Anyone ever opened MIT cables?

If you're really curious this may guide you in the right direction. I remember 4-5 years back one of the home theater magazine (I'm almost certain it was,surprisingly enough, Home Theater Magazine) actually cut open a set of MIT cables and took a picture of it. The jist of the article was a weekend with a bunch of guys reviewing the loudest stereo system that a limited budget could buy. They reviewed Cerwin-Vega Speakers, etc. The article also said they bet each other what was inside the little MIT boxes, and the guy who said cheap parts won. The reviewers included Corey Greenburg and Brent Butterworth. I'm not sure who these guys are writing for now, but I'm sure many of the audiogon members do. An e-mail to them will get you closer to your answer. Good Luck!

Think "zobel network" and you won't be far off the truth of what is in the box!

I have a pair of MIT T5 speaker wire and opened one of them once. The solid core wire of the (+) half of the signal is separated from the stranded wire of the (+) inside the box. The solid core (+) wire is cut, soldered to 18 ga or so wire wrapped tighly many times around a core of some kind - is that an inductor? It's like a cheap speaker crossover component. The stranded wire continues uncut to the other end of the wire; while the solid core goes through the crossover component and is soldered back to the other end. The (-) side goes untouched through the network to the other side.

Cornfedboy, i did the same but unfortunatley the boys from NSYNC showed up and havent left my room.

When you hook up a MIT cable it is anyones guess how its network will combine with the input impeadence/etc of the receiving component. To get to the question, you are all on the right track, do cut the cable and when you get over the outrage of contents you see inside, you are now ready to throw them away, and get a cable that does not add a white papers worth of complications to an already complex issue.