recabling my Stax sr-009 to pure copper cable

By the way, silver is MORE conductive than gold. What gold has going for it as a conductor is that it doesn’t easily oxidize.

+1. Both silver AND copper are more conductive than gold, and by a considerable margin. See the resistivity and conductivity tables that are widely available for various metals, such as the one in this Wikipedia writeup.

That being said, in the case of a home audio system it can be shown analytically that under most circumstances whatever sonic differences may exist between cables made of these metals are not due to differences in the resistance and conductance of the metals, assuming the cables being compared are of equal gauge and length. A possible exception to that being speaker cables, in situations where cable length is long, speaker impedance is low, and wire gauge is narrow.

Also, to add some perspective, simply making a copper conductor one gauge size larger will lower its resistance by well over twice as many percent as it would be lowered by changing the original copper conductor to a silver conductor of the same gauge.

Regards,
-- Al

Since the Stax 009 cables are not interchangeable, I would refrain from changing them. To me, that's like changing the engine in a Ferrari to a high performance Chevy engine. It might go faster, might not, but what's the point? If you want a different sound, buy a different headphone (one with interchangeable cables) then experiment with different conductors all you want. The idea of cutting through the flat Stax cables and then twisting or soldering the wires to other types of cables is ridiculous. Ruin them if you want to, they're your headphones, but at least you have my opinion. 

zd....wrong....or I should say silver can have a rising brittle high end. If the cable is well designed....no. Copper can also have a rising high end or even a grainy tubby low end.  You have to hear a cable in your system to decide the performance....

It's been said that since Stax are largely capacitative devices, low cable capacitance is the most important parameter by far (more so than conductivity). That's why Stax makes the cables flat. And that's why traditional cable design "logic" doesn't fully apply here.

I think the vast majority of experienced Stax lovers are going to tell you that recabling is a bad idea.

And yes, the 009 can sound anywhere from mildly to annoyingly bright out of many drivers...including the BHSE. A KGST or (much better yet) a KGSShv Carbon is a better tonal match for the 009 and the new L700. The BHSE is a great tonal match for the 007. Amps make a HUGE difference in the quality of sound rendered by your 009. Much more so than with dynamic headphones. Much more so than even most speakers.

If you truly believe the silver coated wire is top blame for the brightness (I believe that it's 99% the transducer + amp), then maybe try one of the Stax all-copper extension cables and see what that does to the sound. 

Snibelsnabel:

Certainly the Stax 009 would benefit from a different cable. Perhaps only the Abyss headphones have been optimized by a headphone manufacturer. And I am of the opinion that the silver + copper wire gives you the worst of both worlds.

Modifying the cable may help but you will destroy the resale value.

Another approach is to decrease some of the noise getting to these sensitive headphones. Consider trying a Synergistic  Carbon Headphone Transducer (HOT) . It is a parallel filter that plugs into the headphone jack and then the headphone jack plugs into the HOT unit. It has helped the sound with my Sennheiser 800 and Enigmacoustic headphones.

It is sold with a 30 day trial.

What A/C wall outlet are you using? That Stax unit does not like a ordinary house plug,it will generate a lot of high frequency noise. I would consider a darkish sounding outlet such as the Oyaide R-1. Another consideration would be the Synergistic Research Teslaplex unit. The SR unit are especially nice in that they come with a 30 day trial with refund. The oyaide do show up used on Audiogon.

A Synergistic Research Black fuse in your amo will also help you problem with the Stax Hot sound.

I do think the above three additions to your system would greatly help your headphones.

David Pritchard