[sdiy] Mini-Din cable woes

[Joel B]

I have a couple of Pearl fightman analog drum modules (circa 1979/80) and one came with the complete drum kit and cables, the other without.

 I’ve been attempting to create a second set of cables, with only partial success. The cables are each a 5 pin mini-din (https://goo.gl/images/pDHvsP) that split to a fan of 4 and 5 RCA Male jacks - proprietary cables that nobody seems to make. (crash/ride/oh/ch)/(kick/snare/toms). First problem is how to solder tiny wires to tiny posts. Took a while to get that right, and I’m pretty sure there is a better way, like wires with some kind of clip already attached...

Second problem was that I think the outside ring on the mini-din is the ground (or at least the “common” wire) as far as I can tell from my amature multimetering. 

So I built a couple cables, and the second try sort of worked but a little intermittently. Thinking I understood how to do this now I built a third one that works even less and a fourth one that doesn’t work at all. I can’t find a short. The pins all have good connectivity. 

I was trying to adapt to 3.5mm jacks so I wired to 3.5mm female sockets instead of RCA male, to use with beatstep pro or other trigger (Original cables with an rca/3.5mm adapter do work with beatstep pro). I could only find TRS 3.5mm sockets online when I wanted TS but I’m pretty sure I soldered that part the same way on all my attempts... 

I’m wondering, are the pins on the newer mini-din male just maybe not long enough? What am I doing wrong? Certainly they seem not designed for the sleeve of the mini-din to be a soldier point but It seems to be so in the original cables, so I made that connection.

Joel
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