[Folsom]

I have no idea what I could use... All I know is my stock MMF-5's RCA's are not that special. The cords seem a little sad.

Can I replace them with coaxial or.... I have no idea what to use on none amplified signal cable. I have just been thinking it would probably be fun to upgrade that part.

[BobM]

I wouldn't use a coaxial. I would use a shielded twisted pair. In the past I've found TT interconnects seem to sound better with smaller guage wire. I believe Belden still has a small guage shielded twisted pair that they could send you a sample of. All you'd really need is a 6 foot sample, then make the rest yourself. I think the model number was a "7700" or something like that. You would have to search their site.

Good luck,
Bob

[mgalusha]

I used some really small coax from Mogami. I don't think they make it any more. If you want some, I'll send you 15ft for the cost of the shipping (I had to buy 100ft). PM me if you're interested. It may not be the greatest but it was, IMO, a nice improvement on the stock cables. It's very small, the OD of the cable is about 1mm and I'd say the center conductor is 28ga or so.

mike

[beachbum]

i have a mmf 7 and agree the stock rcas could use some help, a good shielded cable is the best choice, if you or using a separate phono pre amp, i think the run from the phono pre to your pre amp is more important than the turntable to phono pre, due to the low signal, i am using jps sc fx from tt to phono pre, and sc 2 from phono pre to pre, with very good sounding results,

[Folsom]

I was thinking of just using the cores from some 89259, not the outside ground. Aside from that hmm.... Well some thing smaller but the non-solid core holds and appeal for not to much capacitance tendency. However when I look on the connections to the cartridge the wires are significantly smaller.... I wonder if the larger coaxial (each strand, I think there may be three or four, the cartridge leads being about the size of one maybe two) being so much bigger would degrade the low level signal.

Also I think that not copper but high content copper brass would make the best plugs for to turntable and to phono pre-amplifier or what ever. Pure copper might hold too much capacitance, but copper would be so much better for the connection, the non-amplified very sensitive signal. My thoughts being the plugs on these things are significantly bigger than the wires themselves. I think a different connection type would be better for turntables :/ .

[erimille]

I rewired my MMF-5 as I too found the stock RCA cables to be lacking. The basic ingredients (mostly from partsconnexion) of this rewire include:
 
- 5' cardas 33awg shielded wire
- 5' techflex sleeving
- 2 Eichmann bullet plugs
- VPI cartridge clips
- a bit of patience

The cardas wire is very flexible and *much* stronger than the original tonearm wire. The shielding is by far much better as well. Soldering this to the old and pulling this through was actually not too much of a problem. There is no insulation, etc. inside the tonearm and the holes are relatively large compared to the wire so there is nothing to hinder this process.
 
Inside the base of the tonearm of the MMF-5 is a plastic cap with metal leads. This is where the old tonearm wire and the interconnects are connected. I removed the old wire and cut off these leads except for 1 which I used to connect the grounds in a star-ground configuration. There is a whole in the center of the plastic cap which I simply snaked the new cardas wire though and continued this all the way to the RCA bullet plugs.
 
To connect the bullet plugs, I had to strip back about 10" of the cable to separate the wires. These wires are very thin so that took some patience. I wrapped the 2 wires associated with left and right channels around a small thin / strong shaft of nylon (e.g. the nylon wire for my 'weed wacker'), surrounding  this with aluminum foil and teflon wrap. And finally the techflex on all of this wire to make it look nice  
 
It took a while to make sure the tension of the wire that travels from the shaft into the tonearm was just 'right' as not to hinder at all the movement of the arm across the table.
 
Overall, I'm extremely pleased with the results.

hope this helps,

-e

[Folsom]

I rewired my MMF-5 as I too found the stock RCA cables to be lacking. The basic ingredients (mostly from partsconnexion) of this rewire include:
 
- 5' cardas 33awg shielded wire
- 5' techflex sleeving
- 2 Eichmann bullet plugs
- VPI cartridge clips
- a bit of patience

The cardas wire is very flexible and *much* stronger than the original tonearm wire. The shielding is by far much better as well. Soldering this to the old and pulling this through was actually not too much of a problem. There  ...

That is some good information. I was however under the assumption that the wire from the cartridge back to the M-Din thing was not that bad. I was just going to replace from the M-Din to the RCA plugs. Who sells sets of only two Bullet plugs? I have seen sets of four.

[erimille]

That is some good information. I was however under the assumption that the wire from the cartridge back to the M-Din thing was not that bad. I was just going to replace from the M-Din to the RCA plugs. Who sells sets of only two Bullet plugs? I have seen sets of four.

In the MMF-5 (at least on my table) the thinner wires which are attached to a plastic terminal connector in the arm base (is this what you're calling the 'M-Din thing'?) are soldered to the thicker wires inside the arm. These thicker wires are then attached to the clips. There is a white piece of plastic that insulates the solder point between the 2 wires. It was this connection (inside the arm) that broke which was the reason for my rewiring my MMF-5 in the first place.

I too was under the assumption that the wire from the cartridge back to the M-Din thing was not that bad; I was wrong

Rewiring this (in the above manner) removed 2 solder joints - one at the M-Din and one inside the tonearm. It was the most difficult tweek to my MMF-5 I've done, but the one that has resulted in the most improvement.

I don't know anyone who sells only 2 Bullet plugs; I had to buy them in sets of 4.

hope this helps,

-e

[Folsom]

The M-Din (I guess that is what it is called) is the white thing the RCA cords run into, then from it on the otherside runs out up and out to the cartridge. That is what I remmeber from when I was looking at my own.

Here are a few parts...

http://www.diycable.com/main/default.php?cPath=26_44_50

[erimille]

The M-Din (I guess that is what it is called) is the white thing the RCA cords run into, then from it on the otherside runs out up and out to the cartridge. That is what I remmeber from when I was looking at my own.

Here are a few parts...

http://www.diycable.com/main/default.php?cPath=26_44_50

The "M-Din thingy" looks kind of the "plastic terminal connector in the arm base" I was refering to in my previous post. The MMF-5 terminal connector has 5 eyelets that are used to connect the 4 toneam wire and ground to the RCA cables and ground. I simply snipped off all of the eyelets but the ground one and ran the cable from cartridge to clips.

You need to strip off about 16" of one side of the cardas cable and only thread this through the tonearm. The fully insulated cable won't fit.

For the ground eyelet you'd use this to create a star ground that connects the tonearm ground, table ground, the cable shield for the RCA run and the the ground that runs to the phono amp.

Bty, those cardas PCC-E clips on the diycable site you linked to look alot like the VPI ones I used. I thought these were *much* better than what came with the table.

hope this helps more than confuses

-e

[Folsom]

I actually came accross the VPI ones too at a much lower price... They are probably the same thing.

I wish I had my MMF-5 here so I could work on it or just look at it.