Making DIY cat5 cable - will this wire do?

BenPremium · 29-07-2004, 10:47 AM

Hi
Basically my dad is a telecommunications engineer and as such he has loads of cable floating around the place. He's salvaged me a load of cable which he says they use instead of cat5 and that it's the best quality you can get.

The only problem is the pairs of wires are very loosely twisted, not like the tightly twisted pairs in cat5. Will this be a problem?

Cheers

hornydragon · 29-07-2004, 11:02 AM

what are you using it for???

Mylo · 29-07-2004, 11:13 AM

home made cat5 speaker cable by the sound of it.

WBC · 29-07-2004, 12:54 PM

Needs to be at least STP.

Check out this link.......

http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ffrc_e.html

Stace

BenPremium · 30-07-2004, 9:36 AM

Yep should have mentioned, it's for speaker cables.

Stace - what does STP stand for? I read through that article but couldn't find STP anywhere.

I'm pretty sure the quality of the wire is up to the job but it's just the twisting I'm concerned about. Thanks

WBC · 30-07-2004, 9:54 AM

Shielded Twisted Pair.

Hope this helps!!! I don't think the twisting is too much of an issue. Just take your time, its more tedious than difficult!!

Stace

BenPremium · 30-07-2004, 11:08 AM

Ah right. Pretty sure they're fine then.

Thanks for the help.

TooManyHobbies · 03-08-2004, 6:12 PM

I wonder if you have started to make these yet?
I made some up a few weeks ago although I haven't got round to terminating the yet, there is a lot of work just in the cable work. Infact I would say if I was to add my time up I would say I had about 8-10 hours in them so far.

jasper_mccrea · 05-08-2004, 10:14 PM

I took me four years to finish mine - in fact of the three cat-5 I have driving my front three speakers, I've just this evening managed to finish one lead. I had had them braided and taped together, with the wires twisted together at the ends. A session a few weeks ago where I had to swap amps four times made me think about getting some plugs. Nice IXOS ones, and some sleeving and heatshrink from the nice people at vehicle-wiring-products.co.uk - and here is the result: I think it looks pretty swift. I'll finish the other two at the weekend.

edit: finished them off in 30 minutes this evening, plugged 'em all in, and fired up some Simple Minds in DTS neo 6 music. Great. Even though I can't see them, and know they sound no better, I'm pleased. If only the rest of the miles of crap behind the telly was as neat