Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit


Has anyone tried this "minimalist" cable kit? After receiving a recommendation from someone with similar musical values to myself, and whose ears I trust, I could not resist ordering one. I will report on how they sound in a few weeks, but am interested in others' opinions too.

For those that have not heard about them look at www.sakurasystems.com for an interesting read. The cable sounds as if it is very close to the specification of the conductors in Belden Cat5. So I may have spent around 100 times what the kit is worth. We shall see.

If you have not heard this cable, please don't bother posting your opinions of how it MUST sound here. Nor am I that interested in hearing how stupid I must be to order this kit - it's my money and you are free to make different decisions with yours. Sorry for this condition, but I am bored with those that have nothing positive to offer on this site, and post their opinions based on deductive logic rather than actual experience.
redkiwi
But I don't think it's advisable use the OTA from cartridge to Phonocube. The problem is the bare OTA wire itself is too stiff to be a good tonearm wire. The sitffness will play havoc with the tonearm's antiskating. This is rather unfortunate because as the output of the cartridge is very low, the fewer solder joints you have the better it would sound. So it looks like in my system I've no choice but to use a more flexible tonearm wire before joining it to the OTA cable.
Hi Guys,

Anyone tried using the OTA for power cords yet? I thinking to trying it out soon. Any special way to terminate/dress the power cords? Feedback much appreciated.

Best Regards,

Bill
Please, don't use OTA from cartridge to phono stage!
My mention of this scenario was not in the reference of OTA but a dedicated armwire.

Sead

p.s. Will write more but just got back from a trip and noticed this which, IMO was something that needed an immediate comment.
Btw: "The problem is the bare OTA wire itself is too stiff to be a good tonearm wire. The stiffness will play havoc with the tonearm's antiskating."
Correct, OTA is stiffer than tonearm cables. But there is a way to spiral it away from the arm that will not seriously affect antiskating (even if it will increase signal length) assuming that one can position the phono stage as one needs.
Sead: "Please, don't use OTA from cartridge to phono stage!" Sead, I hope you spend a little time discussing what makes this prohibition necessary. There is something mysterious here... even though I can intuit what might motivate your immediate rejection from my own resistance to proceeding with this experiment. It certainly would be less work and hassle to just take the SY cable plug shoes off of the end of the arm wire, strip off the insulation a bit, and install it in the OTA plugs. But the shoe/crimp contact I am using right now seems altogether satisfactory (even though there is a solder joint there between the tonearm wires and the shoes). Today, I inspected and cleaned the contact and thought I would try some fluid with it to improve conductivity. One contact fluid (Reson Licon) had detrimental sonic effects. I wasted a lot of time waiting for the abrasive mid-ranges introduced by it to go away and I eventually wiped away all traces of it.
For deoxidation/desulfidization the technical sprays from CRC (by which I mean Kontakt 60 and Kontakt 61) have worked wonderfully with OTA, and exhibit only minimal detrimental effect on sound. BTW, CRC puts out alot of other technical sprays: Kontakt WL, Kälte 75 Super, Kontaflon 85, Drückluft 67 plus, Video 90, Tuner 600, Sprühöl 88, Screen 99, Antistatik 100, Etikette LX, and Reiniger 601 do their specific jobs right.



"Sead: "Please, don't use OTA from cartridge to phono stage!" Sead, I hope you spend a little time discussing what makes this prohibition necessary. There is something mysterious here..."

Slawney, nothing mysterious, simply OTA is too rigid not to mess up with the designed movement of the tonearm and can lead into a serious damage to the cartridge as a medium term effect. Very simple. Even if you spiral it, put it any way you want it, it will still affect the bearing movement (or/and azimuth with unipivot tonearms), not to mention the antiskating adjustment. Btw is absolutely right. Even "not seriously affect" is a serious thing in the game of small figures as they are in the arm/cart game. My guess is that even if OTA would be 0.1mm instead of 0.4mm it would still be too much of spring effect introduced for a solid core cable. If you want to get rid of your cartridge, I can think of several less painfull ways. :-)

"For deoxidation/desulfidization the technical sprays from CRC (by which I mean Kontakt 60 and Kontakt 61) have worked wonderfully with OTA, and exhibit only minimal detrimental effect on sound. BTW, CRC puts out alot of other technical sprays: Kontakt WL, Kälte 75 Super, Kontaflon 85, Drückluft 67 plus, Video 90, Tuner 600, Sprühöl 88, Screen 99, Antistatik 100, Etikette LX, and Reiniger 601 do their specific jobs right."

Water dilluted sodium bicarbonate is adequate for the job. Cheap, neat, mild and clean, without side effects.
Most of the commercial deoxidants I've tried are either pretty agressive or have tendency to leave a sort of "protective" film which is something I am not particularly fond of.

Best regards,
Sead