$10 / foot speaker wire

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.

Cdc-- I usually pick it up in Europe when I come over. Their US importer is in Californian, but I get the idea he likes car stereos. I am over here now and am bringing back almost 100 feet for some other people. It sells for 10 euro (now about $12 per meter). I will be back this weekend. I have a pair of 9 footers if you want to try them. Let me know.

Cdc and others. Supra can be found at:

www.jenving.se

Hi Lee:

I leave small 1/8" tabs on opposite sides which can be pinched "in" prior to attaching the RCA in order to increase the grip.

I am not even certain if this makes a difference in the sound (as I have not A/B'd like IC's with and without this mod), but usually do it anyway in order to further maintain the concept of reducing metal mass in the signal path.

Perhaps this is something that you can experiement with when you have time to kill?

Polishing/cleaning the contact areas is easier and it definately does improve the sound.

I am in the process of switching over from 47 Labs cable/RCA's to my DIY cables so it is difficult to judge things on a whole @ this time. Currently I have one channel wired with the DIY cables while the other channel is still wired with the 47 Labs cable and their RCA's.

This may seem a bit odd, but I did so specificaly in order that I may compare the two cable types with mono source material over the next week. If the DIY cable is good enough I may end up selling the 47 Labs cable as I am in the process of downsizing (will just be keeping the bare essentials for decent/involving sound).

We seem to have sidetracked CDC's thread to a certain extent, so if you wish please feel free to email me directly in regard to other simplistic DIY cable designs (ones w/o shielding/braiding/twisting, et cetera).