Don't read you'll be sorry

PBN,
I take it the cables you have are single wire. I was really looking for biwire. but I have another question. How did you determine that the wire is silver coated? did you scrape off some silver to expose copper?

this whole thread makes me question the economics of making counterfeit cables as opposed to grey market. In this case, if the K2 cable is counterfeit, the maker went to a lot of trouble and effort to copy the external and internal packaging, with molded plastic container, silkscreen the correct labeling on the cables and connectors, create the battery pod for the 72v dielectric charge, copy the exterior sheath, and use the same guage wires, with the only difference we might find is that the wires might be silver plated instead of solid silver. seems like a lot of work to sell something at 3% of the normal retail price.

I would suspect that these are more likely grey market or back door cables out of the same factory in China

PBN said, "you get what you pay for," but I'd argue that's not really true here. If it is indeed Rockefeller, it's still a huge bargain at the price, right?

There's one other piece of the puzzle that hasn't been addressed. Someone needs to cut open some legitimate K2 to compare with the results of PBN's investigation.

"If it is indeed Rockefeller, it's still a huge bargain at the price, right?"

Not really. This "factory" most likely makes whole line of fake cables including fake Rockefeller.

The point is that if it realy looks like Rockefeller it will sound like one too. No matter how righteous you are, you can't and won't stop this market.

Manitunc

Yes indeed I scraped of some silver to expose copper, its also evident form looking in at the end of the conductors.

I don't think these wires are "counterfeits" in the sense as made a completely different place than legit Audioquest wire, everything just looks to "real" including the box they came in.

Theres another clue as to that its a "Rockefeller" wire when looking in straight at the wide side of the cable you see only 2 silver stripes barely any of the silver stripes on the sides, just like the picture on AQ's site of the Rockefeller. On their picture of the real K2 much more of the stripes on the sides are visible indicating that the k2 is physically larger than the Rockefeller .

Now for some pure speculation - could it be that this wire was a test run of wire that never made it to market, the "Rockefeller 3" The wire picked up by some "crafty" folks whom terminated them put them in boxes and marketed them as real "K2" because of all the similarities, ie color of jacket silver plated wire etc. Again this is pure speculation on my side.

As always, Good Listening

Peter