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
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