Poll elco pins crimp or solder which do you like

Doings tons of wiring at work and wondering which do you guys prefer.
I go right on the fence and will work with ever is available. but curious to know which you guys prefer

Solder. The crimp connection on tiny cable (like multicore audio cable) tends to break easier when "programming" the connector after soldering. If you NEED to use crimp contacts, solder them as well - that'll make them hold much better

Jakob E.

Solder! Solder! Solder!

I hate crimp terminals or anything crimp for that matter :evil: :twisted:

Just my preference, though. No offense to all the crimpers out there.

Depends on the connector. I never saw a solder 78 pin D-sub or DL pin (there is a PC mount/ wirewrap though)

AMP, DL, ELCO, Molex, BICC, lugs, etc- crimp. And the weak link of any multi-channel termination is the strain relief, not the contact type. Any crimped/ soldered DL shells I have seen were all dirty with flux, and to de-flux soldered DL pins- way too much time if paid by the termination. Over 20 years, my crimped connectors have out-lasted both the equipment and the companies themselves!

XLR, TRS, TTY, RCA, Burndy, Tuchel, Cinch, D-sub, etc: solder. I kinda like the crimp XLR, but have not done an install with them.

will crimp for beer! :sam:

I was trying to use 56pin elco cables that I purchased. It ended up that they had problems. I found a number of bad crimps. So I would plug the connectors back in and find more problems. I did this over and over and realized that everytime I would screw with the wires more would break. I ended up having to make my own cables with solder pins to solve the problems

I am a big fan of using whats around. Which at the moment has been lots of solder style elco pins. I have used the crimp style before and I find it to be taxing on the hands having to crimp all them pins Plus I find it better to solder them slightly right after I crip them. As for DL's crimp all the way which even then isn't really the best way as I have had one or 2 connections go bad right away.

I have yet to use crimp XLR's would just seen weird to me. I have soldered thousands XLR's why change now? :thumb:

I've done many Elco's myself and I don't crimp anything! I just don't trust crimp connections especially in studio use. Nothing worse than a marginal connection that appears after a period of time. So solder is my choice.

Regards,
Jeff

Crimpping seems easier at first till you have to do thousands of them. And even still you should solder just to be sure of connection after your done.

Used one of the big elco machines once that crimps lots of cables at once and feeds almost similar to machine gun with a belt of ammo. Worst thing ever. over 50% of the crimps the machine did failed before even putting them into the elco. They literally fell right off. Myabe it was just a baddly alligned machine :?

I vote crimped. Done well a crimped connection is very reliable. Maybe I am lucky though, never had a failed connection out of the last thousand or so. :grin: