Home Tweakers' Asylum

Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

Re: You're first to question Eichmann, what's this?

Hello Bart
The method was really semi-scientific; first I tried several connectors with the same interconnect, in three different systems.
After all three of us agreed that Vampire was the best overall connector, I made several different cables and geometries, all with Vampire 800C: copper coax, silver coax, silver braided within teflon tubes, hybrid copper/silver with teflon tubes.
Sources were Audio Analogue, CAL, BOW ZZ-Eight and Rega CDPs plus my Linn Sondek turntable.
Speakers were Thiel, Vandersteen, Revel and Von Schweikert.
Amplification was a mix of tube preamp (DIY Berman) a transformer volume control and excelent SS amps (Etalon, BEL 1001 and Pathos).
I insisted with the Eichman plugs because they were cheaper than Vampire, looked nicer and were very easy to solder.
I tried them with AWG 22 pure copper, AWG 32 silver coax and silver ribbon cables. I heard the same discontinuity in all those configurations. It sounds very impressive in the beginning, but IMS, for my music, it ain't natural.
I think I gave the connectors a fair chance. Anyway this is very subjective.

BTW I invested about $500 in plugs to reach these conclusions. I recovered my investment by selling the cable prototypes to friends.
I usually lent to my friends a pair of identical ICs, one with Eichman plugs, the other with Vampire 800CB.
None of the cables with Vampire plugs were returned, I still have a couple of cables with Eichman in the closet.

In summary, I think that my experiments were conducted fairly, however, there is no accounting for taste. For example, the french are known to like bright speakers, Americans love lots of bass and detail, it is well known that the british tend to make smooth, polite sounding speakers, perfect for chamber music.
Maybe brazilians are deaf due to loud samba during Carnival ?

The jury is still out on WBT's top line crimp style RCA, I will receive a new set in a few days ($100 OUCH!!!).

Best wishes



This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Kimber Kable  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups


You can not post to an archived thread.