Neatness counts

[Maynard]

Hey so I've finished the crack, listening, mightily impressed. I am addicted.
In your opinion does neat even twisting and braiding, measuring and soldering of wire, allow the units sound to be superior to a project that's put together In a slap dash kind of way?  Just thinking because I really took my time examining the photos in the manual, looking at what angles the wires were bending at and how much solder the example pics had. But if you google the crack images you'll see some mightily neat builds where all the wires are going at precise right angles etc. Would this make much difference to the Sound? Geek out.

[John EH]

That could be debatable I'm sure.  Good quality soldering and tight connections are probably more important than wire routing neatness. I have an old set of Paramour amps that look like somebody threw a grenade in a spaghetti pot and it sounds ridiculously amazing.

[mcandmar]

Yeah its harder for electrons to turn tight corners    Personally i would always go for a nice radius instead of a 90 degree bend as it uses less cable.

There is a lot to be said for careful routing of cables, keeping audio path and power supply wires physically separated, especially the AC heater wiring.   If they do need to cross each other try to do it at a 90 degree angle, tightly twisting or braiding AC power and signal cables helps prevent noise.  Generally try to keep wires as short as possible, i.e. avoid having caps with inches of wire handing off each end unnecessarily, and try to route them as close to the chassis plate as possible.  For me its more of a personal satisfaction thing, taking pride in ones work and all that

[Paul Birkeland]

In your opinion does neat even twisting and braiding, measuring and soldering of wire, allow the units sound to be superior to a project that's put together In a slap dash kind of way?

Yes.  I have finished repairing a Crack or two, but noticed that they still didn't "sound right" until I found that last cold joint. 

[Maynard]

Mmm grenades and pots filled with spaghetti. Sounds like fun. Messy fun.