vasishta.sushant
Active Member
I bought this speaker cable not so long ago but couldn't use it since it was bought loose and came unterminated. Since this is a good cable (and quite costly), I didn't want to use it as it is and wanted to terminate the ends with some banana plugs. The Chord original termination costs more than twice the cable itself so thought of trying it out myself.
Wasn't too tough, if you ask me. All you need is few banana plugs (bought over ebay), some shrink tubing (bought from partsconnexion.com) and a little DIY instinct.
I'll just post few pics which will explain the whole thing. Lemme know if you have any questions.
The Chord Silver Screen Speaker Cable that I got loose can be seen in the following pic.
It really is a very thick cable. Just to put it in perspective, you can imagine a 15Amp power cable which is normally used in the ACs.
Have a look at the shrink tubing as well:
I just removed the sheathing at the ends to bare some wire for termination. In the pic you can see the silver foil being removed.
After removing the silver foil, the ends would look like this:
The final stripped end look would like this:
I already had the nakamichi banana plugs which I used for this DIY effort:
The next few steps were to cut out the required pieces of the shrink tubing and place them over the required location.
After this was done, it was time to heat up the tubing to let it settle down. I didn't have any hair dryer (which is the best bet for this kind of job) so I started with a matchstick to heat this thing up. Although it worked, I was left with black residue over the surface. Wasn't as pleasing.
Later I improvised and did it over the gas stove. Although heat was too much, it was all clean without any residue. The final thing is very fine, as seen in the following pic.
For the people who would want to go for a similar termination, I'd advice you to learn from my mistakes (Hydra, you listening fella ???).
1) Don't use the matchstick. Get a hair dryer if possible.
2) The shrink tubing is very sensitive to heat. Do the whole thing very slowly or it'd settle down at wrong places (e.g. in the last pic, you can see that the tubing is not symmetric since it settled before I could move it to the right position).
Wasn't too tough, if you ask me. All you need is few banana plugs (bought over ebay), some shrink tubing (bought from partsconnexion.com) and a little DIY instinct.
I'll just post few pics which will explain the whole thing. Lemme know if you have any questions.
The Chord Silver Screen Speaker Cable that I got loose can be seen in the following pic.
It really is a very thick cable. Just to put it in perspective, you can imagine a 15Amp power cable which is normally used in the ACs.
Have a look at the shrink tubing as well:
I just removed the sheathing at the ends to bare some wire for termination. In the pic you can see the silver foil being removed.
After removing the silver foil, the ends would look like this:
The final stripped end look would like this:
I already had the nakamichi banana plugs which I used for this DIY effort:
The next few steps were to cut out the required pieces of the shrink tubing and place them over the required location.
After this was done, it was time to heat up the tubing to let it settle down. I didn't have any hair dryer (which is the best bet for this kind of job) so I started with a matchstick to heat this thing up. Although it worked, I was left with black residue over the surface. Wasn't as pleasing.
Later I improvised and did it over the gas stove. Although heat was too much, it was all clean without any residue. The final thing is very fine, as seen in the following pic.
For the people who would want to go for a similar termination, I'd advice you to learn from my mistakes (Hydra, you listening fella ???).
1) Don't use the matchstick. Get a hair dryer if possible.
2) The shrink tubing is very sensitive to heat. Do the whole thing very slowly or it'd settle down at wrong places (e.g. in the last pic, you can see that the tubing is not symmetric since it settled before I could move it to the right position).
