DIY fine silver interconnect review.

Cable Asylum

Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

My system consists of, Wavelength Gemini's/TJ Mesh Plate 45's, Recent Bent Audio NOH transformer based passive preamp, Sony XA777ES SACD/CD player, Mana 4 tier amp stand and single sound base, Audience AU 24 speaker cables, DIY AC cables for all,Dedicated AC circuit with external star grounds (5 eight foot copper rods), Lowther DX-3's in commercially designed Baltic Birch bass reflex cabinets, Fostex 206e's in smaller Birch bass reflex cabinets,B&W Nautalis 805's, a pair of Chartwell LS3/5a's, and finally, various interconnects such as, Van DEn Hul MC Silvers, Vampire Wire Continuous Cast Silver and Copper.
Like many forum members', I have had many years of experience with cables and especially interconnects. I was in the audio bisiness for many years which has given me the opportunity to barrow MANY differnt types of cables over the years. I had come to the conclusion that I deffinately prefered silver to copper cables quite some time ago. I finally found the best of the best about 12 years ago when I brought home two pairs of Van Den Hul MC Silver interconnects. These are a very high quality silver plated copper coixial design that continues to retail for $2,200 per meter. I continued to try various competators but none displaced the Van Den Hul's until two years ago. I decided to try the new Vampire Wire Continuous Cast Silver cables because I was slightly intriqued by the single crystal theory. Well, they were the first cables in my experience to offer more of what I liked with the VDH cables. They were even smoother yet more detailed and ofered more of a "you are there" life to male and female vocals. They also offered a less forward perspective which resulted in better front to back layering of images. The low frequencies ,within the capabilities of my speakers, were very similar. I still own the VDH cables ,but, they have not spent more than half an hour in my system since the Vampire CCS's arrived. The great news was that the Vampire's only retail for $700.00 per meter!
The Vampire CCS cables have a single hot and return lead made from solid silver and a shield that is connected only at the source end. Oh yea, the gauge of the solid leads appears to be in the 20 gauge range, faily stiff and tends to break easily. I have re soldered these cables to their rca's many times due to my constant manipulation.
Because of the many repairs to these cables, one pair has become short enough to make connections somewhat tight. Well, I decided to give the fine silver DIY design a shot instead of investing another $700,00 (or less) in a replacement pair of Vampire's. I got caught up in the fine silver hype and liked the design of twisting the tiny cotton covered wires around cotton stuffed Teflon tubing. I didn't like the idea of having to wrap the things with Teflon plummers tape. By the way, the tape wrapping is definately the most tedious and time consumming part of the job ,but, suprisingly fool proof. Bottom line, I built two one and one half meter pairs and let them burn in using music for approximately one week before evaluating them. I have rarely heard a product live up to it's hype like these are, accept my recent fullrange driver purchase, but that's another story. These cables do all the nice things that the Vampire Continuous Cast Silver cables do ,but, everything is better by a magnitude similar to what I heard when going from the very good VDH silver to the Vampire. These DIY cables are substantially more present and coherent. I like to use vocals to differentiate equipment because my wife has made me an expert with the female voice during the past twenty five years (and I'm not afraid of my stereo). But, vocals were more layered and went from center stage and believable to spooky at times ,lots of times. Also, suprisingly, the bass is deeper and tighter than ever before with the DIY cable in play. Keep in mind that None of my speakers are wonders in the bass region. I wonder if the overal increase in presence and coherence (you know, the feeling of air and life) has to do with the fact that these cables are unshielded in the conventional sense? It does'nt really matter because they are the best cables that I have ever used, AND I MADE UM MYSELF! These things cost me under $400.00 for two meter and one half pairs and I have enough left over wire to use inside my passive preamp. Keep in mind that these cables are built using 28 gauge solid silver wire (I used top of the line Vampire RCA's all the way around) and are extreemely suseptable to breaking. I have broken at least one wire loose from the RCA of each cable three times while performing comparative evaluations. So, either have your soldering iron ready and hot orjust leave the cables alone and enjoy them. I'm through comparing so no more worries.

Lance A.

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Topic - DIY fine silver interconnect review. - chopper87@aol.com 15:20:00 10/14/04 (7)

Where did you buy the Vampire CCS wire for diy?? - Kyu 02:14:40 10/18/04 (0)

Re: DIY fine silver interconnect review. - Kyu 07:27:47 10/15/04 (0)

When I built mine. . . - drumminman 05:28:16 10/15/04 (0)

recipe - 2395 05:16:15 10/15/04 (0)

Curious - AnandR 17:28:40 10/14/04 (2)

Re: Curious- probably here............ - Awe-d-o-file 23:47:54 10/14/04 (1)

Copule things that may also help with reliability... - Penguin 06:59:33 10/16/04 (0)

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