Solid wire ribbon or other slim cable that'll work with RJ connector?

Other Hardware General Electronics
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I have an existing patch cable with 6 wires that has a 3 pin XLR on the end, where only 3 of the wires are used. I need to pigtail off the other 3 wires within the XLR, like this... image

The original cable functionality has to stay as is and I don't want to have to disassemble everything as I have a lot of these I'll need to do this for. Otherwise I'd change to a different kind of connnector and make a special Y cable.

For simplicity, I'm trying to find some kind of 3 wire cable that is small enough to fit within the strain relief of the XLR connector. At the other end it will need to work with an RJ45/11/12 connector (22-24AWG). I was able to slide in 3 x 22AWG wires I pulled out of a 4 wire phone cable. This works for both ends, but I need to run these about 40' and I don't want loose wires. Nor do I want to have to space out shrink wrap to hold it together. It will inevitably get snagged. The old style phone cable that is flat has a fairly thick cover and unfortunately didn't fit. I'll need about 250' of this solution to start with. Then more later.

The phone cable I pulled wires out for testing is about 3mm outside diameter. I was able to force this in but it took a great deal of effort and very much strained the cable cover and wires in the process. I has some 4 pin 22 AWG ribbon cable intended for LED/RGB extension cables that have about a 1/16" thickness. This didn't work for two reasons... first because it was stranded wire, it had no stiffness to it and would bunch up while attempting to insert it. Secondly. the cover over the wire is too thick to fit in an RJ connector. Alpha Wire has an EcoCable Mini product and its 26/28 AWG sizes are smaller than 3mm, but I have a suspicion that those smaller wire sizes will be problematic with an RJ connector.

Any ideas anyone?

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Will audio signals such as microphone be on part of those wires. Those connectors were designed to have only one round wire inserted in them. You will have to look around for thin wire. The ribbon cable wire may work, but it is not very rugged. I would consider placing a small box on the cable before the XLR and make your connections there. You may also be able to do it with just shrink tubing if you are careful.

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I've used neutrik XLR's and they have more room at the strain relief. These come with an XLR already, and I didn't want to get into replacing them all. Rugged won't matter, but it needs to be stiff to slide in. So, yes I'm looking for a small cable of some sort... it exists, I'm sure, I just haven't found it yet.

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That is good advice.

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Except that it would involve disassembling (unsoldering) the existing cable, which I explained I didn't want to do.

I'm also considering sliding the XLR casing back, slicing open the cable about 3 inches, carefully cutting thru the outer shield, pulling out the 3 wire bundle I need, pulling that back thru the XLR casing and strain relief, soldering on my pigtail to those wires outside the XLR casing/strain relief, sliding on 4:1 shrink tube (which should fit over the XLR connector) to cover the sliced cable, heating that, then sliding the XLR casing back up and screwing it back together. This would be a lot cleaner than adding a box on... But this is also a lot more work than finding a cable that'll fit in.

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