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Cable Asylum Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys. |
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Cable Asylum Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys. |
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When we acquired an audiodharma Cable Cooker in 2003, initially, the Cooker itself was lent out. When a local Bay Area audiophile had it, he Cooked two different (one was the old black & blue version, with standard bananas. The other was the newer clear & white, with WBT slant bananas) samples of Kimber 4TC speaker cable.
Lending out the Cooker proved impractical, so we decided to keep it in one location. Cables thus began coming to the Cooker, rather than the other way around. Well, the guy above recently reconnected with me. Then we realized that we never have directly reviewed the 4TC. The 4TC has always appeared in posts, talking about other products.
We'll dig more deeply into the 4TC, but for now, let me reveal my history with it. Thus, readers will know where I am coming from.
January 1990 kicked off with Kimber placing this ad in Stereophile. Audiophiles postulated about the ethnicity of the model. Was she Egyptian? Middle Eastern? South Asian? An 8TC ran from the model's ear to an image of a speaker, which could have come from DCM or Vandersteen. Meanwhile, as a college freshman, I had not yet possessed any high-end audio products. But ads like these planted the seed.
On my dorm's floor, an Asian Indian, Sangha, was our "den mother." Sangha never smiled, but beyond that expressionless facade, she was actually looking after us. She routinely showered in the late afternoon. She would carry a towel, and wear slippers. After showering, she'd coil the towel around her hair, kind of like a turban or beehive. Other than rubber slippers, she was buck naked. But something about a blue-colored towel twirled in her black hair added to, and intensified your interest in, Kimber's TC series.
C'mon, Sharon, why you wearing overalls in the Hawaiian heat? In the early-90s, Sharon's brother taught us how to drive. She did not want to be weighed down, and made hotter, by a lei. In summer 1991, Honolulu's Audio Directions Ltd. were located on Waialae, near the Palolo McDonald's. They were a mess, which meant they were busy doing the actual work. Strewn and draped over a shelf full of electronic parts were a few pairs of the old black & blue Kimber 8TC. Geez, with the frayed ends (ready for ADL's Stewart Ono, aka UncleStu52, to add terminations), the 8TC could have been a lei. Anyway, Stu gave me an 8.5x11 Kimber brochure, depicting a blacksmith-type nerd, surrounded by a few silver ingots. Yeesh, this brochure made the ad in Stereophile that much better!
During the Fall '91 quarter, both Santa Cruz's Water Street Stereo and San Francisco's Ultimate Sound had spools of Kimber PR (black & brown) and VS (black & gray) speaker wires. Ultimate Sound's David Tam, however, advised customers that, if they had the extra bucks, Kimber's TC series was sonically superior, and an even better buy.
For me and my friends, then in college, 1992 was our Summer Of Love. A major part of that was Def Leppard's Adrenalize . My future girlfriend, ACS, then entering her sophomore year at Cal, did not take any summer school classes. Instead, she worked at Victoria's Secret. She still had time to accompany me to Ultimate Sound. Via UPS, a box arrived from Kimber Kable. Part of that shipment was a customer's 4TC. That was the first time I saw the 4TC. Known for her flippant and crude quips, ACS actually liked the black & blue 4TC. She matter-of-factly said that, at VS, black and blue were commonly paired. Anyway, back then, the 4TC was a very reasonable and affordable $4.40 per linear foot.
On 2/12/93 (for the long Valentine's/Presidents Day weekend), ACS took the evening intercampus jitney from Cal to me in UC Santa Cruz. Kimber TC series or not, ACS purposefully chose black VS underwear, under blue jeans and blue Cal t-shirt. We did indeed listen to Def Leppard's Adrenalize , with its blue and black album cover.
At the March 1993 Stereophile Show in San Francisco, a large room with stacks of Krell gear and huge Apogee loudspeakers had staff scrambling for speaker cables. I think they wanted the then-$15,000 Kimber Black Pearl, but ended up with the 4AG. At $100 per linear foot, the 4AG had us plebeians scurrying back to the TC series!
Here in the Bay Area, the end of 1993 was hot and dry. ACS could wear black and blue shoes, shorts, underwear, belts, and tank tops. Because she did martial arts, people said she should have been like Kitana, from Mortal Kombat II. Kitana dressed in blue and black, and had, as her weapons, the two fans. Kitana was taller, slimmer, and sexier, than the egg- or pear-shaped ACS.
Anyway, I bought a used Signet SL-280 B/U. My previous loudspeakers had those awful, spring-loaded, push-in-and-lock terminals, which accepted bare wire or pins. But the SL-280 B/U had binding posts. With ACS' encouragement and blessing, I ordered a double biwire Kimber 8TC. Alas, I idiotically got the 8TC with Postmaster spades. ACS actually scratched/cut her forearms, trying to route the cable to the Muse Model 100's Cardas binding posts. Worse, routing the spades to the countersunk posts behind the SL-280 B/U was awkward. Moreover, when you tightened down on the Postmaster spades, the sandwiched metal/rubber/metal would come apart. Should have gotten the 8TC with banana plugs!
Sonically, the 8TC was underwhelming and disappointing. Our older AudioQuest Type 4 and Indigo were better.
ACS loved the gloss black finish on NHT loudspeakers. So in late 1994 or early 1995, we learned from past mistakes, and ordered the Kimber 4TC, with bananas. Not only was the 4TC excellent on the NHTs.......sacre bleu! When we used 4TC on the Signet SL-280 B/U, it was superior to the more expensive 8TC! The 4TC was more open, fast, detailed, lively, and airy.
In late 1996, ACS and I bought the Thiel CS.5. We had the 8TC re-terminated into a shotgun stereo pair, bananas at the amp end, spades at the Thiel (which only accepted spades) end. I was "messing around [ACS' words]" with the cabling, when ACS stopped, and said she thought the sound had changed. When the 8TC lay on the floor, the sound became congested, rolled-off, and slurred. When I picked the 8TC off the floor, ACS swore that the sound became more open and transparent. This was the first time we experienced the deleterious effects of the floor acting as an electrostatic field, affecting the speaker cables' performance. We repeated these off-the-floor experiments with the 4TC. Same results.
In a few weeks, this Cable Cooker will turn 18 years-old. AFAIK, it has treated at least a dozen pairs of Kimber 4TC. We have more samples on tap, so stay tuned!
-Lummy The Loch Monster
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Topic - Kimber 4TC, Part 1 - Luminator 22:13:52 03/16/21 (1)
- RE: Kimber 4TC, Part 1 - Palustris 09:01:46 03/17/21 (0)
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