Neutrik Silent Plug Problems

[mapka]

I built some cables for a few people and had them returned because the Neutrik Silent plug end failed. Both cases the end was a 90 degree end and the cable I was using is Canare GS-6 cable. What happened is that the "silent" function stopped working. Sent the ends back to Neutriks for failure analysis and their response was:

"Based on what we found we suspect that the connector was mechanically overloaded. It looks like as the lateral load exceeded the limit which caused the press seat between plugfinger and housing to get loose. Kindly note that the silent plug cannot accept that much lateral force (~ 6Nm) as the standard right angle connector as the seat is much smaller due to the silent switch."

Two different people and different guitars, so no commonality there. May have been something in my construction but cannot figure out what.

Has anyone else experienced any failures with these ends?

[Eric]

I have one of the silent 90 degree ones. I'm not sure if the silent part still works or not, but I don't focus too much on that, so I don't really care. It sounds like they may have been using these without wrapping the cord through the guitar strap, so it kind of pulled on the end, right? That would be my guess as to why they failed. I can't see how your soldering job could have anything to do with it, since the guts of the connector where you solder the cable looks 100% the same to a normal one IIRC.

[mapka]

I have one of the silent 90 degree ones. I'm not sure if the silent part still works or not, but I don't focus too much on that, so I don't really care. It sounds like they may have been using these without wrapping the cord through the guitar strap, so it kind of pulled on the end, right? That would be my guess as to why they failed. I can't see how your soldering job could have anything to do with it, since the guts of the connector where you solder the cable looks 100% the same to a normal one IIRC.

Both of the players do the cable through the strap routine. I really don't think it was anything they did. They both are not really animated on stage so no jumping or stressing the cable. Plus they both use both LP type guitars and Telecaster type.

The solder post in the 90 is perpendicular to the cable where as the straight ones are parallel. I trimmed back the cable to the lengths the Neutrik suggested. The connector is suppose to have strain relief built in, so I cannot see any kind of side forces within the connector that would have caused the failure