Small parts gold plating

Try your local jeweller, not high street chain.....

Joules

I'm just wondering whether what you need is a low-noise cable, rather than gold-plated plugs - something like RS stock no. 367-296, perhaps.

"Malcolm Stewart" wrote in message news:4517ec13$0$19707$ snipped-for-privacy@free.teranews.com...

I recently had some clock parts gold plated by Premier Plating of High Wycombe. Excellent job and reasonable price. Not too much of a trek from MK but could perhaps be done by mail. HTH

Nick.

The message from Andy Wade contains these words:

How about a soldering iron. Just solder the wires on each time - it'll be better than any connector.

Try

or I've used both of them for commercial gold plating over nickel on automotive electronic connector jobs, the spec. for which was

0.75microns nickel hardened gold over 1.25-2.25 microns sulphate nickel. This gave a good hard wearing contact surface.

Peter

They are the spawn of the devil, those mini-jacks. I'd just keep a can of cleaner/contact treatment like Electrolube handy. You're likely to get handling noise off the cable too.

It's for a good reason 'proper' mics are low impedance balanced and use XLRs. I modified my portable MiniDisc by hard wiring onto the PCB and having a flying XLR lead.

Cheapskate! Use Lemo's :-)

Mark Rand RTFM

Whatever you can do to the plug, the socket inside the camcorder or Minidisc recorder is always going to be crap. As other's have said, if you're serious you need XLR connectors for mic's. Greg

Slightly inconvenient and may not cure the problem if is is due to cable microphony. Good to do once though to prove the point one way or the other.

;-)

Cost more than the recorder...

"Malcolm Stewart" wrote in message news:4517ec13$0$19707$ snipped-for-privacy@free.teranews.com...

Try a Google on electroless gold. Used to do it ages ago on small microwave assemblies.

John

Your really chasing something that you'll only catch by getting rid of the 3.5s altogether imho. 3.5 jacks are simply not a system thats upto it, for a number of reasons. Youve got small contact areas Whatever plug you use, youve got a consumer grade socket in the chain due to small plug size, cable handling puts a relatively high forces on the jack and its connection points Youve got plugs with a central pin pressed onto the lug, and some come loose youve got at best physically weak assemblies and so on. Its not gonna work, pull out the 3.5 socket and mount something decent on there. 1/4" jacks might be sufficient, but XLR and a balanced mic would be much better.

I have worked on recording studio equipment but not a lot.

NT

"Malcolm Stewart" wrote in message news:4517ec13$0$19707$ snipped-for-privacy@free.teranews.com...

Many thanks for all the suggestions. Company names (which didn't turn up in my Google search) etc. have been noted.

The handling noise only occurs occasionally and is not caused by the Yoga electret microphone cables (I've just checked this specifically.) I do have an XLR connector lying around and it's about 1/3 the size of my Minidisc recorder, so not really suitable for this application.

I've tried applying a drop of Electrolube switch-cleaner to the noisy connectors, and after being exercised for a short time, the handling noise disappears. Period. However, I expect it will be back when the chemical has dried out, so gold plating would probably be the long term answer. There's no audible noise from gold-plated plug contact against gold plated socket.

No-one seems to have expressed any concern that the OP wants to gold plate his small parts.

NT

There used to be some products often recommended in the sci.electronics newsgroups - Tweek and De-Oxit, I think. These were some sort of contact enhancer rather than the solvent/lubricant that electrolube use, and were particularly popular with the hifi crowd. Might be worth a try if you can source some.

-adrian

Well as true Engineers, we don't have small parts, so probably have no comment

AWEM