Need advice about soldering patch cables

revsorg

I thought I was being clever saving some money...

I bought a discounted 1 metre Designacable Van Damme XKE/Hicon patch lead on Amazon, and 8 x Hicon angled jacks.  My plan is to make 5 x 15cm patch cables.

I'm sure this will improve with practice, but I'm struggling with the soldering.  So far I've assembled two of my patch cables.  I hope someone can give me pointers to improve the way I'm doing this.

My main issue is the tiny holes that you solder the wire to.  The centre wire fits through the hole in the live tab.  I'm just gradually becoming aware that I need to spend more time deciding which rotational angle I want my wire to exit the jack plug because so far both my patch cables have the jacks pointing at odd angles in relation to each other.

But my shielding wire, even tightly twisted, has pretty much zero chance of fitting through the hole in the ground tab.  the last one I soldered I just tucked the ground wire under the tab and soldered it in place between the tab and the case of the jack plug.  But this feels like I'm bodging it.  I've contemplated drilling out a bigger hole in the ground tab.

Any advice please???

paulnb57

I don't thread the wire into the hole, I tin the tab with the hole and tin the wire then hold the two together and touch with the iron,to amagamate the two, job done!....

ICBM

If that black inner core has a transparent layer nearest the core wire, and a black outer covering, you need to cut the black back further than that or it may short against the terminal.

As paulnb57 said, you don't need to put the wire through the hole, just solder it to the tab - cut it to the right length first. There's very little strain on them once they're on the pedalboard.