Just to update this, I went with the Neotech NEI-3004 cable and the KLE style connectors.







I'll post some pics of the made up cable when I get home today but I have to say overall I'm very pleased with it. Only connected the shield at the source end (after reading a War & Peace amount of 'information' as to the 'why's' and the 'why not's' of doing this). Eventually I pulled apart another pair of my favourite sounding IC's and they were connected in this way so I followed suit.

After a couple of 'practice' goes with some bellwire I got in the groove of tipping both cable and connector and really cleaning the tip of the solder iron between every application. Wow, what a difference that makes. All nice shiny finishes without any blobs or oxidisation/discolouring.

Now I'm getting cocky and wondering if I should make some more maybe with these plugs:

https://www.hificollective.co.uk/cat...-rca-plug.html

Is it worth climbing up the Neotech cable ladder for a notch up in performance or anything else around I should try? Will definitely look into the microphone cable suggestion from others, thanks for that.

Like I say I'm really pleased with the performance of these but the plugs are made in Taiwan and materials quality isn't exactly guaranteed.

Cheers,

Chris