Headset Wire Weirdness

[Yorkie]

Supposedly, the method of cleaning and tinning Litz is (or at least was) to separate the conductors, dip them in meths and set light to it. The meths burns just long enough to clean the wire, but not long enough to burn it. That's the theory, but when Litz was in vogue in the late 50s for home wound coils, I soon discovered that the difference between theory and practice in practice is much greater than the difference between theory and practice in theory. Every time I tried this stunt, the wire incinerated in the routine manner. I quickly abandoned that malarkey and resorted to using 1000 grit wet and dry paper and teased out each separate wire, gently abrading it with the wet & dry paper till each strand was clean enough to tin. I saw an article a while back which gave figures for the extent to which the performance of Litz degrades when some of the conductors didn't conduct. It didn't make a great deal of difference. I always felt that using Litz in tuned circuits was a sales gimmick, with no discernable improvement in performance over a single conductor.

I don't know, but I would have thought that current production Litz wire was self-fluxing and solderable without cleaning, like most enamelled coated wires these days. Might be worth a try. I dare say that on production lines they simply dip the wire in a molten tin bath to tin the ends - done in a jiffy. They're clearly not going to faff around with wet and dry, meths, or any other stunt that takes more than a couple of seconds.