Source for High Quality wire

[pjpoes]

I was wanting to do some experimenting with wire, along with just needing some around. I just finished a project for my analogue front end that involved rewiring my turntable with all silver wire in the 33 guage range, run straight to my phono preamp, and then I made a nice set of silver braided interconnects to go from the phono preamp to my tube amp. I loved the look of them, the sound seems much improved, but the cost was obviously quite high. For that project I used 99.999% pure silver, I believe, from Hand Made Electronics. I bought teflon tubing from another source, and used a different softer poly insulation for the tonearm, I think polyvinyl maybe.

For my next little project I thought I would rather work with copper, but unfortunatly getting uncoated copper is very difficult. I was wondering if anyone knew of a good source of copper wire that doesn't have any sort of varnish insulation, like magnet wire does, and is of high purity. I found 99.99% pure through jewlery and hobby places, but wasn't sure if it was good to use. I would love to try some long crystal copper wire, but haven't seen much that isnt being marketed to audiophiles at a price premium.

Also, has much been done with copper ribbon for wire. I saw a lot of places seem to have tried it, some swear by it like Mapleshade. I can get copper ribbon, said to be 99.9% and I think I even saw some 99.99% pure as well, but wasn't sure if it would not be of the same grade as is commonly used in audio. Its cheap enough I thought it might be nice to experiment with.

[KBK]

Largely speaking, any copper available to day is considered OFC and at ~99.99% purity.

This means the copper rolls, like from a glass house for working with stained glass, will be of high purity. Their grain quality and direction will be all wrong, likely. But not nessessarily so.

Combine that with 'extreme grade' painter's masking tape for interconnect and buffered with duct tape* for speaker wire use, and you're good to go.

It is reasonable to assume that with a few hours labour and $25, one can achieve a very serious level of sonic fidelity.


*The painter's tape keeps the adhesives from the duct tape off the copper (when constructing speaker wires), and provides excellent damping all on it's own for the interconnects. Both the duct tape and the painter's tape should be 3M's best. This combination can last years. The duct tape is clear in color. The painter's tape is tan, not green.