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I won some cables at Ribfest and I'm puzzled [message #73073]

Thu, 21 June 2012 11:09

Bill Epstein
Messages: 1088
Registered: May 2009
Location: Smoky Mts. USA

Illuminati (2nd Degree)

Towards the end of the afternoon one of the guys comes to me and says write down your contact info we're about to have the door prize drawings. 20 minutes later I find out I won the biggie, a 3' pair of ICs by Darwin Cables, made by a fella I met there, Bill Magerman.

He told me they're based upon the idea that air is the best dialectric and so are very small gauge wire in what looks to be 1/4" PTFE tubing, nicely finished and terminated.

I took'm home and cook'd them for 50 hours then gave a listen and wrote a review you can find on AA. Now it's 50 hours and many album sides after that and I still can't figure out how one out of a total of three ICs in the loop can make such a difference. I'm guessing this is 26 or even 28 ga. silver wire and the next one in the chain. from pre-amp to amp, is 16 ga copper.!

The bass is the most articulate I've ever heard from my system, especially after setting up the subwoofers, and the soundstage is worlds better. On some recordings, the treble is "hotter" than I recall which may be the character of silver or maybe it's the recording.

So what's going on here? How can one of three wires, four, if you count the 20' speaker cables, trump all the others?

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Re: I won some cables at Ribfest and I'm puzzled [message #73076 is a reply to message #73073]

Thu, 21 June 2012 12:18

GarlandB
Messages: 27
Registered: July 2009
Location: Natick, Massachusetts

Chancellor

Hi Bill,

I'm sure you picked up on some of the threads about using small gauge magnet wire as speaker wire. I find I have the exact same reaction to using 26 to 30 AWG magnet wire as speaker wire on my 4 pis: somewhat exaggerated treble but great articulation in the bass with good bass extension as well. I find that the treble is clean and very responsive to upstream circuit changes. I've also used 32 awg silver in teflon spaghetti tubing ICs to good effect but they are pretty darn fragile. I also think I prefer the sound of copper, what ever that is; maybe a warm glow to the midrange.

Garland

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Re: I won some cables at Ribfest and I'm puzzled [message #73078 is a reply to message #73076]

Thu, 21 June 2012 13:09

tom-m
Messages: 56
Registered: December 2009
Location: Texas

Baron

Garland,
When you use 26 ga wire for the speakers, is that multiple runs, or just one 26 ga wire?

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Re: I won some cables at Ribfest and I'm puzzled [message #73086 is a reply to message #73078]

Thu, 21 June 2012 14:41

GarlandB
Messages: 27
Registered: July 2009
Location: Natick, Massachusetts

Chancellor

Hi Tom,

I've used both: single bi-wire runs and bi-wire with single to the tweeter, dual to woofer. -No discernable difference. I should say that this is with low power amplifiers, 3 watt tube amps or 12 to 50 watt class T digital amps.

G.

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Re: I won some cables at Ribfest and I'm puzzled [message #73090 is a reply to message #73086]

Thu, 21 June 2012 19:09

Bill Epstein
Messages: 1088
Registered: May 2009
Location: Smoky Mts. USA

Illuminati (2nd Degree)

I'm thinking about some runs of silver hot and copper magnet wire return, run through 1/4 or 3/8" teflon tube. Handmade has good prices on silver wire, better than Toback and then Percy for the Teflon.

You might try the cheesy Switchcraft RCAs that hold the wire really well. Used in the White Lightning project you can Google.

Right now, tho' I'm up to me ears in projects that I accumulated before I retired and I've run out of excuses. I finally did a good chunk of re-chassis-ing and re-wiring the Aikido pre-amp UPS trashed on it's way back from Steve Brown 2 years ago. I sent it to him 'cause it had a teeny hum I just couldn't fix myself. Sure as heck didn't hum after the Brown Truck guys finished with it Laughing