Transducer cable,to shorten or not to shorten?

[4x4yak]

Well i have shortened mine . I have a Lowrance X125. Not a colour sounder so im only talking about a 'grey scale" type sounder.. After consolting one of the electritians at work he told me there is no reason why you can not shorten a transducer cable .The way he explained the way trannys work to me in laymans terms is in the transducer is a "pizzo " type set up like in a stove lighter ignition system.. Basicly as i understand it 2 pieces of ceramic areldited together. When an electric current is passed thru them they expand sending out a shockwave this shock wave is measured and hence giving away the distance of an object below the tranny..So your transducer is tuned to the screen electronics not the cable.. Anyway mine is working just fine and the temp is also fine. The cable was 5 meters now 500mm. What my mate the sparky did is cut the cable and rejoin the 4 wires {alto there were 5, only use 4} Shrink wrap the wires intervidually after soldering them. And he said it was important to solder the wire protective shielding coating too.
Im no expert so im more than open to discussion on this ..
From what i have red on this subject, on product web sites it says not to shorten them, They suggest to buy a shorted cabled transducer off them ..Unsure on that one .
Steve

[ELM]

Don't quote me on it but I have read and was also told that the main issue with shortening transducer cables is not the cutting/soldering, its more about removing the protective sheath that the wires are wrapped in, if they are exposed in anyway then the final results are not displayed as well. I can only assume that is why your sparky stated

And he said it was important to solder the wire protective shielding coating too.

, so if that has been done correctly, then all should be good. Hope you also sealed any new joins extremely well, if any moisture gets in, the wires will quickly disintegrate. Good luck with it, now get out and mark up some reef and bag a few.

[4x4yak]

Yeah Elm. Each wire is intervidually heat shrinked then 1 layer over them and a second longer layer of heat shrink over the lot .So should be fairly well insulated against water. Especially considering what salt water and 12 volts is like .But on the other hand i dont even have my battery out of the elements all i do is keep the terminals fully lubed up with copeius amounts of vasaline and that does the trik.

[Boz]

Why not just wrap up the extra cable with a couple of zip ties?

Would save cuting them and if you ever up dated would be easy to sell the old.

[Digger]

The transducer is basically an antenna and altering the feeder may change the impedance resulting in a less efficient antenna. I suspect that the cable length is important in the scheme of things....you will notice I said "suspect" because I'm not positive.

You would need to contact the supplier to be sure.

Digger

[4x4yak]

Yeah Digger , i have a spare cable . But i haven,t had any trouble with the shortened one any way.

[Digger]

That's good Steve and I guess what I would expect is a slightly reduced efficiency, not total loss of performance.

I'm speaking from a radio background rather than marine electronics although I seem to remember discussions about this from my time working at GME and that is what colours my opinion.

Glad to hear it's OK though.

Dig