Monorail Installation with Solder-less Connectors

The Monorail™ Installation Cable Tips with Solder-less Connectors

You should solder plugs to The Monorail cable for best results. There are many reasons why soldered plugs are better than solderless if you get right down to it. Soldered plugs are more reliable and sound better. However the solderless method is quick and easy and non-permanent. If this is your method of choice then the below directions will give you superior solderless connections. Just bear in mind that to get the most out of your monorail cable you should consider a soldered plug.

First make a clean 90° cut with a sharp knife and roll the cable between your fingers to ensure that it is perfectly round.

With straight plugs, remove the screw so it doesn't snag the jacket on insertion.

When you hold the cable to insert it, hold it firmly to keep the jacket in place.

While pushing it in, rotate the plug back and forth. This helps the cable slide in nicely.

Stop pushing the cable the moment you feel pressure. Now just give it that extra shove to seat the pin against the conductor. It shouldn't move that much.

Before turning the ground screw measure the positive signal with a meter and THEN tighten the set screw for the negative/shield so it’s just below flush with the barrel of the ¼” phone connector.

If it does not work pull out the cable and you may notice that the positive (white) conductor is usually pushed in a bit. Either re-cut the cable or trim any overlapping shield/negative/black plastic with a pair of scissors . This ensures that the positive conductor will protrude more and also lessen the chances of a stray ground wire shorting out on the center positive conductor.

When using right-angled connectors, keep forward pressure on the cable into the right-angle plug while bending it over to put the end-cap on.

When using right-angled connectors, don't close the cap ALL the way. The ideal depth will leave a small gap; without the gap you might create a short.

Here's how it works. The various plugs
out there have a hole you stick the cable in. At the bottom of this hole
is an inverted needle which presses alongside the center conductor to
make the positive contact with the plug's tip. Then a screw gets tightened
on the side of the plug body until it cuts through the outer jacket and
touches the shield to make the ground connection. Sounds pretty simple
right? Well it is with some practice. You also need a nice clean cut that
leaves the cable as round as possible. You may find yourself making three
our four attempts before nailing a nice connection, but don't feel bad.
You are not alone.

If you can't get a nice cut after 2 or 3
tries you are using the wrong tool. Put the scissors away and try something
else. Once you've got that clean cut, make sure the ground screw is fully
backed out of the way. If it hits the cable as you push it in, you will
be starting over.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words,
here's a look at a nice clean cut of the Monorail and another popular
cable:

The objective and technique are the same.
It's just that with the Monorail you will be pushing the needle against
a larger center conductor drawn from IGL copper. With other cables it
will be smaller strands of tough-pitch or tin-plated copper.

Screw out of the way? Great. firmly hold
the cable and slide it into the hole until you feel resistance. That's
usually the needle kissing the conductor. We want more than a kiss, so
press the cable in enough to overcome that resistance. You should feel
the cable move in about another 3mm. Not much we can do about the size
of your needle. Just move on.

Here's a picture to show you what should
be going on inside the plug:

Once that's in place, you screw down the
screw on the side of the plug (or in the case of some right-angle plugs
you bend the cable down whilst keeping forward pressure on the needle
and screw down the end-cap).

It's not very glamorous but the end of the
screw cuts a circle and its circumference marks where the screw makes
contact with the shield. In the case of the Monorail it is a spiral shield
with minimal and consistent strand interaction. With other shields it
may be a braided shield of questionable material. I'm sure it's very nice.

Improve on the
ground connection.

You can generate
a much larger surface area for your ground connection, and avoid the limitations
of using the screw to run your signal through if you performa a slight
modification to the cable before pushing it into the plug.

The modification is simply removing enough
of the outer jacket material on your cable, so that when you tighten the
set-screw you are pushing a large amount of the shield on the other side
of the cable directly against the inside of the plug body.

This is a great upgrade to your solder-less
cables even if you don't change the cable or plugs. It requires a bit
more time and care, but if you're determined to make solderless cables
a part of your life, you might as well go all the way.

Here are a few photos to give you an idea.

Much of this material is from the Evidence Audio Web Site. Peerless Tone is an Evidence Audio Dealer and we thank them for sharing this inforation with us and our customers. For more information please check out http://www.audionova.ca/