NOS Western Electric wire used for power cables??

Fuzzbutt17

Actually I live with 4 cats and 2 dogs...all rescues.

Coolness!

One of mine I got from my neice's friend whose cat had kittens. One I got from a rescue shelter. And the other two I adopted as stray/abandoned. Looks like I may be taking on another when my loser neighbor across the street gets booted out of their house. I'm already buying food for it.

One dog. Also a stray/abandoned.

As for the "short debate" I believe we were talking apples and oranges and that is why we disagreed to some extent.

Well, you weren't getting what I was referring to by "higher resistance" that much is certain.

There is no comparison between the way 50 year old NOS wire(meaning NEW old stock as in "like new" vs. "not used")and 50 year old wire in an older home or vintage gear will react.

Nothing I had said regarding shorts had anything specifically to do with your wire, NOS wire, or any other wire in particular. It only related generally to how shorts can occur and cause sufficient heating to potentially cause a fire.

I'd only cautioned previously against using the cloth insulated Western Electric wire for power cords. Your wire's not cloth insulated. It's rubber insulated. While it may have a cloth covering, I consider the primary insulation to be rubber. The wire I was talking about uses cotton as the wire's primary insulation.

After plugging these Mojo power cords into my system, it was a very cool thing to hear musical details come through that weren't there with more expensive power cords. Very cool, indeed. (o:

Cloth insulated WE wire was for low voltage signal, not for AC (as you probably know).

IMHO it also doesn't sound as good with wide bandwidth signal since it was optimized for mid/voice transmission.

The WE speaker wire is about the same. I used it for years with full range speakers but it too is not wide bandwidth and tends to sound a bit cloudy with a rolled off top end.

It can be a good cure for "digititus."

Please keep in mind that I'm speaking in ABSOLUTE terms and that both the silk/enamel covered signal wire as hook up/IC wire and the speaker wire are exceptional values if you get the right "vintage" at the right price.

Much of their popularity was originally based on them being SO inexpensive and music being narrower bandwidth than it is today.

At their current pricing there are much better options IMHO.

Now you know why my company only sells NOS wire power cords and not other products made from NOS wire. I can buy modern wire that sounds better for the same or less $$$ and I can buy all I want rather than hunting around the world for scraps.

Soon enough we'll no longer be making NOS wire power cords since I can barely find 30' of the specific wire I've been using and people that have it for sale want too much for it. I have a good inventory of AC wire but at the rate I'm selling power cords it won't last for too many years.

There are SO many variations of these NOS wires...plated with this or that....shielded with this or that...wax or enamel coated...etc, etc, etc.

I don't recommend people thinking they can simply buy something off of eBay and they are good to go. Most of the wire I've seen for sale on eBay is not the "right" vintage.

Much like with tubes, people hear about "chrome tops" or "black plates" or "halo getter" or whatever and they think they are getting the famous vintage they've read so much about and they are not.

As they say: "Let the buyer beware."

That being said, if anyone wants a "grab bag" of different gauges and types of WE solid core hook up wire I would be happy to sell it to them very cheaply. These were the wires I used for R&D but ended up going with modern wires instead.

For $50 I'll gladly give anyone that wants it a bag of coils of different "vintages" of WE solid core wires that would sell on eBay for 5X that price. You'll be saving me the trouble of listing them individually.

Ben, I think it would be redemptive to educate people on the theoretical advantages of the WE copper processing....

I know only the basics of WE wire manufacture.

High purity copper was DRAWN from a copper rod which results in very long crystal lengths.

The strands were dipped in a molten plating bath. The plating alloy was proprietary and a trade secret. Sort of like the Colonel's herbs and spices (I believe some of the ingredients are a bit different).

There is something about the plating that makes it both non-oxidizing yet conducts almost identical to copper.

The act of dipping in a molten plating bath annealed the copper. Annealing relaxes the crystalline tensions within the copper.

The strands of plated copper were twisted into different gauge bundles.

The bundles were coated with a proprietary polymer insulation. Just because you know the polymer don't believe you know the insulation. An example of this is Polyurethane. The same polymer that is used to protect furniture is used to make Spandex. Hard and clear vs. elastic and white. Both polyurethane.

For added flame retardance and abrasion resistance a cloth cover was put over the polymer insulation.

The result is the best sounding AC wire I have heard short of the custom copper ribbon wire I'm using in my new top-of-the-line power cord.

I've tried EVERY pure copper and plated copper wire I could get my hands on over the past 10+ years and have not found a better sounding copper wire for AC conduction.

Personally I compared it to power cords by companies like Sunyata, Nordost, Kimber, Straight Wire, Transparent, etc. that sold for over $1K. A simple power cord made from this wire and Wattgate basic copper connectors beat all of them by a huge margin.

When I began selling basic power cords on eBay for $100 I knew they would sound better than anything for under $1K.

I had no idea that audiophiles with $30K+ systems would be buying them to put up against $2K5+ power cords.

All my profits went into R&D. We learned that modest Chinese made pure copper plug sets sounded better than not only the Wattage we were using but the most expensive of Furutech, Oyaide, and Kimber plugs.

BTW, I am an OEM Furutech distributor.

We also learned that certain gauges of wire as well as shielding and twisting schema sounded better.

When I say "we" I refer to about half a dozen beta testers with high end systems that sold their $2K-$3K power cords and replaced them with my NOS cords.

I was disabled in 2006 as the result of a car accident. My small power cord business was supposed to be a hobby. A year later I just hired two employees to keep up with the overwhelming demand.

In my formal career I was a product development engineer, a technical consultant, and owned my own computerized embroidery company. Over the years I specialized in computer numerically controlled robotic machinery.

My hobby for over 30 years was DIY audio. I love acoustic music. I found that most "audiophile" products are "pumped up" and distort the music's flow along with the organic tones and timbers. I got into making my own cords and cables because that was the only way I could hear the music I loved.

Apparently there are many others of you out there that feel the same way about the time, tune, organic timbers, and musical flow being more important than EQ, imaging, or the other "attractive distortions" that most audiophile cable/cord companies are selling.

I would just like to close by saying I am no genius and I do nothing original. Apparently I have a good ear and I've simply combined existing technology and components that other companies manufactured to make a more musical product.

The geniuses at WE made this AC wire decades ago as well as developed most of the circuits that audio manufacturers are using to this day. We are all "standing on the shoulders of giants" as they say.

The only real advancements since then were in digital and microchips. Basic electronics hasn't changed all that much.

By all means, if you enjoy DIY, experiment like I did. You will certainly have fun and save $$$.

On the other hand if you want to benefit from my 30+ years of experience then purchase my products. You will certainly save a lot of time and $$$ as well as space in your basement where you keep your "failed experiments."

One last word of caution about NOS wire. Don't fall for the more modern A.I.W. version of the Western Electric AC and speaker wire. This is NOT the stuff that I am using. Now that the word is out, people are pulling this stuff out of the back of their warehouse and selling it all over eBay for 5X what it sold for only a few years ago.

I'm not saying this is a bad sounding AC wire, only that the REAL stuff sells for MUCH more and I haven't found more than 30' of it on eBay in a given month. The guys that have it know what it is and they sell it for much more than $1-$2 per foot like the A.I.W. wire.

Good luck with your DIY projects!