Nuts and Volts - December 2008

by Bryan Bergeron, Editor

DE VELOPING

PERSPECTIVES

To Solder or Not

I finally made the move to a home theater — an Apple TV, DLP projector, and an audio system capable of shaking the foundation. As part of the installation, I also splurged on supposedly audiophile-quality audio cable from a major manufacturer. I don’t fall for the oxygen-free cable that sells for astronomical prices but bought some good, 12 gauge copper wire with flexible insulation.

To my dismay, the ‘audiophile’ cable came with gold-plated twist-on connectors. I was taken aback. Twist-on, not even crimp-on. The instructions said to just peel back a quarter inch of insulation and twist

the wire into a connector. My first response was disbelief. After all, how would a twist-on connector hold up to the constant vibration of a subwoofer? Would the friction fit result in noise?

My second response was to take out my soldering iron and silver solder, and to solder each connection. In the end, the system worked fine, but I was still troubled about the twist-on connectors. Was I just a creature of habit? Was the company just bending to a consumer environment in which soldering irons are becoming an endangered species? Or, I wondered, was I mistaken in my assumptions about the relative value of soldering. Was I wasting my time and effort

with the soldering iron?

As a young ham radio enthusiast, I was taught that, when it comes to high-current DC or any RF connection, use solder, regardless of the connector design. I was told in certain terms that crimp-on connectors were at best short-sighted time savers. Similarly, when I worked for a telephone company, I was taught that wire-wrapped connections would eventually fail unless carefully soldered. Perhaps this line of reasoning was born out of the southern Louisiana environment, where even gold connectors succumbed to corrosion (from an acid-secreting fungus).

Modern, machine-assembled electronic equipment is built with

8

December 2008

Interface a sharp LCD display to your BASIC Stamp® or other micro-controller project with ease. No-solder wiring harnesses and easy mounting kits available too. See www.seetron.com today.