corrosion there is limited scope to correct any 'wetting' issues should they arise, and often may require a full clean and start from the beginning again to rectify those issues.

[DrNomis_44]

Yep, there's lots of ways to do it, if I'm making up an XLR-XLR lead, or a TS-TS, or TRS-TRS lead, I like to tin the wire and connections separately and then let the solder do all the work for me when I go to solder the connections together, definitely insures a good reliable joint, I'm just going to have something to eat first before continuing on with the mini-tutorial.


When you're doing the actual soldering, there's three rules to observe in order to get a good solder-joint, they are:


1, Cleanliness.

2, Cleanliness.

and....

3, Cleanliness.


Expanding on that....you want to make sure that the tip of your soldering-iron is clean and shiny, if you're working with a soldering-iron that has a dirty, and, or, rusty tip, you're not going to get joints which are shiny and have wetted the two surfaces to be soldered together, you also want to make sure that the surfaces being soldered together are clean and shiny, trying to solder to a dirty surface will not produce a good and reliable solder joint.

[DrNomis_44]

Rightio, before we start making some DIY instrument leads, we need to get together the raw materials, soldering iron, or soldering station, solder, and some tools, and then set everything up on a convenient workspace.


Materials:

Cable, Jaycar Electronics sell two different types of cable that I have used to make instrument leads, one type has a single core and shield surrounding it, the Jaycar Electronics catalogue number is WB-1508, it is roughly 6.5mm in diameter and has a black outer plastic-sheathing, the other type has two inner cores surrounded by a shield, the Jaycar Electronics catalogue number is WB-1530 has a black outer plastic shrouding too, I mostly tend to use the WB-1530 cable, here's a comparison pic to show what they look like, the top one is the WB-1508 cable:




Plugs, there's two types of plugs I tend to use when I make my DIY instrument cables, there's a metal right-angle plug, and a straight one, here's a pic so you can see what they look like:




Both are stocked by Jaycar Electronics and I've found them to be pretty reliable.

https://www.jaycar.com.au/6-5mm-pro-...-plug/p/PP0157

https://www.jaycar.com.au/6-5mm-pro-...-plug/p/PP0159

[Simon Barden]

I expand any too-small holes in order to get the wire through them. I really don't like just using solder to fix wire to metal, though sometimes, like with pots, there's no other choice.

When I started off soldering I was told that a good mechanical connection males for a good solder joint, and I've stuck to that wherever possible; putting the wire through any holes then wrapping the wire back and around so that it can stand at least a gentle tug on its own before applying the solder.

Sometimes I find it easiest to strip more of the wire than necessary just so I can tin just the very tip, then if it's a bit wide, cut the end down a bit with wire cutters so that it's easy to fit through the hole without some strands failing to pass through and producing messy whiskers. Then do the wrapping part and cut off any excess wire (including the tinned tip).

[DrNomis_44]

Good point Simon, yes whenever possible try to make the solder-joint as mechanically strong as possible, solder is a relatively soft material and while it is electrically strong, it's not very mechanically strong.


Okay, so I've covered the materials that I use to make my DIY instrument cables, next are the tools that I use.


Here's a pic of my Temperature-Controlled Soldering Station, I'd highly recommend getting a temperature controlled station because it makes things a lot easier when it comes to getting good solder joints, definitely worth the money:




Here's a pic of a device that's sometimes called a Third Hand, very useful for holding things together while you're soldering:



Next up is a pic of the roll of 60/40 Resin-Cored solder that I use, it's about 1mm in diameter, some people like to use Lead-Free solder:



Here's a pic of a container of Solder Flux, this is always very handy to have because it helps the solder to take to the metal surfaces being soldered:




Here's a pic of one of my rolls of 3mm Goot Solder Wick, this is a special chemically treated braid that soaks up excess solder, much like a sponge soaks up water, definitely handy to have if you ever need to de-solder a solder joint, better still make sure you have at least two:

[DrNomis_44]

Next is a set of various pliers, and a clipper, these are handy because sometimes you may need to bend something into shape:



Here's a pic of my two Digital Multimeters, very useful when it comes to doing some tests on your new DIY instrument lead to see if it is going to work properly, or for troubleshooting it if it doesn't work:




Both of my multimeters feature a Continuity Test function that produces an audible beeping-sound, when a lead is being tested for continuity between say the two tip-connections, and an audible beep is heard, that means that there is no break in the wire conductor running from the tip of one plug to the other, that also indicates that the lead is good, that's assuming that the sleeve connections also give an audible beep when tested, note that there should not be any audible beep when testing from the tip to sleeve on either end of the cable

Next is my wire stripping tool, this is used to strip the insulation off the inner cores of the cable prior to tinning and soldering:




Sometimes you might come across a plug that uses screws to hold wires in place on connections, some XLR plugs use screws to hold them together, so it's good to have a few screwdrivers in amongst your collection of tools, some thin Philips-Head and Flat Heads of various sizes should be included.

[DrNomis_44]

I'm going to be continuing on with a discussion on how I actually go about making my DIY instrument leads soon.....stay tuned.

[Marcel]

Something I'd like to throw in at this point is about the two types of solder -- 60/40 Lead/Tin type and the RoHS compliant Lead free solders...They are not compatible and it is best to not mix the two. In essence a Lead free designated iron must only be used on Lead Free joints with Lead free solder, and Tin/Lead solder only on Tin/Lead joints with a iron designated for Tin/Lead soldering. Mixing the two different solder types will contaminate the solder resulting in far more frequent 'cold joints' and reduced reliability and strength of the soldered joint.

FYI - The whole 'Lead free' thing was initiated by a huge bunch of nations to reduce the amount of Lead in our environment. In itself the reduction of Lead in our environment is a good thing as like the liquid metal Mercury the Lead once ingested into our bodies is toxic and can cause/create a whole army of health problems with few available corrective measures. To identify all the Lead reduced products the "RoHS compliant" scheme was created. After much protest and subsequent expensive R&D the electronics industry came up with the current series of formulae for 'Lead free' solders, but it has its problems with the two major ones being incomparability with Tin/Lead solder and that it needs a relatively much higher temperature than Tin/Lead solder to melt (typically being around 190C/360F for 60/40 Tin/Lead and 210-220C/410-430F for (Sn-Ag-Cu-Mn)(Sn-Ag-Cu-Zn) RoHS Lead free electronics solder).

For more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solder is a great resource...

Both work and do work well.... just if at all possible don't mix and switch your irons between the two...

As a side note the whole RoHS lead free thing is probably why we have seen such a huge reduction in the amount of Germanium solid state devices on the market as Germanium devices are very sensitive to the heat from soldering.... A RoHS compliant Germanium based device is a rare item to discover...