I seriously despise cheap interconnects. And I don’t mean inexpensive, I mean cheap.
When I say cheap I really mean low quality. And this is not a price issue. I’ve bought really good interconnects for a few dollars which have lasted for years with absolutely no issues. And I’ve had interconnects costing tens of dollars give me nothing but trouble ranging from intermittent connections, to noise, to very short lifetimes.
What brings me here today is a set of cables connecting to an amplifier I use every day. Suddenly one channel just stopped working at power on, however after a few minutes it seemed to work again. So I swapped tubes and cycled through different scenarios trying to get it to perform again. To say the problem was intermittent would be an understatement.
So I finally got to the point where I was going to take the amp to my workbench to give it the once over. But before I powered it down, I reached behind and brushed the interconnect cable and the missing channel jumped back to life. A little gentle manipulation of the input cables identified the problem; bad cable. Now the infuriating part of this is that the cable in question is less than a year old. And for its whole life it’s just been sitting there without being moved or even touched. And suddenly, for no apparent reason, it just decided to fail.
This is a recurring issue I’ve had for the last several years. There was a time (maybe 20 to 25 years ago) that by avoiding the absolute cheapest cables but buying something in the tens of dollars range would generally yield, if not the best, at least a reasonable quality cable which could be counted on to last a reasonable amount of time and give reasonable performance. Now it seems that any correlation between price and performance has completely disappeared. I’m having problems with $20 dollar cables just as much as $5 mass produced cables.
There was a time (WARNING: Old man rant incoming) when you could walk into a store and actually look at cables and, in some places, actually try them out. And years ago, even at places like Radio Shack I could look at a range of different options without bankrupting myself. Now it seems that, with everything on-line, the purchase of ready made cables is really a crap shoot.
I’m almost ready to return to making all my own cables. That’s a bother but at least I’d know what I’m doing and can be assured of at least a decent level of quality.
I’m curious to hear what other people do for interconnects. And are there any sources or brands which are of reasonable quality without sliding into the audiophile tomfoolery category? Let me know in the comments.
As always, questions and comments are welcome.
So if manufacturing your own RCA cables, what solderable RCA plugs do you use?
In the past I’ve generally got rca type cables from Jaycar, kind of like Radio Shack used to be when it traded here. I still use some maybe more than 15 years old without problems so far. They look well made but not boutique style, and likely no more than $7 each. I also have some really old things from when I had a tape deck with double wires and plugs which still work. When I built the 6as7/12au7 amp I decided to make up some cable using 24 gauge red and black cable which I twisted and wrapped in heat shrink and soldered these to some nice plugs also from Jaycar. I think I may have been inspired to do this from an article and pictures in diyaudioprojects.com.
I generally use known brand cables from reputable suppliers with no problems whatsoever. I have never and never will use “boutique cables” (can’t see spending hundreds or thousands on an audio or digital cable). This, I will say that dollar store cables are total junk, some are dead before their first use.
I generally make my cables and such from pro-audio supplies.