Tito from Macho Nacho Productions recently posted a video showing people some great tips to straighten crimped, or tangled cables. I love his method and the care he takes to make sure too much temperature isn’t applied and that the ends don’t get wet as well. Overall, it’s an awesome video, but I have some things to add:
First, while this is something so obvious it probably doesn’t need to be mentioned (but this is the internet, so I’m going to anyway): Don’t perform this on any frayed or cut cables. The reason Tito took such care to not wet the ends is water can corrode or damage metal components, so if there’s a cut in the cable, water can easily get in. Maybe he mentioned this in the video and I missed it, but I felt like mentioning again isn’t a bad thing.
Next, his idea of how to keep the cables straight while they cool / dry is excellent, but I wanted to add one more: Hanging them. When I clean controllers, after I’m done, I’ll hang them from the console plug side and let the weight of the controller keep tension on the cable. Then after they’re straight, I place the controller inside a box and let the cables dangle out as shown in the picture below.
This is not a perfect method though! First and foremost, if you’re not careful, piling the controllers on top of each other in the box may scratch them. I’ve never personally had this happen as I’m pretty careful, but it’s worth mentioning. Also, since the cables themselves are exposed, they still get dusty, even though the controllers will not. It’s not a big deal for me, as I just run a wet wipe over the cables when they get dusty again…but since the controllers stay clean, it’s a really quick fix.
There’s many “right answers” for this though and I just wanted to share mine, as well as Tito’s! Do whatever works best for you!
