Looking for really fine cables at really low price
I have been listening to excellent sounding Exemplar exception cables for the last several weeks. While my HFCables are better they are also much more expensive than the below $500 cables.
They offer an excellent sound stage, dynamics, and top to bottom quality sound. Not only are they inexpensive but they are very portable and easy to install.
Rob, just took a look at Shun Mook's Vintage WE IC. Lots-O-money! LOL! I bought lots of parts at Leeds Radio until they moved to the Bronx. Sounds like your father-in-law was a DIYer. As I remember you are going to build a AN Kit 1 right? It would sound great with AN speakers. No worries about synergy between amp and speakers!
Grannyring, I may as well fool around with some DIY WE IC's. I need to buy another 50 feet of this stuff if its still available in a week or so. Regards Jet
RE: Shun Mook. This from their website: "micro tuned by ear-listening"
Does anyone know WTF "micro tuning by ear listening" means? Can I somehow make my modest investment in old wire worth upwards of 50 or 60 times what I paid for it?
Full disclosure:
I recently purchased enough cloth-covered stranded and tinned WE 16 awg on eBay to make a pair of 12' speaker cables. I've got about 50 hours on the wires and so far they perform as described by grannyring and others. Great detail, depth, and "air." I run an excellent MFA tube preamp into a surprisingly good NAD C272 amp into a pair of Magnepan MMG's. My wife with golden ears says the WE are not as full as Grover's speaker cables. Her ability to hear high frequencies is better than mine.
I've been holding off on making some IC's using the Belden, because I first wanted to experiment with a few sets of old IC's, primarily Van den Hul 300S. I've been running Grover's IC's for the past number of years. Early impressions of the Van Den Hul/WE combo are quite favorable.
Jetrexpro, Someone did, Shun Mook has them for sale at the Cable Company, for over $3,000. My wife is from Brooklyn and as a child went to Leeds Radio with her father. Best, Rob
I use the WE wire on the RCA inputs and the outputs and from the output trannys to the binding posts. In my dac and pre I use it on the RCA inputs/outputs, digital in on the dac etc...
All signal wires I can possibly use it! I have not used it for high voltage as it is rated for 300 volts and cloth wrapped.
Grannyring, I wished I lived near you. You could help re-wire my stuff as well as supervise the Cap and resistor changes it my Coincident Dynamo 34SE. Right now it looks like I am going to use vintage Mallory 30/450 and 10/450 to strengthen the power supply, Ohmite Brown Devil Type 90 and Type 20, plus Arizona Capacitors 0.47/600v, either Blue Cactus or Green Cactus. Also re-wire with the WE.
Jet, as Grannyring stated, the Belden needs a little time to settle in, but these work really well with the WE 16ga. But that is also dependent on listening bias. Your speakers are on my short list once I move in to my new home.
Grannyring, There used to be Leeds Radio here in Brooklyn that sold NOS electrical stuff and the whole place had that old electric smell :)) They relocated to the Bronx.
How are you using the WE16ga in your amp, pre and DAC? Regards-Jet
Hi Jet. I had the same experience with the Belden at first. I found they really settled down and became quite natural sounding after more break in. They seemed to mate well with the WE wire in my system. System synergy is most important however.
That WE wire is very special and at under $1.50 foot a great find. This weekend I am going to wire my preamp with it. I already have it in my amp and dac.
Wow the Western Electric 16 gauge speaker cable sounds great! After two days of listening I hear tonality richness and depth at least equal to my Audio Note Lexus but the presentation is quite a bit more clean and direct. This is suprising to me that the cable can be so clean and direct sounding but still have such richness and depth. I was hearing a bit of hi frequency emphasis yesterday but not today. Grannyring, correct, I have enough of this cable to double up or do a single run bi wire. Meaning four 8 ft. runs to each speaker. Nice sounds for sure. It doesn't hurt that the transformer wire is in direct contact with the speaker cable. I only have 24 hours burn in on the Belden so I won't make any firm judgments yet, but a quick listen tonight was disappointing. Not even close to the Kondo interconnects so I'll leave them burning in for a few more days.
64 ft of WE 16 gauge arrived last Wednesday. Love the smell of vintage components!! I made an 8ft bi wire set since my Audio Note AN-Es use bi wire configuration. Bare wire, not terminated per Grannyring's direction. They have been burning in for the last 5 days in my 2nd system in the back room. Will put them in today and see what's up - Jet.
I've assembled IC's as well as speaker cables. I purchased some surplus 12 awg, 18 awg, and 20 awg which were modest monetary investments and which yielded great results. YMMV
The Belden wire starts off bright and within just 20 hours becomes natural sounding and quite nice to listen to. Don't let the initial brightness disturb you. It greatly concerned me at first, but quickly went away. The difference is pretty big on the Belden and far less so with the WE wire.
Steakster - My experience with the speaker cables (I have not doubled them yet) and IC results in a "Yes" to both of your questions. Though these changes are noticeable, they are not significant and, IMO, did not alter the character of the 2 types of wires.
IMO, a more noticeable change for the 16 GA came when I went from copper/gold bananas (amp end only) to no connectors.
Re: the IC's, I am going to make a set with the shield connected at the source end only for a comparison.
07-19-15: Tbg John421, all copper cables would be more conductive, especially if the ends are not soldered on.
It is true that the conductivity of tin is roughly about 6 or 7 times lower than the conductivity of copper. However, to provide a quantitative perspective on that difference in the context of the WE speaker wire, and assuming (as I suspect) that the layer of tin comprises just a small fraction of the cross-sectional area of each strand of the wire, consider that the difference in conductivity and hence resistance between that wire and a hypothetical similar wire made of all copper would be vastly overshadowed if the copper/tin combo were simply made one gauge size larger.
And in many cases the conductivity and resistance of a speaker cable of reasonable gauge won't matter anyway, especially if speaker impedance is not particularly low and cable length is not particularly long.
07-19-15: John421 Would todays tin/copper cables have the same affect as the Western Electric style cables?
Sorry, but I have no idea. And I doubt that anyone else can say with any kind of certainty, unless they have compared the WE with a variety of modern tin/copper cables, and with a variety of speakers and amplifiers.
John421, if you go with something like I have (Supra 3.4W speaker cables), make sure you give them a good 100 hours to break in. Mine were great at 20, even better at 50 and so much better at 100. This applies to all cables (IMHO).
I saw an ad here recently for a pair of Supra 3.4S with only 50 hours on them and if the seller only knew what was in store for him, he would have kept them and then decided if he wanted to keep them or not.
From what I gather here on this thread, it's the formulae of tinned copper stranded wire that works so well, regardless of whether it's NOS or some current brand. As long as it's high quality copper, it shouldn't matter. The technical differences will arise in strand count, gauge, and amp to speaker pairing (that's another whole can of worms). :-)
The Cable Company was advertising Shun Mook Power Cables using, what else, Western Electric wire for about $1,000-$1,500, comparing them to other $5,000 cables for sound quality.
You all peaked my interest with this stuff so I have purchased the wire but I will not be able to make the cables for a few weeks.
I plan to bi-wire by making a star-quad run of the WE 16awg (13 awg aggregate) to connect my MF/HF drivers and a star-quad run of the WE 14awg (11awg aggregate) to connect my LF drivers.
I also have the Belden 8402 coming to make balanced cables using either Vampire or Furutech connectors that I have here. I will probably connect the shield at the source end only and run a separate spiraled ground wire around the outside of the casing.
I will let you know what I hear when it is all done.
Metman, Mikirob is spot on. You must get the Belden ICs in combo with the WE as they are magic together and any hint of that brightness is gone. I agree 100% with your comments on the WE16, but when the IC was added all was perfect.
Metman, Are you using the WE/Belden in combo or something else for interconnect? I'm curious since there seems to be a real synergy between the two. In my system, never bright, really gorgeous tone, upper register of violins spot on, brass likewise.
I tried to wait until I had more hours on the cables before commenting too elaborate now have between 50-100 hours on them. Overall I'm very happy with them but did experience a little brightness in the upper registers but that seemed to have passed and it really only occured on CDs that were a bit bright to begin with. There's a big improvement in all other phases and for the money there are just stupid good. For me what really makes this hobby enjoyable is finding something as inexpensive as these cables are and having them make as big a difference as they do
Experimenting is fun since all systems are different and even sound different to different ears (too much difference?). I just had to crow about my Supras (since they are part of this thread) and how they continually break in and please me to no end.
Intentionally, I didn't listen to all of my favorites and decided to wait until I'd achieve somewhat complete break in. One CD is the soundtrack to 'Game of Thrones'. Period sound with period instruments (or made to sound like). Delicious on the micro level and stupendous on the macro.
I've never heard tympani pound and resonate like this before (and this is a favorite of mine). The inflections by the musicians on the quieter end of the spectrum come through (not so) loud and clear. It's that ability to sift and sort out the delicacies and nuances, timing and tempo, which furthers the enjoyment.
Again, there is no digital bombast of etch and harshness. The only thing different are my ICs (which have more than enough hours to be considered broken in) and these Supra cables. These Supras seem to have opened up that "bottleneck" and released a torrent of musical information but not at the expense of anything natural, anything of ease. Pacing and timing seem almost analogue.
I just hope that you who are experiencing the WE 16ga wires are 'hearing' what I'm hearing.
Maxima95, that is exactly what I did. The improvement is slight and huge. I do like it better however with two runs. Very direct sounding wire and quite lively.
07-09-15: Metman I have a straight run from speakers to amp - no braiding or twisting and it sounds pretty damn good. Will I realize an additional benefit twisting the + and - around each other from speaker to amp?
The main effect of twisting + and - together will be to reduce inductance. (Also, as Mitch2 noted above, there might be some reduction in sensitivity to stray magnetic fields, although his reference was to a star quad configuration which takes that a step further. The consequences of magnetic field/RFI-EMI sensitivity, if any, will be dependent on the design of the particular amplifier, as well as on the characteristics of whatever stray fields may be present in the particular setup). Reducing inductance will reduce the impedance of the cable in the upper treble region (and above). The likelihood of that being audibly significant will depend on the impedance of your speakers in the upper treble region (the lower that impedance, the greater the likelihood of a difference), and on the length of the cable (the longer the cable, the greater the likelihood of a difference, since cable inductance is proportional to length, everything else being equal).
The impedance of many dynamic (box-type) speakers rises significantly in the upper treble region, which reduces the criticality of inductance, although many other such speakers have impedances which remain relatively flat in that region. The impedance of most electrostatic speakers decreases to low values in the upper treble region, which increases the criticality of inductance.
Further complicating the issue, of course, is that in many systems and for many listeners cable behavior that is non-neutral may be subjectively preferable. Meaning in this case a softening of the upper treble that may result from inductance being higher rather than lower.
The bottom line, as is often the case in audio: It all depends :-)
Grannyring - I bi-wire with the WE 16ga and have experienced a similar change in the sound - perhaps not to the degree you have. I did a loose twist every few inches or so.
Did you twist to achieve the doubling of the wires, and then twist both of the doubled bundles?
I now have two runs per pole of the WE wire. I twisted them and put a nice black Tech Flex netting over them. I found one run to sound very good. With burn in however they were a little, just a little , too tilted up in the highs after 50 hours or so. My system is very resolving however so any small change is quickly revealed.
I found two runs provided more base weight and improved overall body and tonal balance. I will report back after the second set has burned in for 50 hours. Thus far a nice improvement in my system vs. just one run of the WE wire.
It's questionable, to me. My Supras run parallel to each other with nary a twist and with barely any separation between them but then, they were designed that way.
I realize it's a completely different make of cable but it's similar in concept so maybe it's not necessary.
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