[nlitworld]

I was looking to tinker with my Schiit Sol turntable to eliminate the common ground wiring it currently has. Since I'd like to do this without accidentally destroying the circuit board, I decided to just rewire the whole tonearm straight to alternatively mounted RCA jacks and proper ground lug. This should eliminate the 5-pin plug, common grounded circuit board and cheap gold plated rca jacks. I was looking at using the Cardas Clear tonearm wire and KLE rca jacks and was curious if anyone has tips on properly stripping and soldering those wires easily. I've fiddled with tonearm wires a few years back with some success, but it was messy and I want to make sure I'm doing it right.

Any tips and info is appreciated.
-Lloyd

[nlitworld]

So I ended up completing the tonearm rewiring this weekend with moderate success. That tonearm is soooo easy to pull wire through using a little bit of paracord and scotch tape. I used Audio Note silver cardridge clips and they are FINICKY and absolutely tiny. One is on there but barely because some solder rolled up a little too far thus crowding where the cartridge pin rests. End result is it's all playing music and sounding absolutely fantastic. A major headache and a true test in precision soldering and self restraint to not throw it across the room. Major step up in clarity from the stock Schiit setup, but I won't willingly be doing it again any time soon. 

[Rocket]

Hi,

Thanks for the information and its great you had a good improvement in sound quality.

Cheers Rod

[BobM]

Here's something I recommend. First ... the strength of the signal coming from the cartridge is so small it will take 1000 years to adequately burn in the tonearm wire.

So ... I suggest getting some male RCA jacks, just cheap ones, and soldering some solid copper wire to them. The gauge of the wire should be the right size to fit into yout cartridge pin clips. See where I am going yet? Plug those RCA jacks into the back of your CD player and the copper wire into the cartridge pin clips (obviously remove them from your cartridge first). Then run the other end of your tonearm wire into your preamp/receiver, but not into the phono section. Just the Aux or CD in. Play away on your CD player on repeat for as long as you feel necessary (at least a couple of days) and that will burn in your tonearm wire better than any amount of vinyl listening will do. When you are satisfied it is enough, put things back the way they are intended to go.

[nlitworld]

Interesting. I know wire does break in over time as I've heard it happen before, but I didn't think anything of it when I was soldering things together. Probably won't go back in and do that, but now I know for next time. Thanks for the tip!