Vintage DIN phono cables, any good?

Chakster/Nandric -
I have used the Neutrik Profi - they are garbage in terms of sound quality - I have a bagful to prove it. The newer range of Klei are a new design and better than the earlier Eichmann bullets. The Klei and WBTNextgen are both good sound wise, and I have used them. Nevertheless I prefer a vintage plug from the 80’s, lightweight, minimal metal and robust.

With regard to the WBT’s - one of my preamps had Nextgen chassis mount RCA male sockets - the surface coating has long gone, whereas the other RCA’s for the other inputs are still like new. I question their longevity.
PS I used to distribute WBT’s in the 80’s and their quality control at the time was appalling.The centre pins on the original RCA’s were very short and on many top end components the WBTs could not actually make proper contact.

The Eichmann chassis mount RCA male sockets I have installed on my Marantz tube pre - they are ok sound wise, but no better than the original teflon/gold I had installed 25 years ago.

As far as cartridge pins go - the Cardas etc are garbage. I prefer sonically cartridge pins that are phosphor bronze base rather than the tinny brass used by most, including name brands.

Best connectors are copper or silver body ( no brass ) and minimal metal and non internal joints. If you are in the habit of melting Eichmanns or Klei’s then I suggest you go to soldering school and learn how to solder properly.

I have no experience with the Xhadow apart from 1 pair of interconnects, which, after about 4-5 years, the connector surfaces were tarnished to eternity. Not very impressive on the longevity front, given the cost..

@dover 

Nevertheless I prefer a vintage plug from the 80’s, lightweight, minimal metal and robust.

That's interesting! Which one, i'd love to see the images if possible. 
And what do you think about vintage phono cables? 

If you are in the habit of melting Eichmanns or Klei’s then I suggest you go to soldering school and learn how to solder properly.

Haha, definitely not in the habit, but i'm in my school here on audiogon. 

 

I have no experience with the Xhadow apart from 1 pair of interconnects, which, after about 4-5 years, the connector surfaces were tarnished to eternity. Not very impressive on the longevity front, given the cost..

I use my Stereovox Colibru RCA (Xhadow) for 15 years, still very impressivle cable, but the connectors are not like new in color, same with Xhadow Spades on my Stereovox Firebird speaker cables.  

Nandric,
Passing an electrical signal through a metal tube creates an inductive effect which distorts the signal. Changing your metal plugs to plastic will minimise this effect. The downside of using plastic plugs would be that that leaves the joint exposed to rf ( now unshielded ).

Same principle with interconnect - if you use a symmetrical twisted pair with a shield, the shield creates an inductive element. If you take such a cable and physically strip the shield off, you will find in most instances improved speed and resolution. The downside again is that if you live in an rf heavy environment you may get added noise.

My system is optimised for speed and resolution, but when I had a top end audio shop I found that some folk prefer a slow and smooth sound, so as with many audio components listening preferences often trump science or truth.

With regard to Lewm's comment on the Xhadows I took it from his comments that they are based only on review, not experience.

Minimum metal will minimise skin effect and distortion resulting from the signal passing through a big lump of metal. The worst example I have had in 30 years was changing the phono sockets on my ET2 air bearing tonearm - I lost the bottom end completely and had to reinstall the cheap ( 25yr old teflon ) sockets, even though both RCA sockets had similar construction. Other examples are the original WBT's which had steel covers, later replaced with lightweight aluminium that reduced distortion, then ultimately they developed the Nextgen.

Chakster
I use either the Kleis or some proprietary MIT plugs produced in the 80's which were never available to the public. I was an MIT distributor along with Siltech, Kimber and a few others at the time.
As regards vintage cables they are hit or miss in my experience. I use only MIT ( mostly Oracle series ) in my system. The only exception is between MC transformers and preamp as the MIT is quite capacitive. I would also expect MIT cables not ideal for MM's as a phono cable due to its highish capacitance. I have some high end cables from the 80's that still beat most out there today, but they have not oxidised or deteriorated, and that may be indicative of their inherent quality.    

  

This discussion was most informative but for some reason died, I guess you all know what sounds best.