Tonearm cables and Shielding

[RobbieGong]

What determines good shielding for tonearm cables ?

What are the basic rules, what to look out for ??

[Made in 1968]

You dont actually need any if you are using a low output MC. But ive never had any noise issues from standard Shielded cable.

[RobbieGong]

Thanks Andre.

I'm into silver litz tonearm cable, having had the Yannis Tome 423.5 previously which is a fab cable and I'm led to believe that shielding is important with litz wire for some reason, I could be wrong though.

[Wakefield Turntables]

Did you ever get that cable back from Yannis?

[Made in 1968]

I use Kimber 'PSB' interconnect for some time with a Supex cart. PSB is just standard Kimber 'TC' vari-strand signal wire in a three wire Braid, no shield. Had to switch to Kimber 'KC-1' for MM & High output MC but was just the same with added braid.. Never used Litz, always avoided it for some reason.

[Barry]

Tonearm cables don't really require any extra special screening. Just use cables that use good quality copper and braiding with a high optical coverage (i.e. a tightly woven braid, with as few gaps as possible).

[RobbieGong]

Tonearm cables don't really require any extra special screening. Just use cables that use good quality copper and braiding with a high optical coverage (i.e. a tightly woven braid, with as few gaps as possible).

Thanks Barry, from trying to inform myself I believe awg and capacitance are worth considering as well, in the search for a really good cable, maybe ?

[Made in 1968]

Aye low cap cable.

[Barry]

If you are using an MC cartridge you don't need to worry about cable capacitance. The only area where you need to be concerned with capacitance is if you use an SUT. There, the cables between the SUT and the phonostage need to be short, so as to prevent the cable capacitance resonating with the secondary winding inductance.

And like André, I wouldn't bother with Litz construction. As long as the centre conductor is no more than 0.5mm in diameter, stranded copper is perfectly acceptable. IMO that applies to all interconnects.