Peter Q at Audio Note UK has always been very responsive to my emails, give him a shout. |
Audio Federation Inc. is the US (North America) distributor as
listed on the AN website. I have dealt with Neli and she is great to deal with. Contact her at
mike&neli@audiofederation.com |
also, have you tried Nick Gowan?
http://tsound.com/ |
I purchased some from a company in the UK direct to my home in the US. Just google "Audio Note silver tonearm wire", or something like that. Finding it was not a problem. Trying to use the stuff IS a bit of a problem; it is amazingly thin silver Litz wire (a good news/bad news type of thing) and therefore very easy to damage. I am in the midst now of deciding whether I dare to try to thread it through a braided copper shield; the cut ends of the metal braid are very likely to tear the very fragile insulation, if not also to break one or more of the leads. Some others whom I trust swear by the Ikeda silver tonearm wire, which looks to be easier to work with. |
Thank you everybody, the list is there, my fault, I just didn't see the 'if' in
'if not mentioned below' on the AN site!
I never did play with silver wiring before sticking to the idea that the copper would give more 'presence', I am going to try silver this time after I looked over what other people saying here (I am gonna do 'copper backup' though :)
Best Regards
Anatoliy |
Lewm, have you considered running it first through small diameter Teflon tubing, as used to insulate capacitor leads, then through the copper braid? That is what I did with my continuous run tonearm wiring (except for the short section where it needs to be flexible, of course). It works very well that way. |
Frogman - what was the teflon tube diameter? I didn't work with teflon much. So I guess the teflon you put just INSIDE the tube, correct? What did you use after that and ouside of the arm base to the pre-amp? Same teflon or something else, would be intersting to know. Thank you |
I purchased m Teflon tubing from Michael Percy(.com). He has Teflon tubing as thin as 22 gauge. I think I used 20 gauge. AN wire is very thin so even the 22 gauge will work, the problem is that the thinner the tubing, the more difficult it is to run the wire through it.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by "putting the teflon inside the tube". To be clear: the tube itself is constructed of clear Teflon. The tonearm wires go inside the Teflon tube. |
Audio Note is not Audio Note. Identity relationship is very
deceitful. Ie the objects and the names are different things. Audio Note UK was importer of Audio Note from Japan but annexed the tradename 'Audio Note' for the UK and probable Europe. Kondo san was devasteted by such behaviour
of his UK dealer but was not able to do anything to correct this injustice. Consequently Audio Note wire is not the same as Audio Note wire. Audio Note Japan claims special properties for their silver qua purity and age. I am sure that insulation, thickness, etc. are also different. Anyway the price is certainly different.
Regards, |
Frogman, Good idea. I have done things like that before, or tried to. In some sense it is trading one problem (threading the fine and fragile wire through a braided shield) for another (threading the fine and fragile wire through teflon tubing). But the latter is probably easier to do. |
Lew, what I do is to solder the tinned end of the wire or twisted pairs of wires to the end of a length of thin solid core picture hanging wire which will comfortably slide through the entire length of the teflon tubing, and I pull it through. No danger of damage with reasonable care. |
Nandric is correct. I found this out when I was sourcing my AN wire a while back. My concerns were put to rest when I received and installed the AN UK wire. The Kondo wire may be superior (at about 3-4 times the cost), but the UK wire is the best I have ever used. Far better to my ears than Cardas, Discovery or VDH. |
Frogman - sorry, I should have said 'inside the wand', I mean inside the arm. Or inside the arm just wires and then teflon once you get out of the arm? If this is not to much to ask - if you could share a picture in case you have any of what you did, I don't expect you to disassemble the arm certainly - if you could email me the picture at asmirnov9@homtail.com would greatly appreciate that. Thank you |
Froggie, I do the same, using any fairly stiff solid core wire as a guide for the thin wire.
Nandric, While I have to agree that AN UK is different from AN Japan and that for a while at least the former traded on the very high reputation of the latter, it is also true that in recent years just about everyone knows the difference. The UK products are so much less expensive that it's obvious. Also, the UK products as a rule are not as good nor totally duplicative of what is sold by AN Japan.
But, having said all that, I have also to say that Kondo-san and AN Japan are also guilty of, shall we say, excessive "showmanship". The idea that silver wire, made from a base element that was in the ground possibly since the earth was formed from a cloud of gas, would somehow transmogrify to something more wonderful, if the end product made from it is aged above ground for a few measly years, is just silly, IMO. The idea that ANY amplifier can be worth sums of money in the $150,000 range is equally farcical, but I recognize that AN is not alone in promoting such costly products. I once had the pleasure of listening to both an Ongaku and a Kegon, consecutively on the same day in the same place, driving AN loudspeakers. Each was excellent in its own way (given the cost, I would say "merely" excellent), but I was struck by the fact that they sounded VERY different from each other. IMO, that should not be; there can be only one Nirvana. |
Aspirin Lew. As a medical doctor you should know. Put the
wire on the aspirin and then the soldering iron above both to strip the wire. |
Best idea I have heard or read today. Now to sleep on it. |
'Ubung macht den Meister'( practice makes the master). One
should first practice with a piece of cheap but difficult
(to strip) wire. 'Sleep on it' will not solve the problem. |
Solder pot is the ticket for stripping Litz wire. Unfortunately, that AN stuff is so thin and flexible that it is tricky to dip it into the pot; it wants to bend and float on top due to resistance of the molten solder. |
When my dealer give me the advice to use Aspirin I really
thought to have just heard the worst joke in my life. But
the coincidence was that I just got some very thin silver wire
which become some kind of black lava by any contact
with my (professional!) soldering iron. The Aspirin cooks
the insulation, so to speak ,away. Only two days ago I used
Paracetamol instead to change the tags on my Zeta tonearm.
The Zeta arm wire are the thinest I have ever seen.
Regards, |
Pardon me. I thought you were being humorous about using aspirin, as a cure to the headache of trying to strip and solder very fine wires. |
The Swiss always emphasize that their aspirin is a multifunctional medicine. |
