quad wire soldering

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JohnS
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quad wire soldering

Post by JohnS »

Hi,

I have a pair of 350p's quad wired, i.e 2 complete runs of k400's going to each speaker. They are connected to a pair of solos. At the Solo end it means that each 4mm plug needs to have four strands of wire connected into it.

This is one big soldering challenge that my dealer did by twisting the four strands together into one very big strand and then soldering it onto the side of the treaded part of a Linn 4mm plug. This is then wrapped in insulation tape.

The dealer did the best possible in the circumstances and I haven't yet even had the time to plug it in, but I am just curious to know if there is a better way of doing this as the standard linn plug seems to have a very small contact area for soldering? There isn't much direct contact between copper and plug in such a connection, but there is a lot of solder! Anyone else done it, if so how?

Thanks
John
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lejonklou
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Post by lejonklou »

It works well if you have sufficient power in your soldering iron.

There is an optional way of doing it, by inserting a round metal piece with one small hole and one big, in between the banana and the bunch of copper strands. But I think this is most likely worse and there is also greater risk that the leverage breaks the banana.
Music at Home
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Post by Music at Home »

Instead of soldering 4 wires to one speaker plug, how about soldering two wires to each speaker plug at the amp end - and at the speaker end strip the insulation well back (about 4 or 5cm), split the copper strands from each wire into two seperate bundles and solder a speaker plug to each bundle. Use heat shrink sleeving to insulate the exposed copper wires. This method would only use one run of K400 per speaker - not sure if you view that as an advantage or disadvantage but at least you are elliminating all link plates at the speaker end which is probably where the biggest gains are to be made.

That should still give you a total of four speaker plugs at the amp end and 16 speaker plugs at the speakers but with less difficulty trying to solder 4 cables to one plug.
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lejonklou
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Post by lejonklou »

Yes, that's an idea. But it wouldn't be quad wiring, only biwiring. I expect quad wiring to be better.

BUT if the soldering really becomes a lot better with this method (which I doubt), it could win. A few years ago, when I made lots of soldering experiments, I found that a better soldered single wire loudspeaker cable would outperform a worse soldered biwired one.
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Post by Music at Home »

Idea #2: Don't twist the four cores together to form one big cable. Instead, just place them next to each other in a 2-by-2 configuration, hold them firmly together with a few turns of copper wire, push the rear-end of the speaker plug firmly into the middle of the four cores, then solder the whole assembly.

Idea #3: Buy more power amps!
JohnS
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Post by JohnS »

Thanks for the suggestions, it sounds like the current soldering is about right, maybe 2x2 round the outside of the plug could also work if I feel ambitious about re-soldering.

I'm surprised no-one has built a special plug for this, I could imagine a 'T' shape where the top of the T could have two, three or four soldering posts, one for each wire... it would make it much easier.
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