Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit

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

Ok, sead, no OTA tonearm wire for the time being. I suppose there is no way to soften OTA for this without damaging its sonic performance, and no way to install OTA as tonearm wire without damaging cartridge.

Did 47 Labs supply the wire to Miyabi for the Miyabi/47 cartridge?

Also, Kontakt 61 leaves a protective film afterwards, but 60 does not.

Have OTA now as bi-wire bridges on loudspeakers. Loved it the first half hour, but now it is the usual break-in with frequency response going in different directions. Will just have to wait and listen...

Bill, I've been using the OTA as power cords for more than 8 months. The sort of changes in sound was similar to those when I installed OTA as speaker cable and interconnect. That means that all kind of colorations and dirtiness just disappeared (I was using Transparent and Electrocompaniet power cords before). For me, the OTA power cords brought the final word to 47 labs "sound".
Both Humpty and Dumpty are connected through the ONE AC plug into the ONE AC wall socket. All metal parts from the plugs (both IEC and AC plug) are removed (screws, etc) except, of course, metal pins that go into the wall socket. There is no ground connection. The wires are not shielded; it degrades the sound.

Best regards,

Ivo

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. It's interesting to note that another friend who has been fabrication his own power cords, also told me that its a good idea to remove the ground and the shielding whenever possible. This friend also mentioned that the cables should not be too tightly bound together or it'll screw up the sound. I've already bought the AC and IEC plugs and I'll try the power cords next week.

Bill