Hi Bear,
Still, I like to go back to the big picture and what is surrounding the signal's travels as it moves from point A to point B. Somehow I'm having trouble understanding how a few milliohms can make that much of a difference when the loading is around 50 K ohms. One thing that bears some thought is that with the load capacitance, silver wire will not be damped like copper will be. Much lower energy loss may allow some HF resonant stuff to happen. Still, there are those external interconnects that can help damp everything out for us if we're lucky.
The condition of the head shell pins (to the tonearm) and connectors for the cartridges are another often neglected problem area. I don't think they need to be soldered (which has trashed cartridges in the past), but merely cleaned and tensioned. If they are cheap connectors, lose them for new better quality ones. Often, some attention to these details will completely transform the sound quality. I guess that means that problems should be fixed before we start changing stuff and coming to conclusions.
-Chris
Yes, I'm pretty sure somewhere you may have!
I was thinking that as I posted, but I didn't really want to go there. Can you imagine that topic splitting along that line as well?
You know? That may explain why some systems sound ... so rough - ya know?
Still, I like to go back to the big picture and what is surrounding the signal's travels as it moves from point A to point B. Somehow I'm having trouble understanding how a few milliohms can make that much of a difference when the loading is around 50 K ohms. One thing that bears some thought is that with the load capacitance, silver wire will not be damped like copper will be. Much lower energy loss may allow some HF resonant stuff to happen. Still, there are those external interconnects that can help damp everything out for us if we're lucky.
The condition of the head shell pins (to the tonearm) and connectors for the cartridges are another often neglected problem area. I don't think they need to be soldered (which has trashed cartridges in the past), but merely cleaned and tensioned. If they are cheap connectors, lose them for new better quality ones. Often, some attention to these details will completely transform the sound quality. I guess that means that problems should be fixed before we start changing stuff and coming to conclusions.
-Chris
I use cotton covered copper litz wire from Vic, just like the guy in post two. I joint it at the bottom of the arm pillar into Van Damme ProPatch Classic. Sounds great and all my arms are done like this. Don't worry about a couple of soldered joints, there are loads of them in your phono stage and preamp and just about everywhere else. The ProPatch is about a quid a metre and the same for the Neutrik plugs.
Copper Litz wire.
I was looking to replace the tonearm cables in my Dual 1019, and was getting a lot of conflicting information as far as sound quality is concerned.
I was almost drawn into the hype for silver wire.
I was looking at the silver plated, and solid silver. According to the listening impressions I've read in this thread (and others) the silver will tend to be a bit tighter in the low frequency spectrum, and will tend to have better detail in the high frequencies. To some listeners this is desirable, but I like a warm, harmonious tone, and a full, well rounded bass. I would have been rather disappointed if I had installed the silver wire to discover that the overall sound was thinner and more high frequency oriented.
I know there's probably no scientific reason why one wire should sound different than any other, but I trust the opinions of those who have made these observations, so I went with the copper Litz wire.
I ordered it on ebay from a seller in the UK for about $9.
This seller also has a website of their own.
isokinetik.co.uk
I've not been to the site, but it was printed on the packaging for the wire kit.
The kit has 5 meters of 30 conductor copper litz wire, 4 gold plated cartridge clips, silver solder, and color coded heat shrink tubing.
The wire is really easy to work with, and is remarkably flexible.
As far as the sound quality is concerned, all I can say is "Wow".
The improvement was apparent right away.
I would highly reccommend this kit to anyone looking to rewire their tonearm.
I'm mainly posting because I wanted to thank the members of the diy audio community for sharing their knowledge.
Thank's guys.
Chris.
I was looking to replace the tonearm cables in my Dual 1019, and was getting a lot of conflicting information as far as sound quality is concerned.
I was almost drawn into the hype for silver wire.
I was looking at the silver plated, and solid silver. According to the listening impressions I've read in this thread (and others) the silver will tend to be a bit tighter in the low frequency spectrum, and will tend to have better detail in the high frequencies. To some listeners this is desirable, but I like a warm, harmonious tone, and a full, well rounded bass. I would have been rather disappointed if I had installed the silver wire to discover that the overall sound was thinner and more high frequency oriented.
I know there's probably no scientific reason why one wire should sound different than any other, but I trust the opinions of those who have made these observations, so I went with the copper Litz wire.
I ordered it on ebay from a seller in the UK for about $9.
This seller also has a website of their own.
isokinetik.co.uk
I've not been to the site, but it was printed on the packaging for the wire kit.
The kit has 5 meters of 30 conductor copper litz wire, 4 gold plated cartridge clips, silver solder, and color coded heat shrink tubing.
The wire is really easy to work with, and is remarkably flexible.
As far as the sound quality is concerned, all I can say is "Wow".
The improvement was apparent right away.
I would highly reccommend this kit to anyone looking to rewire their tonearm.
I'm mainly posting because I wanted to thank the members of the diy audio community for sharing their knowledge.
Thank's guys.
Chris.
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