Speaker Jumper Cables Revisited

I recently moved the crossovers external on my speakers.  In doing this I replaced all internal wiring with Duelund DCA 12 awg for bass drivers and 16 awg elsewhere. 

I replaced all speaker binding posts.  Of course the speaker binging posts are now on the crossover box instead of the speaker.  I took out a pound of copper in Cardas binding posts.  Consistent with the "low mass" theory of wiring, I try not to put large chunks of conductors (usually speaker binding posts) in the signal path.  I made my own binding posts from high conductivity copper machined into a tube of the same cross-sectional area as the conductor.  I use bfa style "banana" plugs. 

I did have 2 pairs of cardas posts designed for bi wiring so you needed jumpers if you didn't bi-wire.  Now I have one set.  no jumpers.  Jumpers just add to the un-necessary mass of conductor that I'm trying to eliminate.

Bottom line, if I had a speaker with 2 sets of posts I'd not use a jumper.  I'd take them both out.  Hook both internal wires to the same pair of low mass binding posts. 

If you don't want to make your own, KLEI makes low mass connectors.

jerry 

@erik_squires got it.

OP:  Probably not. Haven't seen them in ages, still, worth looking into.  The original drivers were held back by the caps.

@erik_squires are you referencing the newer Diamond 12 series for the cap upgrade?

The diamonds are a great example of a speaker worth modding.  The original tweeter caps really hold that speaker back.  Even modest upgrades like the Mundorf MKP caps are amazing. 

that is really surprising!  I never would have thought to do that with fully bi-wired speaker set-ups.

Yup — me nether.  Coulda bowled me over with a feather. 

BTW, that’s really interesting about the new designer — I had no idea.  That significantly more performance has apparently been achieved and assuming they’re still priced in the same ballpark that’s quite an achievement in and of itself.  But what’s maybe even more impressive still is that they were able to make the cabinets more inert at the same time, which I have to think not only adds significantly to manufacturing costs but also adds weight and thus higher shipping costs.  And as we know, cabinets can be a large part of a speaker’s overall cost and price.  Again, very impressive, and thanks for the additional info!

@soix that is really surprising!  I never would have thought to do that with fully bi-wired speaker set-ups.  I am cross connecting the speaker cables on the back of the Wharfedales - positive lead to the positive tweeter terminal - and the negative lead to the negative mid/woofer terminal - and then jumping both negative and positive terminals with the after market jumpers.  This sounds better to me (getting similar to the results you get with jumping bi-wired speakers) than connecting both leads to either the mid/woofer terminals or the tweeter terminals - although those connections each have their own sound signature.

As for the Wharfedale Diamond 12 line - they have a new designer, Karl-Heinz Fink (kind of the designer de jour for many different brands and lines today), and the speakers are so much more capable than the old Diamond 8's I have owned for about 20 years, it is not even funny.  With the good jumpers in place, they are WOW good.  For one thing, the cabinets are almost completely inert when rapped with knuckles.  The dynamic envelope for things like drum hits and their spatial capabilities are way out of proportion with their cost. 

kn

Great post.  Always thought highly of Wharfedale Diamonds, especially at their very reasonable price points, so nice to hear some confirmation of this. 

Thought I’d share my experience with jumpers that’s a bit of a different use case but made a meaningful improvement in my system so thought it worth mentioning again.  When I was reviewing some Stereovox cables years ago Chris Sommovigo (RIP) highly suggested I try his jumpers using bananas in addition to the shotgun bi-wire cables I was already using with spades.  Suffice it to say I was pretty skeptical, but considering the source I gave it a try and so glad I did!  The two main benefits I heard right away was better imaging with better perceived clear space between the images — kinda like what you hear when the noise floor drops with other equipment improvements if that makes sense — and the other obvious benefit was notably quicker, tighter bass.  I won’t say these were night and day differences, but they were important and significant nonetheless, and the jumpers remain in place today and I won’t listen without them such is the level of improvement if that says anything.  So if you’re currently bi-wiring I’d encourage you to at least try or demo some reasonably-priced jumpers (my cables are Acoustic Zen so don’t think sticking to the same brand or spending $$$ may be necessary in this application) and see if you get meaningful improvements.  Hey, in the scheme of upgrades/tweaks in this hobby this one could well be one of the more cost effective out there.  Just FYI and FWIW.

Thread update.  based on the success using the $11.00 jumpers, I took a deeper dive into off brand jumpers and found a pair of twisted, thick format supposedly silver plated OCC jumpers with supposedly rhodium plated copper spades.  These were like $40 online.  They are super stiff and difficult to bend into place, but once broken in they sound noticeably better than the flat ribbons with the gold plated spades.  I am stopping here at jumpers costing over 10% the list cost for the speakers.  But these little Wharfedale Diamond speakers are a tremendous value and sleeper that only really shined at full potential when I dumped the stock metal plate jumpers.  Highly recommended upgrade.

Quality jumpers are the only way to go. No need to spend a lot unless you want to match your speaker cables. Either way, just make sure they're well made.

All the best,
Nonoise

Thanks for documenting your experience. Certainly will encourage others to experiment.

I have some good quality jumpers on my Sonus Faber Amati Traditional. Unfortunately I had put them in the system when I was doing something else and did not carefully assess heir impact.