Hi Larry: Actually, I got a bit lucky; I ended up phoning a few places locally (London, Ontario) that do metal heat treating, and Bayson Heat Treating had just recently acquired a cryo unit. As I was somewhat familiar with the process, I made sure that it was what I wanted (a vapour cryo as opposed to actual immersion in liquid nitrogen).
The guy that did it for me was extremely careful as 1) they had initially had a problem with the unit with some liquid nitrogen (a few inches) appearing in the unit and 2) I told him that the wiring he was cryoing was fairly expensive.
They had replaced a part on the unit and had no further problems with LN being in the drum at the end of the process, but just to be on the safe side, they now raise everything off the floor of the drum by about 4-5 inches just in case, and he actually only takes things down to around -300F (He showed me the chart on my particular cryo, which was done with some other stuff-non audio-that was being cryoed at the same time, thus keeping the cost very reasonable).
In any event, I probably would not have done it if I had to ship my stuff out to the U.S. and wait 3-4 weeks to get it back; I'd have too much audio/video withdrawl! This worked out tremendously. I simply took the stuff in and picked it up two days later-whole process was about 30-35 hours and the stuff was still a bit cool when I picked it up.
The results on the wire were exactly like those experienced with the cryoed outlets; blacker background combined with much more extension at the frequency extremes, and a much more fleshed out, more detailed and transparent midband with more info. The wires needed to break-in a bit after the cryo as there was a bit of birghtness or edge to them, but they seemed to smooth out fairly quickly (within about 2-3 weeks) and it has been a great success.
I will probably do a few other things in the next few months-want to reterminate my phono cables with Eichmann's and I held off on cryoing the OTA interconnects and power cord I use because I was a bit nervous about them-will probably do all these and a bit more in the coming months when I can get around to it.
Regards
Blake
The guy that did it for me was extremely careful as 1) they had initially had a problem with the unit with some liquid nitrogen (a few inches) appearing in the unit and 2) I told him that the wiring he was cryoing was fairly expensive.
They had replaced a part on the unit and had no further problems with LN being in the drum at the end of the process, but just to be on the safe side, they now raise everything off the floor of the drum by about 4-5 inches just in case, and he actually only takes things down to around -300F (He showed me the chart on my particular cryo, which was done with some other stuff-non audio-that was being cryoed at the same time, thus keeping the cost very reasonable).
In any event, I probably would not have done it if I had to ship my stuff out to the U.S. and wait 3-4 weeks to get it back; I'd have too much audio/video withdrawl! This worked out tremendously. I simply took the stuff in and picked it up two days later-whole process was about 30-35 hours and the stuff was still a bit cool when I picked it up.
The results on the wire were exactly like those experienced with the cryoed outlets; blacker background combined with much more extension at the frequency extremes, and a much more fleshed out, more detailed and transparent midband with more info. The wires needed to break-in a bit after the cryo as there was a bit of birghtness or edge to them, but they seemed to smooth out fairly quickly (within about 2-3 weeks) and it has been a great success.
I will probably do a few other things in the next few months-want to reterminate my phono cables with Eichmann's and I held off on cryoing the OTA interconnects and power cord I use because I was a bit nervous about them-will probably do all these and a bit more in the coming months when I can get around to it.
Regards
Blake