Problem with custom cable

[JKincaid]

I built my first cable a couple months ago following the tube depot tutorial. Everything seemed fine up until a few days ago when one of the plugs started to make my amp buzz when jostled (I'm still learning the lingo so I hope people know what I mean by that.)
The cable seems fine (Mogami 2524). From what I can tell, the soldering seems fine. The plug is the Amphenol TM2PNJ (the one from Tube Depot.) The only weird thing is that the plug is a little loose in the housing (I can jiggle it a bit). When I checked it out on my multimeter everything seems to be working properly. However, after trying to hold the probes to the ground (sleeve) and jiggle it around in the housing it will occasionally cause the needle on the multimeter to bounce around. I haven't been able to determine if this is an anomaly caused by the probe losing contact with the plug or not.

Does anybody have any ideas what could be wrong? It's worked great for 2 months. Do plugs go bad? Could the looseness of the plug be revealing sloppiness of my soldering or stripping of the wire? Would it be worth it to just cut the plug off and redo it?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

 

[Dave W]

Yes, plugs can go bad. I would pull it off and do it over again.

Are you sure it's the cable and not the jack you're plugging it into?

 

[audioglenn]

I built my first cable a couple months ago following the tube depot tutorial. Everything seemed fine up until a few days ago when one of the plugs started to make my amp buzz when jostled (I'm still learning the lingo so I hope people know what I mean by that.)
The cable seems fine (Mogami 2524). From what I can tell, the soldering seems fine. The plug is the Amphenol TM2PNJ (the one from Tube Depot.) The only weird thing is that the plug is a little loose in the housing (I can jiggle it a bit). When I checked it out on my multimeter everything seems to be working properly. However, after trying to hold the probes to the ground (sleeve) and jiggle it around in the housing it will occasionally cause the needle on the multimeter to bounce around. I haven't been able to determine if this is an anomaly caused by the probe losing contact with the plug or not.

Does anybody have any ideas what could be wrong? It's worked great for 2 months. Do plugs go bad? Could the looseness of the plug be revealing sloppiness of my soldering or stripping of the wire? Would it be worth it to just cut the plug off and redo it?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

I just had the exact same problem last week with the same Amphenol plug. The strain relief assembly will push the shield against the center lead if there is too much of the sleeve stripped on the shield.when it is screwed together. This causes the intermittent problem you're having. It's not the best strain relief I've seen. Check to see if there is any play in the shield at the solder point. Make sure that the shield is soldered through the hole away from the center conductor.

 

[JKincaid]

Thanks for the quick replies.

@bassgod - Yeah, at first I thought it might be the jack in my bass but I get the same result when I plug that connector into the head.

@audioglenn - you may be on to something. I took it apart this morning and noticed that the shield was sort of twisted to the the side if the assembly. After screwing around with it for a minute the shielding broke off at the point of the weld. I wonder if it's a combination of the cable torquing during assembly and a poor weld job by me. I guess I won't know until I resolder it. I'm also wondering if the clamp keeps the Techflex from pulling out but is slippery enough that it enables twisting of the cable during assembly. :-/

Thanks again both of you for the replies!