$10 / foot speaker wire

Sean, Dekay,

my limited experience with rat shack rca's as follows:
With bulk kimber PBJ, I ran one set with the cheapo $3/ 6pak, and then decided to do the rest in their gold plated. The cheap ones were on my tuner. I do have some teflon tape holding the ground connection tighter, as the looseness there is otherwise egregious. I eventually switched things around and found out that the cheap ones sound much better than the awful sounding gold plated ones, and have converted some of them. So now I am wondering about getting some Cardas silver or other expensive ones, if the sound improvement would be as great as the difference between cheapo and rat plated. Is it?

Dekay,-- Thanks for insights. Until I saw your initial post I almast disbelieved my own exerience.

I used the cheap rca's that came 3 red and 3 black, in small plastic bag. I think they may be the same on the inside but with a different useless plastic jacket. I don't feel the need to shell out $33x4 for an upgrade unless it really makes a difference. Its not as though I have a $10,000 set up anyway, I'm plugging them into an old dyna pas pre-amp. Nonetheless, the fools gold plated ones wrecked the sound, and that's what got me thinking. That's one reason I was thinking of staying away from gold plate altogether and trying silver. (Have you listened to the bullets?)

If less is more, then the cheapo rat shack rca's + teflon tape must win the prize, they seem to sound ok, so I think I'm staying put for now. What are these things made of anyway? Nickel plated steel?

Dekay,
How much of the outer metal housing do you cut off? I can see ditching the strain relief tab, and soldering the ground to the outside of the ring, but if the ring is cut back, it must be hard to keep the plug intact? I was just using them pretty much straight, but without the plastic cover. Still not much metal mass there.