00:00:09 I'm gonna show you
how to solder an XLR cable.
00:00:12 In my last video, I showed you
some of the basics of soldering
and how to tell the difference between
a good solder and a bad solder.
00:00:19 If you haven't seen it,
you should go check it out
because it talks about some of
the fundamental aspects of soldering
that you might need to know
if you're gonna watch this video.
00:00:26 I highly suggest you go over there
and look at that,
and then come back and revisit this one.
00:00:31 As a side note, some of you made
some comments on the last video
about the fact that I say the word
"salder" as opposed to the word "solder."
I know it's spelled "solder",
but I happen to be from New York
and that's the way
we say it round here.
00:00:42 Don't ask me why, I have no idea.
00:00:44 If you saw my last video,
you should already be familiar
with the tools that I'm using:
a vise, and a soldering iron.
00:00:51 The first thing I'm gonna show you
is the XLR connector.
00:00:55 It's very important to be mindful of
whether you're doing a male or a female.
00:00:59 The reason for this is because
male and female XLR connectors
have a different configuration
of the pins in the connector.
00:01:05 But the principle of how
to make them is still the same.
00:01:08 Before we get started, there's a couple
of things we need to put on our cable.
00:01:12 The first one is a piece of heat shrink
that has our logo printed on it.
00:01:16 This is totally optional,
we're just doing this for fun,
and so that our cables are branded
and nobody accidentally
walks away with them.
00:01:25 Second thing we're gonna put on
is the backshell to the XLR connector.
00:01:28 This is very important,
because if you saw my last video,
you remember how much I stressed this:
at some point in your life,
you're gonna be soldering a cable
and you're gonna get to the end
and realize you forgot
to put the backshell on, and you're
gonna be really upset with yourself.
00:01:42 So do yourself a favor
and do it now, before you forget.
00:01:49 Last thing we're gonna put on
is another piece of shrink.
00:01:52 This is also sort of optional,
but I like to do it just to be thorough.
00:01:55 All this really does is
tighten down the cable a little bit
and hold
all the individual wires in place.
00:02:02 You don't really need it,
but I like to do it.
00:02:10 This particular XLR connector was
already used in another cable.
00:02:13 I'm gonna take it
and put it in my vise,
and show you how
we can make it as good as new
so that we can use it for a new cable.
00:02:21 Here you can see the back of our connector.
00:02:24 You can see that our pins
already have solder on them
from when this was on an old cable.
00:02:29 What we want to do is
we want to put some new solder in there
to make our new connections
nice and clean and strong.
00:02:35 What we're gonna do is
we're gonna heat up the cups
and we're gonna let the old solder melt,
and then we're gonna put
just enough solder on the cups
to fill it up.
00:02:45 You want to keep in mind that you don't
want to overfill the cups with solder.
00:02:49 You want just enough solder to fill them,
but not enough so that it's overflowing.
00:02:53 This is so that you can make the best
connection possible with the wire.
00:02:57 So we're gonna heat our other cups here.
00:03:07 Alright. And now we're all tinned up.
00:03:11 The next thing we're gonna do is take
a look at the back of the connector
and show you where the different numbers
for the different pins are.
00:03:20 The reason we're looking at this is
because, like I said before,
male and female connectors
have different configurations.
00:03:26 When you're soldering,
you always want to make sure
that you've got the right wire
going to the correct terminal.
00:03:31 On this connector,
you can't see it that well
because it has been used before,
but there's a little number 1
underneath this pin,
a little number 2 underneath this pin,
and a little number 3
underneath this one.
00:03:42 The good news is
you don't have to memorize that
because it's written right there
on the connector.
00:03:47 If you're ever in doubt,
you can look at the connector
and check what the number is.
00:03:51 I do suggest that you do check
if you're ever in doubt
because sometimes you can get confused
when you're going back and forth
between male and female connectors,
and you might forget which pin is where.
00:04:00 It's always better to be safe and look.
00:04:02 But there is one thing
you do have to memorize,
which is what wire goes to what pin.
00:04:07 And XLRs are always the same.
00:04:09 Pin 1 is the shield.
00:04:11 Pin 2 is the hot conductor,
and pin 3 is the cold conductor.
00:04:14 Since you have to memorize it,
I'll say it again.
00:04:17 Shield is pin 1.
00:04:19 Hot is pin 2, and cold is pin 3.
00:04:22 Now I'm gonna show you
how to prep the cable.
00:04:25 The next step is to strip back our cable.
00:04:28 If you saw my last video, you remember
that I like to use a razor blade
to strip back my cables.
00:04:33 I also like to use the razor blade
to measure how far I'm gonna strip back.
00:04:37 I'm gonna use the height of my razor blade
as my measurement for my strip back.
00:04:40 I'm gonna come here and cut it.
00:04:54 This cable has a braided shield
which we're gonna have to unbraid
so that we can twist it into a wire
that we can solder
onto pin 1 of our connector.
00:05:02 Not all cables have a braided shield,
some just have a regular shield wire.
00:05:05 So you might
come across different things.
00:05:08 The bottom line is
a shield wire has to go to pin 1,
and it has to be twisted into a wire.
00:05:13 I like to use
a small screwdriver to do this.
00:05:16 You can use anything
that gets the job done,
but it takes a little while,
so we're gonna fast-forward through it.
00:05:26 So now we're done unbraiding the shield.
Now we have to twist it into a wire.
00:05:44 Now that we have a twisted shield wire,
we're gonna expose
our hot and our cold wires
by cutting away all of the extra stuff
they put in the cable to keep it round.
00:05:53 This cable happens to have string
in there and we're just gonna cut it away.
00:06:06 Ok...
00:06:14 So here we have
the hot, the cold, and the shield.
00:06:17 This particular cable happens to have
blue for hot and white for cold,
but your cable
might have something different.
00:06:22 Generally speaking,
most cables are gonna have
a white/black or a clear
for the cold wire,
and some sort of color for the hot wire.
00:06:30 The next thing I want to do is
to put a piece of heat shrink
over the shield wire,
the reason being this protects it,
and keeps it from getting shorts,
and from corrosion,
and it definitely prolongs
the life of your cable.
00:06:43 Obviously, whenever you use heat shrink,
you need a heat source to shrink it down.
00:06:46 I'm just gonna use
a portable butane torch.
00:06:52 You don't want to
hold it on too long and melt
the shrink, or the other cables.
00:06:58 But you want to keep it long enough
that it shrinks down
nice and tight over the shield wire.
00:07:05 Don't hold it for too long
in any one place.
00:07:10 The next thing we have to do is
strip back our hot and our cold wires.
00:07:13 I'm gonna use my Stripax to do that,
you could use just a regular
cable stripper if you don't have one.
00:07:18 We want to make sure we don't
strip them back too far,
because we want
as little wire exposed as possible.
00:07:31 Ok...
00:07:32 The next thing we've got to do is
tin our wires.
00:07:35 I'm gonna take the connector
out of the vise
and put the cable in the vise instead.
00:07:42 Ok. So we're gonna tin our wires
and just like
with the cups on the connector,
we want to use as little solder
as we can get away with.
00:07:50 So we just want to heat it briefly,
and get a little bit on there.
00:07:55 We want to be especially careful
not to put too much solder
on the shield wire, because
it's already thicker than the other two.
00:08:01 So we want to just put
a nice, thin coat on there.
00:08:07 Ok!
The next thing I want to do is
just quickly trim the length
of the shield wire a little bit so it
has the same length as the hot and cold.
00:08:14 I'm just gonna hold it next to them
and trim it to the same length.
00:08:19 Now we're ready to solder our connector.
00:08:21 I'm gonna take the cable out of the vise
and put the connector back in there.
00:08:30 We remember from before
that it's really important
to pay attention to what wire
we're soldering onto what pin.
00:08:35 We're gonna start with pin 1,
because it's on my left hand side here.
00:08:39 And 1 is shield,
2 is hot, and 3 is cold.
00:08:44 So we're gonna solder
the shield to pin 1.
00:08:50 If you saw our first soldering video,
you should be able
to tell the difference between
a good solder and a bad solder.
00:08:56 So you should be able to do this
and know
whether you're doing it right or not.
00:09:00 Then we're gonna solder
the hot wire onto pin 2.
00:09:04 And the cold wire onto pin 3.
00:09:09 And there you have
a nice and clean solder.
00:09:12 The next thing we're gonna do is
take the shrink that we put on earlier
and slide it up over
the three wires to protect them.
00:09:20 And then we take our torch,
and shrink that down.
00:09:31 As I said before,
that's not really necessary,
but it definitely helps a little bit.
00:09:37 Now we're gonna put everything together.
00:09:40 We want to make sure that
our stain relief is clamping down
on the outer jacketing,
and not on the inner wires.
00:09:48 So as you can see here,
it's on the outer jacket.
00:09:58 I'm gonna take our backshell
and slide it forward.
00:10:02 And screw everything together.
00:10:09 Now, we do have this little logo shrink,
which is really just for fun,
like I said.
00:10:19 Alright! There's our finished connector.
00:10:22 It's important to note
that on the other end,
when you're doing the female,
you want to pay attention
to where the numbers are on the pins,
because the female is gonna have
1 and 2 in the opposite positions
of where they were on the male connector.
00:10:33 This is because a female connector
and a male connector
are inversed from each other.
00:10:37 So you want to pay attention to that,
and make sure that shield goes to 1,
hot goes to 2, and cold goes to 3.
00:10:44 Alright, that should be it!
Have a good one.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
An easy way to remember the wire numbers is to call X = eXternal shield, L = Live (hot) and R = Return (cold) or XLR =1, 2, 3. Happy soldering.
CristianDeluxe
2018 May 08
Congratulations for the care and affection you devote to your cables. A good job, no doubt. Fantastic tutorial.
Danwildemusic
2017 Aug 21
'It's very important to be mindful of whether you're doing a male or a female'. I wholeheartedly agree. Thankfully something I've always been mindful of
djbluntmagic
2017 Apr 08
Who the fuck says "soul-der?"
xfader
2017 Feb 06
Razor blade for cutting jacket? Lock connector to vise? Why? Amateur...
You need an OLFA knive and lock another connector to vise, when you solder a male connector lock an other female and put it. I using Zippo lighter for shrinking, this is faster. When you soldering a lot of cables speed is very important thing!
Midolf
2016 Dec 21
I love the desk.
AndresDaza
2016 Oct 19
Which T strip do you recommend? Where did you get the Custom Flux Shrink Wraps! They are really really cool
niks573
2016 Aug 28
Great vids loved both of them!
One of the best things to invest in while doing this stuff is some solder wick. It's a braided material which sucks up excess or old solder. Super cheap, though can be hard to find. But really helps if you put too much solder on or just have a lot of burnt/oxidized solder from a previously used cable.
headstack
2016 Aug 14
Good video Mike!
If it's okay I'd like to clarify one thing.
The "Hot" and "Cold" as you term are actually both hot and simply opposite phases of the balanced circuit.
The circuit ground is your low or "Cold" and chassis ground is the "Earth" ground, which looks like the little upside down pyramid made up of three to five descending lines on a schematic symbol.
You will often wire equipment with balanced cabling that has the shield broken (detached) at the input of the device, while device chassis will be grounded to a main ground bus.
This is known as telescoping shields.
benlindell
2016 May 31
@moosebeats - You'll want to tin the soldering iron first by applying a little bit of solder to the iron directly but then when soldering the wires to the cups you'll want to heat up the cups and the wire and then add solder all at the same time to ensure a good connection. Temperature varies, some people like to stay on the low and slow side others hot and fast I personally set mine to 600ºF. Check out Mike's first tutorial which talks about some of this too - http://www.puremix.net/video/soldering-guitar-cables.html
moosebeats
2016 May 28
A couple questions I have after watching this. Where do we apply to solder iron? Directly to the solder, or to the wires and let the heat from the wires melt the solder? Also how hot should the iron be?
