A discussion about high end hook up wire

Hello,
Sorry for my bad English...

Why don't you use the Rectangular Legenburg Neotech UPOCC copper wire instead of your Neotech solid core UPOCC copper wire (for ICs and SCs) ?
Rectangular is a lot better ?

Thanks for answer

 

Rectangular/ribbon type wire allows use of a heavier gauge without as much detriment, but I find it's not as good as using more runs of smaller gauge conventional wire to achieve the gauge you want. Also rectangular wire is harder to make into the geometry I want.

 

I am engaging in a complete rewire of a McIntosh MC2100 and looking for hook-up wire recommendations [AND sources]. This amp is already highly modified [toroid power transformer, FRED diodes, non-inductive power resistors, silver-oil bypass capacitors, input/output jacks, etc. etc.] so it already does not sound anything like stock.

I had previously completely rewired it with hand-made Litz from #26 wire-wrap wire but the insulation [not Teflon] broke down after over 30 years of faithful service. Replaced it with what I had on hand [gutted Canare 4S6 wire and used it as four pieces of hook-up wire].

This was a complete disaster! The sound is now missing the silky smooth top two octaves [yup, it literally sounds like it rolls off now at about 5KHz] however under 5KHz sounds fairly good with decent lower-midrange detailing. Deep bass did improve under 30Hz. But I can no longer hear anything from my ribbon super tweeters [cross at 12KHz].

I will rewire all power and signal-path wiring from the supply, driver board, and heat sinks.

I am patient and persistent but would prefer not to reinvent the wheel. So many of you folks have done the due diligence and found what works well with autoformer-coupled output stages.

I am looking for recommendations and sources, preferably in the USA, wire size of 20AWG. I'll need a bunch, preferably in two colors.

 

Buy blue jeans or monoprice. Plug & play.

 

Me thinks you misunderstand.

I am not looking for speaker wire. I am hand-soldering point-to-point internal chassis connections.

 

Apologies. Mea culpa.

 

Does Van Den Hul sell hookup wire?

 

This as far as I have experienced (early 90s Turquoise OFC w/golden RCAs). About modding internal wiring, never been there so no opinion.

 

Vampire might have hookup wire.

 

I think a pertinent question in this endeavor is - does the company marketing/selling the wire actually manufacture it?

As for the bigger question of "does internal wire make a difference?" my experience with my friend who builds super trick guitar amps is, yes, it does...

But not sure if the stuff being marketed as high-end stereo internal wire is the direction I would go in...

and the caveat that I would put in is that changing/upgrading the wire does a heck for a point-to-point wired tube amplifier.
If you are modding runs full of printed circuit boards, maybe not so much because you aren't going to mitigate the printed circuitry?

 

Already modded everything - and I do mean everything. Even added a regulator to the front-end and redesigned the 80v and 90v supplies. Main power supply bumped to 0.2F. Emitter resistors are Mills non-inductive, hand-matched to <1%.

The PC board traces and autoformers are the only thing OEM left.

 

I never he9ard of Van Den Hookup wire.

 

Hi,
I have some experience with rewire of some vintage spekers and also rebuilding of filters with new capacitors, rezistors and coils, but with new models I did not do it because of warranty and also reticence of buyers in case of reselling.

So, from my experience, yes, it matters, if you change internal wire, binding post or upgrade components inside the filter. One of big question of mine and worries of my audiophille colleagues was that changing of wire will change badly the sound of speaker ... ) this it is stupid. When you are planning to update wires, you want to put something better and really the sound was changed, but all the time improvements were in direction of more open and liquid sound.

Till now I have beed used 7N solid cooper from Neotech with good results, but for the next project I want to use 5N solid Silver. My question it is what gauge should I use for bass, middle and treble? Could be good ideea if instead of useing one solid wire of 16 awg, I will use combination of 2 or 3 wires with smaller awg's in order to rich 16awg?

My next project will be Harbeth shl5 ) where I know that designer does not believe in cables and I could get good improvements changing internal wire.

Any recomandation's are welcome!

Thanks

 

My Symfonia power amp was designed and manufactured with Kimber speaker wire as the internal hookup wire.

 

Doubt it's speaker wire, Kimber makes lots of different wire for nearly any application.

 

The designers and manufacturers had a retail outlet and were the importers of Kimber, and became friends during the time they were designing the amp. At that stage they only brought in the speaker cable in lengths, and the blue+black speaker cable was what was used in the amp. They also used it to make interconnect for use with their demos. The only Kimber interconnect they imported were the completed cables with RCAs, I don't think interconnect cable was available by the length then.

 

After reading all the responses, I'm still left with some questions. I'm not too concerned with brands at the moment, but more interested in why type of hook up wire to use.

- Pure copper
- Tinned copper
- Silver plated copper
- Pure silver
- Silver / gold
- Pure gold

I know my amp currently uses tinned copper, and I don't think I'd switch it out if it wasn't for the poor new binding post job the original owner did. I could just clean up the joining work, but if I'm gonna dig around in there any ways I better upgrade the wire.

So... Can anyone provide input as to the best type of hook up wire? Then I can start looking at the different brands.

 

I prefer the flat Legenburg hook up wire. I have used pure silver, Mundorf which has 1% gold, silver plated copper, and bronze wire.
Pure silver was terrible, and I was quite satisfied after replacing it with Legenburg wire. Litz wire (copper) is good for power supply, but needs high heat tinning to get the enamel off. But for signal, the Legenburg flat sounds great in all categories. Silver plated copper is fine for internal speaker wire on midrange and tweeter, better than copper, but on woofers copper give a fuller, stronger bass.
For exotics, one member here paralleled Mundorf with copper wire with good results. This is an option to try in specific places.
I have some Palladium-Silver-Copper wire which works well before the signal capacitor in my tube amp. Legenburg still better elsewhere. the Palladium-Silver-Copper wire was purchased as a Troy ounce, because it is classified as Precious metal. A Troy ounce gave me 5 feet of approx. 18AWG wire, at a cost of $620.00. I went for it and it's been fun and educational. Palladium has strong bass like copper. Platinum does not, and has a very dry sound. Interesting stuff to play with!

 

Van Den Hull does make hook up wire. I have some here which is 18AWG. It is made from silver plated copper, wound around a carbon core. The carbon is conductive like what is used in some spark plug wires, but the silver plated copper carries most of the current. It works very well on tweeters. Can be doubled up for midrange drivers.

 

Tinned copper wire, done right, is hard to beat. As a matter of fact there has been a lot of people re-wiring guitars, old gear, etc. with old tinned copper wire. There's a company called Duelund which makes tinned copper hook up with with cotton dielectric soaked in oil from 12GA to 26GA. I use the 16GA as speaker wire and it's fantastic. I mean really, really stunning in it's tone and transparency. An industry writer has been blogging about this and has really gotten a lot of people on board. Check it out:
Sneak Preview of my upcoming article for Positive Feedback: An Adventure in the Art of Tone with the Duelund Coherent Audio DCA Series of Tinned-Copper Cables, Part 1 – Update – now live at PF!

 

The article is now on Positive Feedback. It certainly raised my interest in the Dueland wire (for those who don't know the name, they make bespoke capacitors and resistors).

Duelund Coherent Audio DCA

 

Testing the Dueland DCA20GA tinned copper wire as interconnects, and had custom jumpers made for my Merlin VSM's from Dueland DCA16GA. Plan to try DCA12GA speaker cables as well. Very impressed so far - better tone and more musical overall than my Klee Acoustics interconnects at less than 1/10th the price. Probably a little less resolving than the Klee. Big improvement over the Merlin (Cardas) jumpers. Avoid long break-in period by cooking them for a couple of days on the Hagerman Frybaby.

 

I also did some Duelund DCA20GA shielded interconnects and they sound fantastic. Without any break in they were a little muffled and lean but I did voltage and then current burn with the FryBaby2 (great unit, BTW!) and they really opened up. Wonderful tone with excellent detail. All said and done I slightly prefer them to my Silnote Morpheus Reference II Series II shielded phono cable. I'm about to build some non shielded IC's with 20GA wire. I'll let you know how it went!