Help with speaker cable for 1st tube set up ....

I Highly reccomend Clarity Wires "emberglow" speaker cable. The whole Clarity lineup was designed around tube amps and is of very high quality and at a good price. The Cables are sold exclusivly in the US at

www.responseaudio.com

Check em out!

Mapleshade Golden Helix ($85 for 8 ft. set) or Double Golden Helix ($280 and worth the difference). The Double Golden Helix wiped out biwired Kimber 8TCs in my tube-based system. You can try them for 30 days free and see what you think. Good luck, whatever you decide. Dave

a great place to start would be a used pair of straightwire
virtuoso (gold if available) works great with tubes. i used them with 3.5 maggies and aronov amps. these cables can always be re-sold they are that good

You don't indicate how long the cables need to be, or whether it will be a single or bi-wire setup, so I am going to assume for the discussion that 10-foot runs will suffice, and that you do NOT need bi-wiring.

On that basis, and given that this is a second system, I suggest that you consider the Alpha-Core Goertz MI2 (or maybe even MI1, given the power output of the amp) cables. They have very low impedance (the MI2 has an impedance of only 2.5 ohms), so they work very well with both tube and solid state amps, not to mention low-impedance speakers.

For more info about Goertz speaker cables, prices, and a list of dealers (you can also order directly from the factory, which will also do the terminations), here's the Web address for Alpha-Core's Goertz speaker cable line:
http://www.alphacore.com/mispeaker.html

The other cable choice which should also work very well in your (second) system is Kimber Kable 4TC or 8TC. These cables do a lot of things well, and have no major deficiencies in performance.