shielded hook-up wire

[orcrist]

hi,

does anybody know a good place to get some shielded hook-up wire. preferably around the 24 awg thickness.
i'm getting some oscillator bleed on the clean channel of one of my prototypes and want to see if shielding the in/out will help suppress it.

thanks.

[mysteriousj]

for wire sometimes your local electronics stores can be good. The only place i've seen some online is smallbear http://www.smallbearelec.com/Categories.bok?category=Wire+And+Cable&searchpath=2590314&start=17&total=26

[D-Rainger]

Don't know about where to get the wire from, but I had a problem with an oscillator whose rhythmic click got onto the bypass signal. And shielded wire on the rate pot leads fixed it.
Mind you, that wire was well chunky...

[hbombgraphics]

I am thinking a place like Allied wire and Cable in PA might have it, they have everything else.

Also: Isn't a guitar cable shielded wire? I would think you could cut up a bit of an old cable (or a smaller cable like a mono headphone cable) and do what you are trying to do.

[mathias]

I am thinking a place like Allied wire and Cable in PA might have it, they have everything else.

Also: Isn't a guitar cable shielded wire? I would think you could cut up a bit of an old cable (or a smaller cable like a mono headphone cable) and do what you are trying to do.

Old George L's patch cables make great shielded cable, but they're a pain to strip perfectly. That said, that stuff is actually easier to work with than the other cables I've cut up (cheap instrument cables that aren't very stiff / don't have a hard plastic coating around the main wire.)

[hbombgraphics]

I am thinking a place like Allied wire and Cable in PA might have it, they have everything else.

Also: Isn't a guitar cable shielded wire? I would think you could cut up a bit of an old cable (or a smaller cable like a mono headphone cable) and do what you are trying to do.

Old George L's patch cables make great shielded cable, but they're a pain to strip perfectly. That said, that stuff is actually easier to work with than the other cables I've cut up (cheap instrument cables that aren't very stiff / don't have a hard plastic coating around the main wire.)

I had one of those fender Tone masters that I used for this stuff forever, worked pretty well. Made nice pedal patch cables as well, plus the tone master plugs break in about 2 hours of heavy use so at least you can save the cable.

Don't usually have a problem with the cheap ones, those old Musicians Friend Yellow ended cables have always been good for stripping.

[Ironbird13]

if you want thinner than a guitar cable, the wires inside the cables that run from the old style monitors to pc are shielded i think

[eatyourguitar]

if your shielded wire doesnt help, you may want to use a daughter board and a vertical copper partition somewhere in the enclosure. my friend has an EH pulsar that throws clicks onto any pedal within 12 inches right through the box. also, PCB mounted pots help a lot when you have audio or clocks going through them. you can design a pcb with a ground cage running across the whole pcb and pcb mounted pots.

[orcrist]

thanks for all the responses and tips. guitar cable is too thick for my purposes, i think. but i do have some rca cables lying around that should be shielded. gonna give those a shot. i had tried to turn the power off when bypassed with a 4pdt footswitch. that got rid of the bleed (obviously), but created some unwanted noise every time the circuit is turned on. i probably should have expected that.

[orcrist]

i also noticed that the oscillator/clock bleed was not present in my line6 combo amp when i tried the pedal at band practice. but when i play through a 15 watt roland cube, it's very noticeable. haven't really tested it with non-digital amps yet.

[hbombgraphics]

Did anything else switch when you went to band practice? Power? Cables?

Could you put shielding tape around the circuit? Put a layer of non conductive tape over some copper shielding and just wrap the circuit.

[mathias]

It could be an issue of tone caps attenuating/filtering that particular Line6, or the Roland being EQ'd to boost the frequency range that you're hearing the clock bleed. I'd say the only real way to know how to proceed is to hook it up to an oscilloscope, and maybe use a tone generator putting out a constant sine wave if you're only hearing it when there's a signal going through the circuit, look for jaggies on the oscilloscope that might indicate clock bleed. If your circuit modulates or distorts the input signal too much, you might not be able to do the function generator trick.

[orcrist]

there were a bunch of different factors at practice. the pedal in question was at the end of my chain, powered by the same source as all the others (daisy chain). probably used a different cable from pedal to amp. at home with the roland, it was the only pedal hooked up at the time.

oscilloscope? i wish i had one of those.
the pedal utilizes a bunch of dual and triple input cmos gates. the oscillator bleed is only audible when the circuit is bypassed. when the pedal is in use, it functions as it should (silent when no input signal is applied).

the use of the 4pdt switch is an acceptable solution for my personal playing. i just have to make sure that i am playing while i engage the pedal in live situations. but i wouldn't want to put it on the market as it is. i'll try the shielded cable first to see if that helps. if not, i'll try the other shielding tricks that were suggested.

by the way, it's this pedal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nlt1IqwREs
i think i posted it before in the "let's see your..." thread.

[hbombgraphics]

If it ran at the end of your chain in practice was it behind buffered pedals? It might not handle a direct signal well, meaining a signal buffer in the circuit would help. I just got a ring mod that reacted terribly when I first tried it but worked perfectly in a chain.

I know more about shielding than circuits sadly, as I spent way to much time over the last year trying to help fix the issue on an inductor.