sadly most cables are soldered by machine and I believe that has as much to do with the problems as anything else...Meffy wrote:Yes, it is. Utter and complete nonsense. Pure and simple. Sorry, but: yes, it is.Hink wrote:BTW Monster cable connect cables are one way (they'll work in both directions though)...is that all hype to fool the often highly educated audiophiles too?
There is one purpose and one purpose only for the ad hype, unprovable claims, and pseudo-science: to convince people to pay ridiculous amounts of money for cables that are no better than other high-quality cables which cost far less.
As for cold solder joints... those are the province of very poorly skilled amateurs who load the iron tip with solder and "paint" it on. No competent electronic worker would ever do that. I learned to solder the right way (by heating wire and solder lug until THEY melt the solder, which then wets the materials to be soldered instead of "sitting on top") at age six, back in the age of vacuum tubes. The laws of physics haven't changed since.
I like you learned the right way, but factories hire peons often and hand them a soldering iron. I can tell you that I have worked on some very expensive guitars that the solder didn't even cover the entire contact..I'm talking factory here not someone who worked on it.
FWIW my father was an electro-mechanical engineer for Raytheon for 42 years starting in 1942, he was a big part of the early work on radar and then guidance control systems for missles (sidewinders and sparrows) except he did n't build the systems, he designed the equipment used to test gyroscopes.
My firts guitar amp was an old ham radio amp that me and my father rebuilt and made into a guitar amp, as a kid he would bring me home those P-boxes radio shack use to sell...when I was like 7 or 8 he gave me a toy called lectronics...I'm not sure who made it, but by far the best toy I had as a kid. Instead of those all in one electronic project things Radio Shack and Laffeyette use to sell it was little building blocks. You built you projects (everything from a therimin kinda thig that used a solar panel to am,fm and shortwave radios) on a cookie sheet like thing. Each block had a magnet on the bottom and one component with magnetic connectors where needed. Sometimes one as in a ground, or as much as four sides..it was cool.
My parents also use to pick up appliances left by the side of the road for trash for me to strip apart and learn from. But then when I went to a tech high schools I took machineshop/tool and die making...which meant two years of mechanical drawing as well... so like you I learn things the old way...hell I had an argument with a friend about tinning bare wires..said he never heard of it and it sounded stupid...
That's why I build my own guitars, because I can and probably better then most...if I had a machine shop I could build a guitar from scratch including making my own pick-ups (I have re-wound pick-ups..I recreated a fly tying vice on a larger scale) and machine heads.
A good example of my thinking is the table my recorder is on (I'm using the pic with my grand daughter cause today is her birthday)
underneath the recorder is a big hole...that way I can reach the back of my rack easily. In my rack rider is a nightlite so I can see. We call it yankee ingenuity, but I make most things like that myself. An upside I never thought of was the added ventilation, which I believe has extended the life on the 2gig seagate in my Akai (now 7 1/2 years old).
In fact the only thing that gives me a hard time is those wirse they use in headphones with small string inside, I can never get those to make good solder joints...
. Honestly, they seem to run their business under the Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition.
I definitely agree that cables shouldn't be bought if they're made wrong. No doubt at all of that.