Have read in a forum, cant remember where exactly about a speaker manufacturer claiming it made a difference in a positive way when their company switched to non leaded solder, sound wise. I also need to make some high quality diy cables and was wondering if anyone experienced an "upgrade" whatsoever or is it bs? Health wise leaded solder shouldnt be a problem as it vaporizes at very high temperatures compared to the melting point, or am i also wrong here? Which solder are you guys using?
yes cables make a difference ( real crappy ones vs real high will give dramatic difference. okay ones vs pretty good ones is smaller difference) i learned to stick with non lead solder for tiny stuff, leaded for bigger
I heard 60 / 40 solder is the best. That is what most people use in guitars and cables from my understanding. I would not worry to much about the lead solder. Wear gloves and try not to breath the fumes. I mean unless you are making 40,000 cables. The little fumes from a few cable will not hurt you. I am sure you breath in worse stuff in the air these days.
Which company, so I can share in the lel? The job is speaker wiring, the components? Speakers & crossovers, I presume. Which house blend is best for that?
Thanks for the replies guys. Got myself eutectic solder from Cardas, which is basically 63/37 ratio and hardens fast, also has a flux core. No plastic range in the middle like with the 50/50 or 60/40 solder, it goes directly from hard to liquid and back, for nice clean fast joints. Its also one of the best solders available. Very expensive though three sellers on ebay uk sell it for a lot cheaper. No point of high quality cables and connectors if you go cheap on solder.
hi Von,i would like to share some thoughts : i was once in a local Guitar Center with a friend and he wanted to make some speaker cables for his studio,so one of the guys working there did the soldering for him connecting the 1/4" jacks to the cables.All i can say ii was a bad experience for my friend. I can recommend Mogami gold cables for everything & blue quad mic cable for mics,especially if you pair it with a blue mic( i am using it with a Blue Microphones Baby Bottle and sounds awesome) If you like diy projects,you might find this useful & entertaining :
*literally "Alloys commonly used for electrical soldering are 60/40 Sn-Pb, which melts at 188 °C (370 °F), and 63/37 Sn-Pb used principally in electrical/electronic work. 63/37 is a eutectic alloy of these metals, which: has the lowest melting point (183 °C or 361 °F) of all the tin-lead alloys."--wikip As is 99% of solder used for electronics (talking hand soldering/the stuff that comes in a roll -- not pastes/wave/process solders). Just as you'd expect, solder comes in a bunch of gauges (thicknesses, wire diameters). Get the right size. If you're doing cables, the following things count, in order of importance: 1. Cable prep work -- how you strip it, how you bind it, stress/strain relief 2. Your soldering skills 3. Nice soldering station with good temp control & right/clean tip 4. Clean hands 3. Cables/hw Solder brand doesn't matter, as long as it's rosin (not acid) core & roughly the right size. Gold & led interact, so Pb solder is technically a bad thing (will leach gold), but only with microscopic stuff, not jacks/cables. :\
I use Klotz cables, you find em in a lot of studios and broadcast as well. High quality, on the same level as mogami.
You see the atoms of the gold leech out into the atoms of the lead, so you need virtual Kolophonium. I use it on every mix.
Reminds me when i was a noob, just started working in a music store. Fuck did i know anything about violins? Of course, the first day of my work as stressed as i was, a customer comes searching for violin strings. I didnt have any available there, she was also kind of bitchy, then just gave her some el. guitar strings, tellng her its almost the same, she wasnt impressed to say the least, rofl....the power of the jedi mind, it failed that day Got better though. The jedi mind worked better later as i sold someone a broken violin, had a cracked body with a fucking hole in it, nobody else before me could get rid of it. "But sir, will it affect the sound?" Me; " Ahh, nonsense, i have seen worse cases in the orchestra" The fuck i did....bam, got rid of that shit, not in my store. Well i did give him a 20% discount, i was generous that day.
The best use for fluxed solder is to melt some in your room just before a customer comes in. The great smell of analog.
