DIY-Central.com - Go Create something! - PCB Design, Electronics

Looking to save some money? Create your own cables! By spending a few dollars on jacks, shielded cables, solder and soldering iron, you can save a ton of money in cables.

For more money saving tips for your home studio, like building your own Neve preamps, SSL compressors, Yamaha "old-school" type preamps, MIDI controllers, check out my other projects.

Back to building your own cable...It's easy. Here are some step by step photos. 

At the bottom of this article, is a wiring guide for XLR to XLR, XLR to TRS, XLR to TS, and whatever combination you can think of.

On this guide, I'm wiring up an XLR cable.  First, we disassemble the cable by unscrewing the lock screw. Pull out the rubber plug (black thingy) and then you'll be able to push out the 3-pin connection assembly.




Since an XLR cable is a balanced cabel, we need a 3-wire cable. Also, make sure it is shielded to provide RF interference protection. 




Now, let's take a look at the XLR jack itself.  It's got 3 pins. Pin 1, 3 and 3. 

The convention is Pin 1 is the GROUND.
Pin 2 is the HOT (+) wire.
and Pin 3 is the COLD (-) wire.

Note: The COLD wire (-) is not the same as the GROUND wire. Don't short these two wires together!

Here's a closeup of the 3-pin assembly and you can see it's labeled for us. Great!  For this, I'm going to make my RED wire my HOT (+) wire and the WHITE wire as my COLD (-) wire.  (If you're wiring a headphone, the RED wire is usually designed for the RIGHT channel, and the WHITE wire for the LEFT channel)



Strip off a few millimeters of insulator, coat it with solder and solder it to the XLR jack terminals.



When you're done soldering the 3 wires, crimp the jack around the cable. This will provide support to the cable... i.e. when you yank off the jack, your wires wouldn't disconnect from your solder points.



Here, you can see the metal teeth crimped around the cable's jacket. Use a long-nose pliers to crimp it close. But don't crimp it too much that you mess up the cable.

Do the same procedure for the other end of the cable. This time using a Female XLR jack.  And here's our finished XLR cable.



If you need to DIY a different kind of cable, say a TRS jack or RCA, use the table below as a guide. This guide has been provided by Rane in their Technical Library section. Visit Rane website.

Credits: Rane

Visi the RANE website for more information about grounding, shielding, ground loops, etc.

Just a continuation of the saga of building my 1176 clone compressor/limiter. Click here for Part 1

Parts arrived a few days ago, and other than the audio input and output transformers and chassis, I think I have enough parts to build (2) units. Here are some pics...

First, we have the output LL5402 Lundahl transformer and the LL1540 input transformer. Made in Sweden.  These things are small.

I got most of the capacitors and the power transformer at digikey.com. They have good prices for these components.




The rest of the parts like the pots, resistors, and ceramic/mylar parts came from Mouser.com. It's a big pile!







I'll clear up my work area and maybe this Christmas break, I'll be able to start construction.  Oh yeah, need to order some 2u case from Par-Metal.com.  I only have spare 1u cases in my workshop at the moment.

We're ready to build the 1176!

I've seen the new Zoom H4 Handy Recorder. I think it's a neat little thing! And best of all, it's "cheap" at $299. Of course, "cheap" is a relative word, but compared to other gear out there, this seems to be one of the low priced new entry. It looks good too!

While reading the H4 specs, this caught my eye... "The H4 features 2 studio-quality electret condenser microphones configured in an X/Y pattern for true stereo recording."  The keyword here is "electret microphone." And the picture seems to confirm that it's really just an electret mic.

So I'm thinking, maybe I can DIY my own stereo mic.

I've used an electret microphone on a non-audio project. I made a sound-triggered flash sync for my Canon EOS30D camera. In this case, I just used the audio output from the mic to trigger an SCR, which then triggered the camera flash.

Can we used the same electret mic to create a good enough sounding stereo mic? I think we can.

So I begin adapting my sound-triggered flash sync and while doing some Googling around, I came across this product.
Stereo Super Ear Amplifier Kit

It's a kit made by Velleman and it uses 2 electret mics, and a headphone output jack. Hmmmm.... interesting. So I ordered a kit (hey, it's less than $10 so if it didn't work, it's not too much of a loss). You can use the link above to order your own kit.

The circuit is simple... the Left and Right channel is the same, so the operation of the circuit is identical. Basically, an electret condenser microphone is biased for operation using a single resistor and capacitor. The output of the microphone goes to a potentiometer which acts as the volume control. This is then amplified by the NE5532 opamp, which is then routed to a headphone jack. Since the whole circuit operates from a single supply voltage (4.5Volts), the opamp uses a virtual ground by the use of 2 resistors in it's input pin. This of course, means that each leg of the split power supply will be only Vcc/2, where Vcc=4.5Volts.

I built this kit in less than an hour... while watching TV. And construction isn't hard and it's very simple. So if you're ready to jump into this Electronics hobby and looking for your first audio project, why not try this stereo mic kit? It's only less than $10.

Here are some pics during construction... enjoy.



There are assembly instructions and schematics on the box. Very easy to follow.

The Art of Electronics
Price: $55.79

People have asked me what is a good book to read to start DIYing... On this page, I'll compile books that I have, read, or know will be good for the DIYer or electronics buff.

The following books are not expensive... the most expensive of the bunch is $55. But considering the knowledge you'll have (priceless), and the savings you'll realize when you build that super-duper preamp for a few hundred dollars rather than buying one and spending $1400, these books are a bargain.

These books link to Amazon.com. I'd appreciate it if you can buy your books by clicking on the links below :)

This site takes a lot of time, effort and money. My latest addition is a new bookstore with products and reviews from Amazon.com.  If you like this site, please consider buying books or stuff via my Amazon link. You'll get great prices and it won't cost you anything extra. In return, I get a little commission that I can use to pay for hosting of this site.

Check it out.  Buy from Amazon.com