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These God damn lava mini ELC Solderless cables are pissing me off. Any tips for solid construction? I'm following the youtube instructions and still 75% are shit.

Halp.

the first time i built some and wired my board up i had a ton that were shitty, like most of them. i ended up taking the ends off of all of them and trimming them again and checking for shorts and they were fine. just took some practice. usually there ends up being some copper strands that are too long when you're first doing it. trim them tighter than the youtube video suggests. i haven't had problems in several years now and my cables work on the first try now, if that gives you any encouragement. good luck.

Fuck solderless, on a positive note, I think you can solder those Lava's too.

Tristan wrote:Fuck solderless, on a positive note, I think you can solder those Lava's too.

I would.

Tristan wrote:Fuck solderless, on a positive note, I think you can solder those Lava's too.

Not with the same tips. At least, that wouldn't make sense. The space is too tight.


Seriously fuck solderless. I bought a bunch of George L and Lava cables and they sounded really fucking good. I could clearly hear the difference. Then I switch a pedal, then another pedal. Next thing you know, I'm redoing ten patch cables because they don't like being moved or touched at all.

Overpriced. Piss poor design. Overpriced. And did I say over priced?

^ This is my exact experience as well. Now I use cheap Hosas. Fuck patch cables.

Soldered cable wins every time. Buy some Mogami cable and a heap of good quality pancake plugs and solder them up yourself. You will never look back.

misterstomach wrote:the first time i built some and wired my board up i had a ton that were shitty, like most of them. i ended up taking the ends off of all of them and trimming them again and checking for shorts and they were fine. just took some practice. usually there ends up being some copper strands that are too long when you're first doing it. trim them tighter than the youtube video suggests. i haven't had problems in several years now and my cables work on the first try now, if that gives you any encouragement. good luck.

Thanks for the recommendation Parker. It did help to trim the copper pretty tight.

That said...I fucked around for two hours last night and was finally able to produce 5 solid and functional cables. Cut, strip, assemble, test, screw, test, fucking doesn't work, repeat.

My board is cramped so I like the small footprint of the right angle Lava minis. But I rarely mess with it so it may be time to invest in some quality pancake connectors. I just want shit to work.

I don't know the exact issue you're experiencing, but when i first made some, i found that the pin wasn't getting good contact with the cobductor. I push the plug into the cable, then take it out to see where the pin made contact and spread out the conductor strands in the space made by the pin . Push the plug back in and assemble.

this seems like a repeating thread, but i echo fuck solderless. had 2 different brands and returned em both, they sucked. lava (single point) soldered mini kits have turned out great for me. otherwise i solder my own pancakes. one mini + one pancake in your chain often will give you the clearance needed to make shit fit, in my experience. nothing is worse than re-arranging some pedals to have a couple of cables die