$10 / foot speaker wire

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=

Dekay: I've still got some of those "generic" plastic RS RCA plugs somewhere around here. The ones that i used looked more like this but without the strain relief. Rather than the "notched" or "crowned" ground sleeve, it used a solid sleeve. I'll have to find them and drop you an email for specifics.

As to the RCA's that Jon recommended, i've used the Dayton's from Parts Express for quite a long time. I sent Jon a couple sets of these ( the first ones he ever saw ) along with some supplies for him to make some cables with several years ago. While i know that some folks are "anti" gold plating and teflon, these really are very decent plugs for the money. These RCA's from Dalbani #15-0205 are also a very good buy. You'll have to enter the part number on these manually as Dalbani's website does not do direct links all too well. They have slightly different construction from the Dayton's and more suitable to larger wires due to increased barrel size. Some might find them to be slightly easier to solder to and work with though. For BIG diameter cables, i've found the Axon's from Zalytron to work very well. These are a bit more expensive, but more / bigger metal also costs more to produce. Just to clarify things, Zalytron does NOT show these RCA's on their website, so you'll have to contact them regarding price and availability. Sean
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Dekay,-- Thanks for insights. Until I saw your initial post I almast disbelieved my own exerience.

I used the cheap rca's that came 3 red and 3 black, in small plastic bag. I think they may be the same on the inside but with a different useless plastic jacket. I don't feel the need to shell out $33x4 for an upgrade unless it really makes a difference. Its not as though I have a $10,000 set up anyway, I'm plugging them into an old dyna pas pre-amp. Nonetheless, the fools gold plated ones wrecked the sound, and that's what got me thinking. That's one reason I was thinking of staying away from gold plate altogether and trying silver. (Have you listened to the bullets?)

Cellorover, where did you get the Supra cable? I can't find it.
Thanks Jmslaw, I heard the Red Rose wire and was impressed. And this was at the time I thought solid core wire was the best way to go. I didn't realize it was so cheap.
Driver, if you don't mind, what did you upgrade to? The LAT is a great bargain considering it has the same construction as the $1,188/8ft pair Acoustic Zen cable reviewed in Jan, 2003 Sterophile:
"AZ's construction technique is based on "constant air-twisting", in which multi-gauge groups of conductors are arranged in a constant twist on the outside of air-filled teflon tubing".
Correction, I made some 12 (not 18) gauge twisted pair wire. Hence the sore fingers note as 12 gauge is tough stuff, even in copper.