Tonearm cable

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Colin2040

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Looking for some cable for a tonearm and thought this question best suited here.Has anyone tried mouse cable as a tonearm cable,seems to get good reviews.
 
Not wishing to hijack this thread but I have a general question on tonearm cable.
What exactly are we looking for when changing this cable? Is it the weight of the cable in the arm,surely insignificant compared to what its in. Is it the conductivity,hard to believe that there is a voltage drop with such small amounts of current.Is it the capacitance in this very short piece of wire,very difficult to believe since there is an additional yard or so of cable hanging on to it.
I can understand needing to change it if it's damaged in some way or if the tags need making off again and there is insufficient slack but other that than that I am puzzled as to why it is ever necessary.
 
Colin, you can barely do any better than the Cardas arm wire, both internal and external. The internal is flexible and the external is almost perfectly shielded. When built together they should give you a great sounding arm. Many companies this this wire, I'm just about to rebuild the external wire for my SME with some.

Pete, capacitance counts for MM carts, more than anything flexibility and low microphony are important and good shielding for the external section.

For me flexibility would be number 1 for smooth tracking.
 
As Simon says, capacitance matters if you plan to use MM cartridges and if that is the case it should be kept as low as possible. Most MM phono stages have about 100pf shunt capacitance and the arm wiring loom will typically add another 100pf.
Thats already max for some MMs.
 
I am using Litz silver in the 12" arm and find it very detailed. Use the same from the Cardas socket to the phono stage too - why not?

I find after the Phonostage or at ~2V line output that silver detracts from the bass weight quite a bit.

I have also used Litz copper and fine that good but a different texture / slightly less detailed.
 
I should note the cardas stuff is a bugger to work with. Buy an extra foot to practice on.
 
I had notivced somewhere else that it could be tricky ,and they had suggested a fair extra length should be alowed for on the arm part. Currently polishing the arm after getting the right polishing compound!
 
Took me about 10cm of trial and error be fore i got my technique dialed. I wouldn't want to split the cards wire to two rca plugs at one end I doubt the wire would support the plugs. better to use a run for each channel and double up on the wires internally.
 
To be honest my decision was to use two runs however if I do a cost comparison I can buy one off the shelf made from Cardas completed for less than the cost of buying the parts,probably because of the minimum amount of cable I would be purchasing.So I may take a slightly easier rout by purchasing the finished loom.
 
or you could just get the star quad with shield from Maplin for £1.70 a metre and use that...
 
Would anyone know where I can source a plug for the rega arm base.The type I would use for a continuos loom.Brass one woud be good but any considered.
 

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