Looking for really fine cables at really low price

To recap the break in time of my WE 16g ICs-
At about 150 hours they turned the first corner and became open and very expressive. At about 175 they turned brittle and shortly after shut totally down. At sometime well after 200 hours they have opened back up into the glorious open expressive sound they have today. Are they fully broken in? Who knows....

Jet, have you considered trying finer gauge WE cable for interconnects instead of the 16g?

Salectric, I have some 22guage solid core WE cable coming from the ebay seller tajacobs but no I have considered a finer gauge WE stranded wire and am not sure if tajacobs even sells any. About a week ago when buying the 22g solid core I also bought enough 4ft pieces of WE16 gauge to make another IC. Have you drawn any further conclusions about your WE wire?

No conclusions on WE yet. Even though my initial reactions were not all that favorable, I bought some more WE 16g "just in case" and those are the wires I am breaking in right now on my video setup. These are older WE cables supposedly from the 1950s with terminations on each end. They certainly look like they were used so perhaps they won't need as much breakin as the NOS wire.

Did you happen to see the comments on AA recently by Victor Khomenko (designer of Lamm electronics) regarding breakin generally? His posts were later deleted but they essentially said that the whole notion of breakin is just psychological; it's a matter of the listener getting used to the new sound. He also said something along these lines---people who claim that parts change with breakin never say the sound gets worse, it only gets better, which was evidently to support his view that the changes are all in the listener's mind. I was seriously tempted to call him on this since I can think of a number of things that change for the worse when they breakin fully. Anyway, in my experience, breakin is very real and I can't understand how someone like Victor who is obviously very talented and able to design good sounding amplifiers does not hear the changes in breakin.

Salectric, No I have not seen that post in AA. Glad you bought some extra just-in-case. If you end up not liking it you'll be able to sell it. Given the way you described your rig yesterday I think you will end up liking it.

I have heard good and bad break in several times. Including WIMA caps which I did not like at all in my amp. Several resistors brands as well didnt sound good. These WE16ga IC's...have had several peaks and valleys which were very audible. I found that once the WE16ga speaker wire hit 125 hours they remained pretty consistent, although I confess to never hearing them from the beginning since they were burning in the back room for 125 hours before I stalled them my 300b rig.