$10 / foot speaker wire

CDC:

12 ft. is the maximum length recommended by Mapleshade, otherwise the (+/-) leads need to be separated by 6" to 12" for it to sound as intended. Pierre once offered to supply the cable to me in this form (non-twisted), but this was some time ago.

I have read much of the same info as you, but in practice I have found much of it to not effect the sound of simple solid core (non twisted/braided) wire in the manner described. I have been using single runs of 26 gauge speaker cable for quite some time now (with various setups) and it sounds wonderful. 22 gauge also works, but my experiment with 18 gauge was a disater (same as yours I guess) as were single runs of 30 gauge solid core.

If such light gauge wire is too scary for you to try @ this time, perhaps look into the new cables advertised here (Bogden or Bogdan) as they are receiving some favorable feedback and they are in your price range. Try searching the name here and @ AA for more info.

As far as round solid core speaker cable goes the best connector is no connector @ all, IMO.

Supra 3/4s Ply. It has out performed Geortz MI 2 and AG 1, Mapleshade and Analysis Plus (in my system). Clean, neutral, balanced, fast and musical.

I would second the Red Rose recommendation.

Another to really look at is the Coincident CST 0.5. I consider it THE BEST BUY out there in speaker wire. I use it myself in one of my systems, and I prefer it by a pretty fair amount over my AudioQuest Midnight(itself much better than Type 6). Please give it a try.

Sean, Dekay,

my limited experience with rat shack rca's as follows:
With bulk kimber PBJ, I ran one set with the cheapo $3/ 6pak, and then decided to do the rest in their gold plated. The cheap ones were on my tuner. I do have some teflon tape holding the ground connection tighter, as the looseness there is otherwise egregious. I eventually switched things around and found out that the cheap ones sound much better than the awful sounding gold plated ones, and have converted some of them. So now I am wondering about getting some Cardas silver or other expensive ones, if the sound improvement would be as great as the difference between cheapo and rat plated. Is it?

Miser:

It's difficult to say as you have had results that are probably fairly close to mine with the cheap non plated RS RCA's.

I wonder though if we are all talking about the same RCA's. The ones that I use come in an 8/pack (small plastic bag) and the plastic colors are Red/White/Blue & Yeallow.

These cheap RCA's when slightly modified sound not that different from my 47 Labs RCA's. I do prefer the 47 Labs, but can no longer afford to replace the ones that I have broken (5 center posts to date), which is why I came up with an alternative.

The Bullet plugs look interesting (approx. $33 for a set of 4) and if you can solder the flimsy RS non-plated RCA's you should have no problem with the Bullets.

Here is an old post (@ AA) by Mr. Risch in regard to more traditional RCA's that he likes (might be helpful).

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.pl?forum=cables&n=16479&highlight=Risch+and+RCA's&r=&session=