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Good and bad w/ replacing stock preamp jumpers?

In the past several days I replaced the stock preamp jumpers on my integrated ($2800 retail) with aftermarket jumpers. I was told once by an audiophile he felt that removing the stock jumpers on my integrated (the amp in question was an expensive one-$5k) for aftermarket jumpers can change the tonal balance of an integrated, thus changing the designers intended sonic presentation. What are your thoughts on this? What's your experience with aftermarket jumpers? Also, aren't the preamp jumpers perfoming the same function as interconnects do between a separate preamplifier and separate power amp? And if they are, why do most of these manufacturers use cheap pieces of metal to connect an integrated's preamp to amp? This occurs even in some of the better more expensive integrateds? Why not provide a quality connection that could conceivably improve the sonics of the unit? I've read where audiophiles with integrateds routinely replace these cheap metal jumpers with a quality interconnect and gain improvements. It makes no sense that a manufacturer spends the money on R&D to build a quality integrated with quality parts and then compromises it with a poor quality connection between the preamp and amp when there is all this hubbub in audiophilia about better and more exotic interconnects that will take your system to the next level. If the quality of interconnects are considered by almost everyone in the audio world to be so vital to an audio systems performace why is the quality of the preamp jumper no less important? Or am I way off base here? Thanks for your perspective.
foster_9
foster_9 OP
1,638 posts
 
For me, it seems as though there has been a sonic improvement since I replaced the stock jumpers; not as much as I hoped however.
jond's avatar
jond
6,063 posts
 
I replaced the stock jumpers on my old Bryston B-60 with Tara Lab's The Missing Link. There was a definite change, the sound became more laid back, with a deeper and wider soundstage. With the stock jumpers the sound seemed a bit bright and two dimensional.
herman
2,290 posts
 
My experience has been that when someone states

it seems as though there has been a sonic improvement

there hasn't been any change, just what they had hoped to hear.

You describe them as being "cheap metal." Doesn't that pretty much describe every cable/connector known to man? Even the interconnects that cost a lot of money are actually made from "cheap metal."

There are traces on circuit boards inside the piece that are much, much longer than your jumpers and made from just as cheap metal.

In fact, you might have longer pieces of wire inside the integrated from the connector to the circuit boards. There are others here who claim great impovements from changing these 1 to 2 inch pieces of wire with very expensive sections of interconnects. You asked for perspectives, mine is that this is audiophile nervosa in the extreme.
adhoc
47 posts
 
The point is just to have as good metal inside the jumpers than anywhere else.
You can say, Herman, that it's cheap metal.
It's irrelevant : it's not expensive like platine, of course, but between silver in jumpers, for instance, and poor (really impure) copper jumpers I got with my speakers, though they were very expensive ones, there is a big difference of quality.
A difference that put good jumpers at the level of the whole wiring.

I haven't bought the most expensive jumpers (same brand as my cables), but good quality silver jumpers, not too expensive, and there has been a big improvement in sonic quality between thoses 2 pairs of jumpers.
knownothing
1,709 posts
 
"My experience has been that when someone states

it seems as though there has been a sonic improvement

there hasn't been any change, just what they had hoped to hear."

Isn't that what happens when someone adds any new piece of equipment, whether it is a $10,000 amplifier or a $60 silver preamp jumper? You hope to hear something different and hope that difference is an improvement.

My experience has been that changing the preamp jumpers on my modest AMC SS integrated makes a very significant change to the overall sound of the system. At least on the same level as changing power cords, ICs, fuses or digital sources.

I have three types of jumpers that I can swap out: the stock metal bars, Audioquest premade PSC+ copper jumpers, and custom made silver jumpers. The sounds of these three are very different, and the two aftermarket jumpers sound considerably better than the stock bars.

I would describe the sound of the three jumpers this way:

-stock bars: brittle, compressed and "shouty"

-Audioquest PSC+: smooth, warm and a bit midrange heavy

-custom silver: Detailed, airy and a little forward

I have been listening with the silver jumpers in for a long time and have made several other modifications to my overall system in that period. I just yesterday put the Audioquest jumpers back in for fun and my immediate impression is that both the bass and treble lost some definition and the sound stage collapsed a bit as well. The flip side is that violins are not as edgy or etched sounding and the overall sound is more relaxed.

Since the Audioquest jumpers have been sitting in storage for a while, they probably need to warm up a bit, but the difference in sound between the silver and copper jumpers in this application is even more pronounced than I remember it, perhaps because other improvements in the overall system have allowed me to hear these differences better than before. In any case, my experience is that preamp jumpers can provide a noticeable improvement in experienced performance. And as with other cables, materials make a huge difference, even if it is only a 2-3" piece of silver in a sea of copper wiring!
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