Who uses home brew cables?

It's true that wires are the easiest thing for one to make themselves. Almost anyone can do it, and if it works even half decently might even be profitable to sell. All that it requires to work is a circuit. And its probably reasonable to expect that most any decent quality ones will compete. There is even a pretty decent chance that if things are built well around them that they might win a few games against even some of the heavy (ie costly) competition.

Its hard to make a wire that flat out does not work. Most all the rest requires a good amount of specialized knowledge and skill.

Wire build and configuration is going to make a huge difference, the problem as transparency goes up the need for shielding gets bigger, then shielding colors the sound. A large segment of the audiophile world works with coloration and the synergy obtained in one particular system. The closer you get to neutral i/c's and speaker cables the less tricky it is to have cables that work well with all systems. That is my definition of neutral. You are not going to get anywhere near ultimate performance with cheap wire conductors, oxygen free and exotic alloy does make a difference and so does cryo treating any given cable.

I make my own cables. I use teflon silver plated oxygen free copper in various gages depending on the application. With ic they are sheilded.....with speaker wire or hook up they are unsheilded. I have few unsheilded and they work with 2.5 volt signals but for low level signals...e.g they need to be shielded or I get emi and fm interference. I've used a variety of rca....lately I've been using rhodium plated wbt type with carbon sleeves. They sound good and look nice. The wire is all military surplus that I buy from a vendor on ebay. In my system they have sounded better than any cable I've tried from manufactures. Admittedly I don't have the cash to buy or try uber expensive cables but those that can be had for 500 or less have been bettered or equaled by what I make.

I also make my own mic cables, too. I use neutrix xlr....they are the best and are the only ones that are truly road worthy.

I have made a simple power cord that worked well as well as the "White Lighting Moonshine"speaker cables I believe they where called,that worked pretty well.Would like to make some IC's with silver but I find it expensive.

Wire, materials, geometry and connectors are four things DIY cables have in common with manufactured cables. After making cables for my own use for the past 15 years, and comparing with pretty good and somewhat expensive manufactured cables, I believe you can do well wrt SQ by building your own but.....probably not on your first or second attempt. You can get close to the sound of some high priced offerings by using the high quality, bulk cables available and terminating them with first rate connectors - a good bang for the buck option but not inexpensive.

I find the Cardas solder easy to work with. A Hakko soldering station helps too.

I agree with you on both counts and would add that a hydraulic crimper is also a good tool to have for SCs.