Eichmann Bullet RCAs - Copper or Silver?

[KT]

Hi,

I'm interested in trying out the Eichmann Bullet plugs for my interconnects.

Budget is important to me at the moment, so I was curious if the silver plugs are worth the extra money over the copper. The copper seems like a much better value, so if the performance is close I'll spring for those.

I'd love to hear anyone's experiences if you've used both.

As for silver, I've heard mixed reviews of using it in the audio chain ranging from "bright and harsh in the treble," to "mellow and relaxed."

My own experience using silver wire is that it imparted a softer, more relaxed, and buttery sound to the music. This was using a short run of 18ga. wire for the speaker cables. Also, I used a short length of Kimber Silver Streak in a SET amp to connect the RCAs to the input board and that 5" run yielded the same results.

Just curious whether the silver Eichmanns make that much of a difference in a real-life application.

TIA,
KT

[pburke]

the copper plugs are extremely good, but silver is better, especially if you are building silver ICs and have silver RCA jacks. Otherwise I doubt you're going to get much of a boost over the copper version. At twice the price, you probably won't see twice the sound.

the key about these plugs is the low mass approach, and the copper version delivers so well that WBT went to clone the idea in their nextgen plugs.

Eichmann plugs are somewhat fragile - it took mea few sets of ICs to figure out the best way to secure them to cables (have a lot of heat shrink in multiples sizes), so that the connection to the plug would not be broken a few days later by handling the cable. However, with proper contruction, it really works well. They do not work well with very stiff cables that will move inside the bullet plug when the cable is bent.

To me these are really the alternative to direct connection (no jack/no plug - IC hardwired to at least one component)

Oh - and that talk about silver being bad - those are people who just don't want to hear the bad parts of their system. Silver doesn't "make things bright" - it just lets you hear what's there.

Instead of muffling the bad sounding DAC with Copper or whatever is not right in the system, at least start with decent cables. Silver sounds great once the overall system delivers.

Peter

[fdegrove]

Hi,

Oh - and that talk about silver being bad - those are people who just don't want to hear the bad parts of their system. Silver doesn't "make things bright" - it just lets you hear what's there.

Well put...I couldn't have said it any better.

But it's true, unfortunately I see alot of people bending over backwards to make their system sound the way they like it best while resorting to all kinds of trickery.
Nothing wrong with that if it weren't for the fact that they shouldn't have to use all sorts of overly sweet ear candy the way it is often done.

I can't help but notice that silver goes down well with systems optimized for analogue sources and tubes. Much less so with CD-based systems. A few exceptions nothwithstanding.

As for the Eichmann plugs, I've been using silver RCA for a few years now and, while not Eichmann I'd choose the silver version over the copper ones as silver oxide is still a reasonable conductor and it often sounds better.
Note, better to me means closer to the source, not necessarily more pleasing to my ears.

Worst of all IMHO are those heavy machined jobs a la the old WBTs. Just use them throughout your system and you're bound to notice the harshness these impinge on the sound.

For some reason (Rhodium?) the Cardas RCAs don't seem to have this effect.

Just my 2 cents,

[zagisrule!]

How much do they cost and where are they available?





-Matt

[Peter Daniel]

You can find them here: http://www.partsconnexion.com/catalog/connectors.html

A friend of mine is using a silver version and he's very happy with it.