Never Buy an Instrument Cable Again

hi i'm mason marangella from vertex effects aka the rig doctor and today i'm going to show you how to assemble your own instrument cables that go from your guitar into your pedal board or from your pedal board back to your amplifier let's do it [Music] instrument cables now this is a distinction that i make separately from patch cables because these are the more robust hardcore very reliable cables that you want to use to kind of insulate your pedalboard on the pedalboard itself you're using patch cables and if you're interested on how to make patch cables we actually have another video that very much mirrors the style of this video that you can watch above or in the description but this is really about the cables that are coming in and out of your pedalboard going from the guitar into the pedalboard and from the pedalboard back to the amp and these are getting a lot more wear and tear and abuse and so these need to be a little bit more robust thicker cables better quality connectors that are a little bit bigger more heavy duty so we're going to go through and we're going to use my favorite cable of all time which is the mogami 2524 and i'm going to show you how to assemble it in the most common connector types that are out there those being neutrik and switchcraft now both these companies have both straight versions and right angle versions and i'm going to show you how to do both of those types of assemblies on both types of connectors so you're going to get a straight and right angle version of a neutrik tutorial and you're going to get a straight and right angle version of a switchcraft tutorial using mogami 2524 so if you get any conceivable type of plug that we would ordinarily find for instrument cables you're going to know exactly how to approach them and how i would do it so that you can implement this in your own rig and the great thing about learning how to make your own instrument cables is once you can do this you'll never have to spend money on an expensive guitar cable again you'll be able to make a high quality one and i like using the mogami for this tutorial because if you can do a mogami you can feasibly do pretty much any type of instrument cable that is out there that's a coaxial cable so this is going to give you a lot of flexibility to apply this to other brands of cables if you wanted to say buy a qunari or a belden or some other type you can apply the same principle to whatever cable it is that you choose so let's first talk about the gear what do you need in order to assemble your own instrument cable so the first thing you're going to need is a high quality soldering iron and typically when i hear people say i'm not good at soldering or every time i've soldered it's turned out poorly generally they're not using the right type of iron for the job you need an iron that has an adjustable temperature i'm typically soldering my instrument cable somewhere around 700 degrees fahrenheit and i'm able to adjust that up or down depending on what i need now if you're using something from radio shack that's just a fixed amount of temperature or fixed wattage you're not going to be able to have the same amount of flexibility in terms of soldering your instrument cable so i highly recommend you get something nice like a weller or a hako and if you're wondering which one to get all the materials i'm talking about today are going to be linked in the description so you can get exactly the same stuff that i'm using and that i recommend the next thing that you're going to need is a vice grip you need some way to be able to clamp the cable so that when you're assembling it you're not chasing it around your workbench so i'm going to recommend a couple of different ones here one is a stationary vice grip that's a real heavy duty one and then another one is a more malleable third hand that has flexible arms that you can move into all sorts of different positions so you can really get in there and solder your cable perfectly the next thing you're going to need is high quality wire snippers and also high quality cable strippers that are going to meet a range of different diameters of cable so that when you're stripping off that outer diameter of the cable you're not going to cut into the shielding or god forbid the center conductor so that you have a ready prepped cable where everything is intact on the inside of the cable also the solder that you use is highly important i recommend a 6040 kester solder there's different types of diameters for this i'm going to recommend something in the middle that i use all the time that could be used for dc cables midi cables as well as patch cables and also instrument cables so it has a wide variety of applications it's not too thick and cumbersome it's not too thin and won't melt too fast this kind of keeps you somewhere in the middle which i think is a good place to be especially if you're just getting your sea legs and soldering your own cables last thing i recommend that you have is some sort of multimeter i have one link in the description that i really like that i think is affordable but you could also use a cable tester although we'll talk a little bit later on what some of the shortcomings are of using a cable tester to completely rely on to ensure that your cables are working properly and sounding the way that they should but let's get into the assembly of the actual cables and let's start with the noitrix so neutrik is a very high quality lichtenstein made plug they also have a sister brand that's made in china called rihann i want to stick with the neutrik version today because i think that those are the highest quality now there's two different versions there's a straight and a right angle and within those two versions there's actually different color variations some of them are silver some of them are black you might be able to find some of them in different price ranges depending on what color might be on discount typically the silver is a little cheaper than the black version there's also silent versions of these exact same plugs the assembly doesn't change at all if you're doing a silent version so just know that these two examples that i'll be showing you today for straight and right are universally applicable across the line of neutrik plugs i'm not going to recommend today that we use the silent plug because i do find them to be less reliable than the non-silent versions typically the silent versions will fail after a year or so and i haven't really found that there's any perfect silent connector that exists out there i've typically found they all have some sort of drawback so i recommend if you can get away with it not going with the silent versions and using your volume pedal or your tuner to mute because the silent versions the advantages when you unplug from your guitar it shorts everything so there isn't that cable noise of just an open cable kind of swapping around on the floor so there is some coolness about having that silent plug but again i don't recommend it if reliability is critical for you so let's start first with the straight now you'll see here that the the distance between where the tip and the sleeve is on the actual connector itself is not that great so basically what i'm going to do is i'm going to measure out with my cable i'm going to place it next to the connector itself and i'm going to look at how far back it is from the sleeve to the tip i'm going to make a little marking with my wire snips in the external diameter of the cable so that i roughly know where i need to cut with my wire strippers so that when i bring that back i have plenty of wire exposed of the shield and of the center conductor so that i can reach both places once i've done that i'm going to braid the shield together now here's one thing that i recommend when you're using an instrument cable like a mogami 2524 you don't need all the shielding so often i might lose a little bit of the shielding to make it a little bit more easy to maneuver i might cut away approximately half of the shielding and i'm basically making sure that it's just cut flush with where i stripped out the wire this is to make sure that i don't have any stray wires hanging out that might inadvertently or accidentally hit the tip that might create some sort of short so i'm just making sure that i'm cutting it cleanly i'm cutting it neatly and if you're using those high quality wire snips like i recommended you won't have any problem getting a clean cut after i've braided it i'm going to hit it with a little solder just to pre-tin it and then i'm going to make sure that i remove the thermal conductive plastic around the center lead again this is the place where most people run into problems when they're soldering any type of instrument cable they often forget that that black conductive plastic is going to put a resistive load on the cable and can make it sound really dark intermittent or in some cases not even work at all i'm going to peel that black thermal conductive plastic all the way down to the hill all the way down to the base i'm going to do that with my fingernail it comes off very very easily once i've done that i'm then going to hold it back up to the plug and i'm going to look visually to measure where do i need to cut the center conductor so that it fits perfectly inside of the cable i'm likely going to need to trim down some of the shield so that it fits in there perfectly and i'm just doing kind of a measure twice cut once type of approach i'm cutting it a little bit off i'm seeing that it fits perfectly i'm cutting the shield to make sure that it fits perfectly once i verified that i'm going to trim off just the slightest amount of the center conductor insulation so i expose some of that wire i'm going to tin that and then i'm going to go ahead and tin the plug both the tip and the sleeve and then i can reflow that put in my shield reflow the tip put in the center conductor and i have a nice quality connection now one thing you need to make sure before you start soldering is that you include the boot that is included with the neutrik connector this is a plastic rubberized boot that needs to go all the way through the cable first before you start assembling it fully with soldering to the plug this makes sure that once you're done you can put the housing back together and that you have the threading of the boot in order to hold everything together so just make sure that that slid through before any soldering occurs even i sometimes forget to do it and i have to desolder it and then re-solder everything again but just a quick word of warning in order to do that correctly this is how you need to do it now let's look at the right angle version of the neutrik so it's a very much a similar approach there's just a little bit different placement of the ground lug versus the tip so the sleeve and the tip are in slightly different places but really my approach is the same i'm taking my cable that's uncut i'm looking at how far i need to go from the center conductor to the tip in the shield to the sleeve i'm making a mark with my wire snips of where i need to start to strip i make that mark i strip it i cut off some amount of shielding because i don't need all of it in order to make a high quality connection to the ground lug i tin the shield i strip away the thermal conductive plastic i'm then going to start re-measuring i'm holding up the sleeve i'm holding up the tip i'm making sure that they fit perfectly with my cable i'm cutting off any excess i've peeled away all my thermal conductive plastic i'm then going to make my final cuts where i'm going to be stripping away a little bit of the center conductor insulation so that i can expose some of that wire i'm tinning everything both on the plug and the cable and then i'm going to reflow it into position and again making sure that i've put the boot on first before i go to solder so that i can make sure that everything comes together once i put back on the housing now one other thing i'll mention with the neutral connectors is they come with a little piece of strain relief that goes inside of the actual cable itself and you'll notice that there's kind of like a little cutaway tooth mark on there that's almost a perforation i always cut that off first and then you can put that on at any time by doing that it's making sure it's going to clamp around the mogami cable it's going to hold everything tightly in place but having that extra tooth there is not going to be necessary for the diameter of the mogami cable if you had something that was a little bit smaller and needed more resistance you could leave that tooth but for this purpose with a mogami or a normal instrument size cable you shouldn't need that you can cut it off and you'll find that even if you left it you're still able to put it together but you won't be able to screw the housing totally on because it will prevent it from being able to reach all the way together as you're putting together the actual assembly of the cable so let's now move on to switchcraft straight and right angle these are probably the most common styles of plugs that you've seen for years and years and years and they pretty much follow roughly the same sort of style that the neutrik does in terms of the order of operations of how you do it but maybe the technique might be slightly different but let's start first with the switchcraft straight so the first thing i always do with the switchcraft straight is again just like with the neutrik i put the actual plug i put it in my vice grips it's disassembled i'm going to put my cable into it i'm going to see how much space i need to go from the tip to the sleeve now with the switchcraft straights what i actually like to do to more closely mirror the actual angle of the center conductor that comes up into the tip lug is i actually bend down the tip just slightly and i cut a little bit of it away this allows me to keep the brake angle of the cable with the least amount of stress possible we'll also see here on the switchcraft that it has a strain relief that's a clamp so what i like to do first is kind of open that up a little bit and sometimes just taking your wire snips and just using the flat side just to open it up a little bit or using some sort of needle nose pliers just gives you a little bit more room to work with the first thing that i do after i've kind of put it in i've measured where things need to be i'm going to mark it again with my wire snips just so i know about how much i need to expose in order to get enough wire available in order to solder i'm going to do the same exact technique with the neutrik where i'm going to cut away about half the shield because i don't need all that braid the shield tint it and then i'm going to peel away all the thermal conductive plastic again all the way down to the hill so all i see around the center conductor is just clear plastic from there i'm going to go ahead and start measuring again i'm going to see how much space i need i don't need a whole lot of that shield so i'm going to cut a little bit of that back and i'm probably going to cut quite a bit of the center lead back because once i've bent down that tip i have a little bit more room to work with so i can have it just leading gently into the cable once i've done that i'm going to cut off just the amount of insulation that i need around the center conductor as little as possible tin that make sure i've cut back my shield as much as i need and then i'm going to tin the actual connector itself the plug the switchcraft plug once i've done that i can start reflowing and reheating that solder i can refill the tip in the sleeve and just move in the shield and the center conductor right into place if i've done that properly i've left myself enough space where i can then clamp back down the strain relief this is going to ensure that the cable is not moving around inside the housing and again just like with the neutrik i want to make sure that i put that housing boot on first in this case of the switchcraft the actual whole entire metal housing is the threaded piece so that needs to go on first so that when i go to reassemble it i can screw everything back together and i don't have to disassemble it put back on the boot and then reassemble the entire thing now let's go on to switchcraft right angle connectors very similar approach that i did to the regular instrument cables but we have a little bit different layout you can see here that we have a lot more distance between where the center conductor is and where the shield will go to the sleeve so in this case i want to just do the same exact thing open up that strain relief gives me a little bit more space to work with again you can use needle nose pliers to open that up or you can use your wire strippers to do this once you've done that you want to then stick the cable in you want to start measuring i'm going to use my wire snips and put a mark so that i know about how much space i need to strip out in order to reach from the tip to the sleeve in this particular case with the right angle connectors i'm gonna have a much longer center conductor lead that goes into the tip because of the differences in space once i've done that i'm going to strip it out i'm going to cut away some of the shielding like i did before because i don't need all that shielding i'm going to tin it and then i'm going to strip off all the thermal conductive plastic again all the way back down to the hilt so all i'm seeing is the clear insulation i'm then going to start re-measuring i can cut away probably most of my shielding here and i'm going to have this long exposed center lead conductor this is going to have all that insulation around it and i'm just going to cut off the minimum amount of insulation i need in order to have enough copper wire exposed so i can solder that to the tip i'm going to tin the center conductor i'm going to tin the plug both the tip and the sleeve and then i can start to reflow getting everything nicely in place holding down that solder as long as i'm getting nice flow and then i'm going to release let it harden and then go to the next lug and repeat after i've done that if i've done that correctly i should be able to then go ahead and reclamp the strain relief and again make sure that you put on the boot first before you start soldering because again all the threading that holds the housing together is located in the boot so if the boot of the housing is not on first before the cable is assembled you're gonna have to disassemble it put that on and then screw it on back together so do make sure that you do that process first now one aside that i like to talk about with either these cables is the use of heat shrink now heat shrink is not anything that's going to help you here in terms of the quality of the connection typically people are using heat shrink in order to remove any sort of lateral movement so this is an optional thing if you want to add it to any of these cables you can but it is not a requirement it is not necessarily going to mean that the cable lasts any longer usually what i'm looking for is is there any movement in the housing itself if it's moving a lot in the housing you can use either one or two pieces of heat shrink in order to shore that up so that there isn't any movement typically i don't find that more than one is necessary especially for the diameter of cable that we're using with the mogami 2524 again that is optional and not a requisite thing but i just wanted to throw that out there so you would know the difference so that was an overview of how you solder your own instrument cables and again we talked about mogami 2524 one of my favorite cables of all time and two different brands of connectors that are ubiquitous in the industry the switchcraft and the neutrik you learn how to solder right angle connections and straight connections depending on what you need we talked about silent plugs and what the disadvantages of using those are and the reliability where they're not quite as reliable as just their standard plug equivalents if you have any questions be sure to put those in the comments below and make sure you check out all the links in the description it tells you all the materials that you're going to need everything that we use today from the plugs connectors cables etc everything is available there so do check that out again in the description and ask any questions if there's anything that was unclear to you and if you watch this and you found it very intimidating we make instrument cables right on the rig that you're welcome to check out that we have in various different lengths different connection types so you can choose the customized cable that you want that's going to fit best for your rig or your pedalboard also if you'd like to support the channel you can do that very easily by giving us a thumbs up writing us a comment telling us what you liked or hitting that bell icon so you're able to stay up to date on all the latest and greatest stuff that we're coming out with furthermore you can head over to vertexfx.com or therigdr.com and purchase a product from us we sell instrument cables patch cables velcro zip ties and also on vertex we sell all of our guitar pedals so any of those things will help support us also we have a patreon page that you can go and join us to become a supporting member ranging from five dollars a month up to 50 a month with exclusive privileges and all sorts of behind the scenes stuff that's available to you or if you want a free way to support us you can always go over to our podcast which is available on all the common podcasts which is the rig doctor podcast where we take a lot of things that we talk about every day in our videos and expand those out into a long form podcast so definitely do check that out if you're interested in supporting us or just getting more familiar with the stuff that we're already talking about right here on the channel so until next time i'm mason maringella from vertex effects aka the rig doctor and that was our tutorial on how to make your own instrument cables see you later [Music] you

Channel: Vertex Effects

Views: 34,098

Keywords: Mason Marangella, Vertex Effects, Rig Doctor, Pedalboard, Pedalboards, instrument cables, guitar cables, how to make a guitar cable, custom guitar cables, custom instrument cables, make your own quarter inch cables, which guitar cable should I buy, guitar cable shootout, pedalboard build, guitar pedals, DIY pedalboard, DIY guitar cable, cheapest guitar cable, most expensive guitar cable, mogami cable, silent guitar cable, save money on guitar gear, best cables for guitar

Id: eekxhJpTctg

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2021