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Hullo!

Where I live it's kinda difficult to find shielded wire...

Could I just:
> take ordinary solid core gauge 24 copper wire in its plastic tubing.
> wrap it nicely with a long strip of tin foil.
> put it all in a heat shinkable tubing.

Sort of a thin home made satellite dish cable or similar

Would that work?

Not really. aluminum foil tears so easily that it would just rip off when you tried to solder the shiled to ground. Also, it might not solder too well either, but thats another thing.

You could add a bare copper wire outside the aluminum foil and inside the heat shrink, then solder the bare copper wire to ground. Dr Balls is right about soldering directly to aluminum foil not working.

DaveKerr wrote:You could add a bare copper wire outside the aluminum foil and inside the heat shrink, then solder the bare copper wire to ground. Dr Balls is right about soldering directly to aluminum foil not working.

That's just the thing I was doing here... 1st layer of tin foil then I twisted a bare copper wire around the thing and wrapped it all with another layer of foil then put it inside a heat shrink now I have easy access to both the signal wire and the gnd or whatever it's called. still have to test it and see what's it like.

why not just cut up a cheap guitar cable?

Seiche wrote:why not just cut up a cheap guitar cable?

Speaking about thinking out of the box, I just found some old headphones with big chunky wire (much thinner than guitar cables). Only has a net of copper wires around the signal core, no foil, that ok?

TV-Set wrote:

Seiche wrote:why not just cut up a cheap guitar cable?

Speaking about thinking out of the box, I just found some old headphones with big chunky wire (much thinner than guitar cables). Only has a net of copper wires around the signal core, no foil, that ok?

isn't that exactly how guitar cables are made? of course there is insulation between the core and shielding. Just saying that shielded cable and guitar cable are basically the same.

Seiche wrote:

TV-Set wrote:

Seiche wrote:why not just cut up a cheap guitar cable?

Speaking about thinking out of the box, I just found some old headphones with big chunky wire (much thinner than guitar cables). Only has a net of copper wires around the signal core, no foil, that ok?

isn't that exactly how guitar cables are made? of course there is insulation between the core and shielding. Just saying that shielded cable and guitar cable are basically the same.

I dunno, I never took apart a guitar cable, all the knowledge I have about shielded cables is based mostly on big-ass audiofile signal cables my father buys for his hi-fi system or those cables you use for a satellite dish, both have multiple coatings and therefore are a bit different from ordinary shielded wires I guess