stripping shielded cable

[scole]

is there a trick to this or a special tool, im using little finger nail scizzors and a knife and then finally the wire strippers. its a real pain.

[Gaz]

working with mini shielded cable is my least favorite part of building. there's a thread over at EL34 world with a lot of tips:

[crisisat22]

a good pair of greenlee strippers that are the appropriate size to take off the outer wrap works nice. then the same tool (different gauge) for the conductor(s)

they stay sharp for a long time, and can help minimize how much this task sucks in general.

[Enzo]

I use a number of techniques. I love my Paladin stripper. it may cost $45-60 or whatever, but geez does it work well. It doesn't have ONE blade, it has a row of tiny blades that individually flex so it conforms to teh shape of the wire.

But a lot of time, I just reach for a razor blade or my Xacto and carefully slit the jacket all the way around and pull the resulting tube off the end. You can also run a slit lengthwise and peel it back an trim off the length. Just be cautious not to cut into the shield conductor.

I much prefer foil shield wire for use inside things, but you can;t use that for guitar cords and other things that must flex for a living.

They do make coax strippers, so if you make up a lot of guitar cords and mic cords with the rubber jackets, you might look into those.

Foil shields you can peel off. Wire shields come in braid and spiral. I like spiral because the wire all twists around the central conductor the same way. SImple to unwind it. Spiral alone doesn't usually offer 100% shielding, but it is probably good enough. But many wire makers also run a layer of black conductive plastic under the shield and around the central conductor wire. The shield wire is against it to they are linked electrically. That conductive plastic fills in any openings in the spiral shield, so overall the shielding percentage is very high.

But you must remember that this black layer is conductive. Peel it back off the centrer conductors own insulation, otherwise if the black stuff touches the center wire solder terminal in a plug, it will short across it. or worse yet, short the cord out now and then, but look OK when you open the plug.

The real pain in the ass is braid shield. May or may not also have the black conductive layer under it. But it is woven and has to be removed from around the center wire. If I ned to unbraid it, I use a pointed tool like what the dentist picks at your teeth with. Start at the end and slowly unweave the thing. Yuk. When the wires are all free, Twist them together into one ground lead.

The tool I use - and is extremely useful all day long - looks like the dental s\explorer, but I bought it at an auto parts store. it is called an O-ring seal pick. Car guys use it to fish o-ring seals out of brake cylinders. But you might talk your dentist out of an old one. You could also take a large safety pin and bend it straight. Those have a pretty good point on them and they are strong.

But here is a trick:
Strip back the outer jacket. Now you are looking at the exposed braid around the center wire. Bend this over double right at the end of the jacket. Now right at the outside of the bend, that braid is sort of stretched over the bent wire. Push a point into the braid and spread a little space in it to see the center wire within. Push the braid down the length of the wire some to make some slack. Widen the "hole" with your point so you can get under the center wire with your point. We then work the center wire out that hole we made in the side of the braid. We are not breaking any of the braid wires. We now have the center wire sticking out the side of the braid near where we stripped. The braid is still all woven and intact. Pull the braid lengthwise a little to tighten it back up. You now have the exposed center wire to strip as needed, and a nice neat little braided ground wire.

A lot easier to do than to describe.

[Gaz]

great tips, enzo! and if i may ask: where is everyone getting their small shielded wire for their preamp wiring? i can't seem to find too much this stuff online, although it's obviously out there. they only have the big stuff at the electronic store. i really like to try the foil shield. thanks.

[Enzo]

All the wire companies make foil shield cable. The first I recall was Belden 8451, it is perfect for behind the panel stuff.

For flexible stuff, I have a large hank of lapel mic cable. VERY flexible and small diameter, I find it easy to work with. I will use it inside an amp - just because it flexes well doesn't mean it has to.

Want a cheap source of small amounts of small shielded cable? Take apart consumer audio junk. A dead cassette deck will have small shielded cables from the circuit boards up to the heads on the deck. Same with dead CD players, there is often shielded cable running here and there inside. VCRs, probably too. You don;t usually find anythig over a foot long, but most times that is long enough.

In a pinch grab a cheap RCA patch cord and use the cable in it.

[Gaz]

perfect, thanks!

[crisisat22]

The beldin works nice, but it is stiff, and in the pedals I build it is hard to route in tiny spaces.
For cheap flexible shielded cable, I buy bulk snake wire with 8 mic channels. Gut it, and you get 8' for the price of one (and you can make it dual conductor since it is balanced cable) Works well. Routes very nicely. And most importantly is very good at shielding, and helps make for a quiet preamp circuit.
I did the math last time and it pretty much ended up the same cost as the Beldin.
hope this helps-