Jumpers for Spendors

I would definitely recommend replacing those stock jumpers. I had fatwyre.com make a pair of jumpers for my Spendor 1/2Es and my results were very good (and not too expensive). I am using Tara Labs Space & Time Phase II speaker cables, which are rather modest in price, and I had Fatwyre make jumpers out of the same cable.

The new jumpers made a major improvement in upper frequency reproduction. I should mention that it took many hours for the jumpers to settle - so don't expect great result right out of the gate. IMHO, spending $150 on jumpers to match your speaker cables will be money well spent.

I have a pair of 1/2e speakers and when I purchased my Alpha Core Goertz MI-2 Veracity speaker cables I also purchased their copper jumpers ($20). I noticed an improvement over the brass jumpers, but I'm not sure I'd spend $150 on this.

A friend of mine with Spendor S-8s hates the jumpers that come with the speaker and insists on using high quality jumpers made out of speaker cable. A dealer does the same with all of the speakers that come with double binding posts.

My intellect tells me that those thin mystery-metal jumpers should sound bad, but my ears tell me that they're indistinguishable from cables. And, I've done all the swaps, tests, etc.

I own the S8e and have on order Cardas CLJP copper jumper plates due to arrive soon. BTW my speaker cables are Cardas too.

Good Luck!*>)

Hey Kw6,
How does the Cardas jumpers sound? Have you tried
bi-wiring your spendors? Currently I am using the soundstring cables on the tweeter section of the biwire. And for the woofer section I am using the audioquest forest but I am looking to upgrade these. Do you have any suggestion? I though about using cardas jumpers?

I have Harbeth speakers I am using Audience JUMPERS AND SPEAKER WIRES and love them

When using jumpers does it matter whether the speaker wire
goes on the top or the bottom post of the speakers?

Thomasjrt - It does not matter, and you can certainly try them both ways to determine whether you can hear a difference. I tried mine both ways and could not distinguish an audible change, so I connect my speaker cables to the bottom posts and jump to the top ones, as this is more practical.

Thomasjrt - I guess it comes down to which driver you want the sonic signature of the jumper to be applied to.

I'm a dealer, with quite a bit of experience with jumper cables.

It can matter whether you hook up to the bottom or top. Not only is there additional cable, but binding posts and connectors will have their likely detrimental effect on transparency - I've found it to be quite noticable at times when swapping the hookups and comparing.

Usually my preference is to hook the main cable up to the midrange driver. In a 2 way speaker, that would mean jumping to the tweeter. I've found the tweeter can be too forward otherwise. In 3 way speakers, it's usually jumped from the mid/tweeter to the bass, as mid/tweeter is more sensitive to loss of transparency than bass.

Another way to play it was once suggested on the Eichmann (Bullet Plug manufacturer) website. Try putting one polarity hooked from low to high, and the other from high to low. I tried this once and noticed improved balance and coherence beteen drivers.

Experimentation is the best way to find out what sounds best in your particular system, but keep the above concepts in mind.

Best regards,
Jeff Delman
Value Audio
www.value-audio.com