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Bare silver wire?

K

Kit Taylor

Well-Known Member
I wondering wear I can buy this, as I fancy having a go at this 47 Labs-esque primativist interconnect design from Thorsten Loesch.

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Per stereo cable simply take four length of PTFE "Spagetti" tubing
(around 0.2 - 0.5mm inner diameter for 0.1mm wire) or as I do the
inner insulator from Low Loss Satellite coax cable and four length of
solid fine silver wire (0.1mm Diameter or therabouts is my
favourite), four short ends of appx. 3mm PTFE sleeving (around the
length of an RCA Plug Center Pin and a diameter to fit into your RCA
Sockets centre hole with just a little slack) and four 5mm inner
diameter rubber O-Rings (plumbing supply).

Take the silver wire and push it into the oversized sleeving and
twist the sleeving together, then use heatshrink sleeing at the ends
to prevent the whole shebang from coming apart. If using Low Loss
Satellite coax centers as "carrier" for the cable pull out the center
conductor and run the silver wire through two opposite air chambers.

The "signal" wire gets pulled through the 3mm PTFE Sleeving and
folded back, making up our "RCA Plug Centre Pin" contact. The other
(ground) wire gets clamped to the barel of the RCA Socket with the
rubber O-Ring. Both exposed Silver Surfaces whould be treated with
some protection oil, you can use extra virgin olive oil (thin film)
or special contact protection stuff such as the Steinmusic Contact
Protection fluid from their kit.

Voila, one of the best possible RCA Interconnects, with the best
possible plug, very low price (< $ 100 cables your entire System) and
no soldering required!!!!
 
Moreso than copper, Les?

I'll do a trial run with some T&E when I've bought some rubbber washers. Does the "centre pin" just connect to the inside edge of the phonosocket or does it have to go right down to the base?
 
Moreso than copper, Les?
Click to expand...
I do believe so, except for the type which is encased in PTFE (Teflon) insulation which doesn't seem to suffer from the surface corrosion as the uninsulated variety. Something to do with skin oxidisation..??
 
While trying to google a table showing the conductivity of oxidized silver *), I came across this:

The Original Parasite Zapper

Sorry, no threadjack intended, I just had to share this...

Best regards,

Oliver

*) Somewhere I have read that the actual conductivity of oxidized silver is still quite good (compared to oxidized copper). Can't prove it...
 
In my experience only the wire that is exposed to an air flow degardes through oxidisation. The wire in side the sleeves remains okay.

So I make sure that everything is covered up.
 
Now that is really clever! Thanks for that Richard I am going to give that a try.

A good source of bare silver wire for experimentation can be obtained by stripping down some silver multi strand and polishing/straightening the individual strands with a silver polishing cloth.

I find the multi strand sounds very fierce, but when each strand is seperately insulated and braided (send /return) it can sound very neutral and smooth .
 
I've had another go with T&E and, bingo, some great sounding interconnects for a £1 a pop.

You can create a high tech "air dialectric" by stripping some 1mm T&E and running it through the sleeve of some 1.5mm. Fold the conductor back over the sleeve and crimp it down tight. The exposed metal should be 2mm or so longer than the centre pin of a phono plug. Hopefully this will stop the conductor getting trapped in the chasis socket. Earth the socket with the earth wire from an ordinary mains cables, attaching it to the outside of the socket with 6mm O ring.

Sound? Quite warm and soft tonally, loadsa dynamic power even at low volume, open and transparent sounding. It's notably less bright than Chord Anthem, but sounds very detailed indeed. Timing is dandy and really fast tracks still sound fast, but the slow ones are way more laidback. It's good at making unique recordings sound different from one another, rather than making everthing sound equally exciting/irritating.

Good stuff, but I'd prefer a less Heath Robinson implementation. You have to push the signal cable right to the bottom of the socket to get it to contact, and even slight movements will cause a disconnect. There's probably a raw material to use than T&E aswell. Any ideas?
 
I tried going back to Chord Anthem and it sounds synthetic and veiled by comparison with the Uniter Zero, as I've christened the cable (Kit means "to unite" in some place or other, so the name reference both the cable's origin and a bad pun).

If cheapo parts sound this good I wonder how the proper PTFE sleeving and proper 4n silver wire I've ordered will sound?

These are interesting times...
 
Made with PTFE tubing, enamled 28 gauge magnet wire and plumbers PTFE tape to hold it all together .... sounds really good, (probably due to negligible capacitance) and is super cheap.

It does pick up a bit more interference than coax, but it's not noticeable unless you turn the volume to max and stop the CD player.

I'd like to try eichman bullet RCAs since they appear to take the theory into the connector, but I'm too cheap, so I'll probably pull the lid off my DAC and solder direct to the PCB, thus removing the capcitance of the RCA connector and plug.

I'm convinced that with interconnects it's all about the capacitance, particularly if the output impedance is a little bit high, and/or the input impedance is a little bit low.
 
hi,
I don't forsee the need to unplug my gear now the modding is complete on my DIY system.
In my case would I gain from soldering the interconnects directly to the relevant PCB's.
If they had to be seperated again it would be a seconds job to unsolder a couple of connections.
I have always suspected that the wire used in quality speaker inductors might make a good interconnect.

....
dogrun.gif
 
I wouldn't personally solder both ends, but then I have a good but worthless DAC (Monarchy audio, ancient thing) and a good but quite expensive amp (Densen B-100). I'm loath to open up the Densen, but very will to do so with the Monarchy.

Soldering both ends is probably the ultimate, but in my case I'll wimp out and go halfway.
 
Last night I built the Uniter Zero mkII, using premium 0.5mm silver wire and 3.05mm PTFE tubing (exotically transparent) supplied by zanash.

The tubing is a knat's pube too wide to fit in an RCA socket, but cut out a 2mmx15mm rectangle and the end of the tubing can be pinched together and inserted, with the bare silver wire folded underneath.

It's a smashing upgrade. New instrumental lines have revealed themselves and the separation is excellent, instrument tones and textures are distinct rather than part of a blob. Clarity is extreme but the sound is not at all bright or artificial. I want to crank the wick to feast my lugholes on all that extra info, whenloud in my tiny room has previously been somewhat lumpen and vulgar. And I've only replaced one pair of interconnects!

Digital cables seem the most voodoo of all things hifi but it works in this role as well, with sharper left/right imaging and groovier bass than with my old T&E jobbie.

The design still needs some work. The fit is loose enough for the signal to be disconnected with a sharp flick. Perhaps a snug fit could be made with a bit of heatshrink wrap around the end of the cable (covering most of the exposed wire would give a smaller contact area a la Eichmann), but what diameters would be ideal for a standard RCA socket? Plumbers tape doesn't work as it peels off too easily.

The earth wire is a bit of multistranded mains cable, easier to attach to the outer RCA socket. This stops hum, but does the quality of this wire really matter? What might be the ideal size ratio?

I gratefully defer to the PFM hive mind...
 
Originally posted by Kit Taylor
Moreso than copper, Les?

I'll do a trial run with some T&E when I've bought some rubbber washers. Does the "centre pin" just connect to the inside edge of the phonosocket or does it have to go right down to the base?
Click to expand...

Degrading (?) silver..


I have also been wondering if Les's belief for degrading silver is relevant. At least Les honestly says it is how he BELIEVES that silver degrades in time.

You remember Le Amp from Thailand marketed by another american (the other one manufactures them) Mr. Michael C. Barnes. He writes quite much on their web pages. They make mainly speakers and tube amps but also cables.

Here's a quote from him:

"The best conductors are silver, copper and gold (in that order). While copper is a better conductor than gold, oxidized copper is a poor conductor. Silver is still a very good conductor even when oxidized. For this reason, connectors are often made from materials that are poorer conductors than copper. Often gold plating is used because gold plating does not oxidize.

There is a lot of marketing hype about cables. The basic thing you should remember is that copper is a relatively inexpensive material. After all, the penny is made of copper. Silver on the other hand is a fairly expensive material. I have noticed how few high end cables are actually silver. Most of these cables are copper cables with the manufacturer hyping something special about their copper. Some manufacturers claim better crystal patterns. Some claim less oxygen. I most cases, these copper wires sell for more money than buying pure silver.

Some cables are mixed copper and silver. It is often difficult to determine how much silver and how much copper are in the wires.

Stereophile acknowledged that bulk Radio Shack wire sounded good. Therefore when we spend money on high quality wire, it should sound better than good. "

The address to read more about cables:

http://www.norh.com/products/cables/index.html

It might be that silver looks degrading but it does not affect conductivity. Les? Have you any further analyzes made on silver? Only optical observing based belief?

Oz
 
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