Duelund Tinned Copper Speaker Cables


Happy post Thanksgiving to all.

I recently read an intriguing comment on a rather old school product; Duelund Tinned Copper speaker cables.  I have used Luna tinned copper interconnects with good results in terms of tone and timbre.

I wonder if the Duelund speaker cables would also offer good tone and timbre and a sense of realism.  They seem rather simple in design and are devoid of some of the newer cable features ( ie insulation and complex geometries etc) but the reviews would suggest they excel nonetheless.

I wonder if anyone has any direct experience with them?

As always thanks for your insights.

mdrone

The Duelund tinned copper speaker cables were introduced as a result of the popularity of folks using NOS Western Electric tinned copper cables, which garnered a following after being written about by Jeff Day in his blog for Positive Feedback a few years ago.  Mr. Day interviewed Shirokazu Yazaki and others of the Japanese SPEC Corporation that used the WE wire, which they believed provided a desirable "natural sound."

Based on Mr. Day's emphatically positive response to using the WE wire, many started building interconnects, speaker cables, and power cords from the tinned copper WE wire.  Sweden's SUPRA Cables have been using tinned copper wire for years and TWL's American Series speaker cables and power cords are made from tinned copper WE wire, as were Mojo Audio's original power cords.  The tin coating was advertised to reduce the sonic effects of current jumping between wire strands in stranded copper wire, supposedly resulting in a smoother sound.  Of course, WE's purpose of using tin-coated wire was to reduce oxidation/corrosion.

Some would summarize the sound as being musical and a little midrange-concentric with smooth high frequencies and a full'ish rounded bass presentation.  You may also want to look at the tinned copper in cotton wire offered by Jupiter Condenser Company, which offers the wire as a twisted pair cable in either 16 or 12 gauge.  Yazaki-san of SPEC Corportion has endorsed the Jupiter wire.   Many also like the sound of SUPRA Cables, for the same reasons.

Lots of choices and a lot of discussion on line as posted by @lak

PS  I forgot to mention that I rewired my speakers entirely with this wire.  My speaker cables are stil woven kimber style but might make some from duelund soon.

Jerry

So, how do these cables sound?

Are they truly mid-range centric with a more golden tone ( as suggested by some)?

No cable will totally transform the sound of a system, IMO. I have made quite a few cables with both the WE wire and with the Duelund wire, and a few with the Jupiter wire, and IME they are similar to what people post - sweet but not super-extended highs, full, rich-sounding mids, and rounded yet full bass. They are overall coherent but are not always my favorite type of cable for every application. I still like multiple, small gauge, OCC solid core copper wire slightly better for speaker cables, and I use factory made (bulk) OCC stranded wire cables for ICs. I do like the WE wire for large gauge power cords and I made a couple at 7awg to feed my high powered mono amps. Careful here as the WE wire has a plastic liner inside of the cotton and are suitable for power cables while the Duelund copper in cotton would not be. I also believe the WE or Duelund wire sounds pretty good as speaker cables but I am not as positive about how they sound as ICs. That’s the best I can do to describe what I hear. Good luck.

BTW, typo below, which you caught - mid-centric not mid-concentric 😑

Given all the variables, it’s not really possible to say what a pair of speaker cables will do in your system, in your room. In my opinion, gear and tube swaps would have greater impact as tone controls than speaker wire.

In the case of this tinned wire, it’s a cheap experiment if the rest of your system is nearly “there”.