What do you do with cheap wonky cables?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

I went through all my monoprice/mycablemart cables with a cable tester and tossed out a bag full of crosslinked tip/ring/sleeve or intermittent connections.

I’m going through another bagfull, and am wondering if it’s a waste since the connectors are probably fine beyond the wiring…

Is it “worth” cutting off the ends and re-wiring with higher quality connectors or the same? Obviously this is not high quality cable, some insulated some less so…

My time is more worth me getting around to wiring up decent mogami/neutrik plugs I’ve got lying around, but I’m curious if anyone bothers to fix them.

I could send back to Monoprice I’m sure, but RMAing can be a PITA even with “unlimited warranty”.

#2

Best thing I ever did was buy a soldering iron, a bunch of neutrik connectors, and a bunch of mogami cable. If you are going to spend the time soldering I would just trash the junk and buy quality, it doesn’t cost much to solder up some nice cables that will last a lifetime! For TRS/XLR or TS cables I recommend mogami W2549 (when soldering them to TS connectors just twist one of the two wires up with the shield).

4 Likes
#3

Yeah, I have Mogami/Neutrik on the bench already, I need to finally get around and bulk-process them.

It just seems wasteful to dump the wires, but probably better for my sanity (and a cleaner room :slight_smile: )

#4

Yeah I think you did the right thing(cause I did the same recently).
Sure, you could fix the old busted ones, but what are the chances you actually would?

And, what are the chances you’d just end up buying new better ones, leaving the collection of old and busted in that same literal bag of garbage, taking up space?

1 Like
#5

When your cables aren’t in use, how do you store them? Do you coil them with a half twist every turn so they lay flat, or just jumble them up?

My Monoprice cables are among my best cables. I have ~20 year old cables from Radio Shack, Hosa and no-name brands. GLS cables from Amazon that are a decade old and a few recent Monoprice XLRs. Most work as well as when they are new, but I’ve always carefully flaked them to minimize stress.

I’ve built a few cables myself, but I’m unable to terminate them as well as cheap mass produced cables. :man_shrugging:

#6

I try to coil them, note taken on the twist. Going through my cable drawers necessarily jumbles them up though :frowning:

1 Like
#7

I use Velcro ties for the larger cables and ziplock bags for groups of smaller cables. Makes sorting and finding cables MUCH easier.

image
image4032×3024 3.21 MB

2 Likes
#8

Yeah, I go through every so often and re-organize. But whenever I change my workflow it’s always a nightmare :slight_smile:

They’re generally ok, some of them just didn’t show as stable in the connector from a tester. Intermittences, cross-wired points on a balanced cable, I don’t think they’re as bad as others, but for whatever reason they’ve gone kaput.

2 Likes