Our tech team is awesome. When you call 888-233-7563 you’ll get trained and certified technicians who can help you through some pretty complex problems. It also means that sometimes, our tech team gets to help educate someone who really thinks they made the right choice. Sometimes common sense doesn’t actually help when you’re doing your own home theater installation.
Here’s an example
A guy says he is having signal loss problems with his DIRECTV system. We went through all the regular troubleshooting steps and he casually mentions that his cables are nice and tight now. Our tech asks for more information about that. Yeah, he said, he felt like his connector ends weren’t tight enough to the actual cables, so he took a pipe wrench and squeezed them with enough force that they deformed. Then he took some dielectric grease and smeared it all over, and put the whole thing in some shrink tubing and heat treated it. What a mess!
In case it’s not clear, you shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t do pretty much anything about that.
Why you shouldn’t squeeze the living heck out of cables and then heat treat them
Compression connectors and coaxial cables aren’t the easiest things to understand. The first thing that won’t make sense to you is that the center conductor wire isn’t the only thing that that signal travels through. The construction of coaxial cable is such that signals sit on the outer edges of the center conductor. Then they sort of expand through the white dielectric foam. This lets the cable carry a lot more information than you’d think it could carry through a tiny sliver of copper.
If you smush that white dielectric foam, you’re going to have signal problems. Simple as that. And the problems don’t stop there.
That same foam, and the rubber outer sheath, could be damaged if you try to use shrink tubing. They’re pretty robust but there’s always the possibility that too much heat could melt parts of the cable. It’s not worth taking the chance.
Here’s what you do instead, and it’s dead simple
If you think your connectors are loose. the best thing to do is replace them. Don’t squeeze them or put them in shrink tubing, that will just make the problem worse. Dielectric grease has its uses but it’s not going to make up for a loose connector. Just get a new cable. In fact, take a moment to inspect all the cables, especially the outside ones. Replace any of them that look skeevy at all. It’s not that expensive and you’ll be glad you did.
Of course you can get the parts and accessories to make cables when you shop at Solid Signal. I tend to tell people not to go to home stores, because they don’t stock the kind of cable you need for satellite or cell boosters. They also don’t have really high quality compression tools. I think it’s worth spending money for a tool that won’t break, don’t you?
If you need help choosing parts, call the experts! We’re here for you during East Coast business hours at 888-233-7563. If it’s after hours, fill out the form below and we’ll get right back to you!
