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A Year’s Worth of Being a Custom Instrument Cable Maker (Part I)

Wow, it's been about a year since DreamVibes started selling custom cables.

At this point last year we were just about finishing our research & development phase, and it had been a tough time.

Even though Yohanes had had a lot of experience soldering cables in his previous job, assembling the best instrument cable in the world was a whole different kettle of fish.

Using the best base cable in the business was non-negotiable. That was, and still is, the Sommer SC-SPIRIT LLX. At 7.5mm thick, this was one of the thickest instrument cables out there.

We also wanted the cable to be really tough and long-lasting, so braided plastic shielding was definitely going to be on the cable. The outstanding maker was Techflex, so that was easy enough.

Where we had trouble was the plugs.

We originally wanted to use Neutrik plugs on our cables, and it wasn’t for the lack of trying, you know? We massacred a fair few of those trying to get them onto the cable and it simply didn’t work - the cable and Techflex together was just too thick.

We could have used the Neutrik JumboPlug, but we didn’t think you guys would like it very much… Check it out if you don't believe us.

So we went back to the drawing board.

More research.

More sourcing.

We even looked at some custom plug manufacturers from China, and I’m not putting them down, because some of them actually looked pretty fancy!

In the end, we decided to go with another outstanding plug manufacturer - G&H Plugs. We got them in their biggest size, and they just about fit our cables.

But beyond that, we wanted to use them because these plugs actually made a difference to the sound! The secret to this was something we discovered while looking at all those plug plans from different manufacturers - G&H plug cores were copper, while many others were not.

So we made our decision and decided to use G&H. It was still difficult to assemble, but our cables sounded the best. They also looked the best. To us, at least!

And that’s the story of how the DreamVibes Ion cable was born.

But wait, hold on!

These weren’t the only difficulties we faced.

There’s more, but that’s a story for another time, so check back soon!