$10 / foot speaker wire

Well I agree that they are overpriced,but when you look at the hypothesis that less is more in some cases like in the case of OTA then they might be useful.

As I mentioned I would like to try some other Connectors also.

If less is more, then the cheapo rat shack rca's + teflon tape must win the prize, they seem to sound ok, so I think I'm staying put for now. What are these things made of anyway? Nickel plated steel?

I guess it's all relative. I have the Eichmann Bullets currently in use. 47 Labs wanted $100 for enough connectors to make a pair of ic's with their OTA (and it may well be worth it, I don't know as I didn't want to shell out the money knowing the 47 Labs connectors can very easily be broken). I replaced a pair of budget Ultralink RCA's on some 47 Labs OTA

http://www.ultralinkcables.com/products/productsList.php?category=ad00

with the Eichmann's and it was no contest. When you look at the cost of the Cardas and, especially other well know RCA's like the WBT's, $30 for the Eichmann's strikes me as a bargain, particularly when the OTA terminated with the Ultralinks was very competitive with Silver Audio 6.0's terminated with the WBT RCA's. The Eichmann/OTA combo was audibly superior. I think the copper Eichmann's are a bit of a bargain.

Miser:

I was able to locate two packages of the RS RCA's that I use yesterday. The price has gone up $1 per pack and the stores said that they do not know which version will arrive with the next shipment from their warehouse.

Both shops had stored the cheap RCA's in black plastic sliding drawers (I had to ask for them). Don't know how standard this is from one RS to the next, but they were no longer hanging on the peg board in either of our local RS's as they used to.

Less contact area makes sense to me (the same principal as replacing the heavy jumper bars on biwirable speakers with wire/cable) and the end/all is the elimination of unecessary chunks of metal in the signal path. Sounds good in theory and according to the experiments that I have made it also sounds good in reality.

Dekay,
How much of the outer metal housing do you cut off? I can see ditching the strain relief tab, and soldering the ground to the outside of the ring, but if the ring is cut back, it must be hard to keep the plug intact? I was just using them pretty much straight, but without the plastic cover. Still not much metal mass there.