Terminating Audio Note AN-V Silver litz cable - some hopefully helpful hints

Just thought i would jot down some thoughts on my experience terminating these wonderful sounding but delicate and fiddly cables.

Firstly, if you are new to soldering, dont have a temp controlled soldering iron or are you are ham fisted and/or impatient then this is not the job for you.

First step is to watch the excellent tutorial on youtube by Nick Lucas of HiFi Collective.

https://youtu.be/HHT0ojbjyyM

He terminates AN Coppper Litz in the video but this left me wondering how it would be different for the AN silver litz given the horror stories ive heard regarding those delicate silver strands!

Well it turns out the process and soldering temps are actually identical. I settled on 355c for melting the coating from each strand as well as making the connection to the RCAs.

As always, good quality flux, a freshly tinned and cleaned tip and good preperation are essential for tinning the wire as well as making a good connection to the plug.

I made the mistake of scrapping as much of the coating off as possible first using a razor blade - if you do this you risk losing a strand or two in the end so just use the soldering iron to melt it off then gently scrape off the residual scum.

For removing the outer jacket of the cable i found a scalpel allows much greater control than the stanley knife suggested.

For trimming away the unwanted copper shield at one end i actually found toe nail clippers to be very precise and easy to use if you dont have a pair of fine snips.

I terminated the cable with a pair of KLE Copper Harmony Plugs. These are from one of the makers of the Eichmann bullets(Keith Louis Eichmann) but i have to say the design is significantly better and they are much easier to work with having experience of both plugs.

So here are the results, by no means am i an expert and the results perfect but i think they are reasonable and show you can achieve good results given time, patience and the right tools for the job.

https://i.ibb.co/BzYg0Yy/20200905-140331.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/bWXYtZV/20200905-141120.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/2kYXqp2/20200905-141222.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/181svHW/20200905-141630.jpg