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Zobel's: More necessary than believed

Glad that worked for you. Many folks have tried other high capacitance cables ( especially Goertz ) and not liked the results simply because they didn't use Zobel's. That is why i ALWAYS stress that a Zobel should be used with ANY high capacitance speaker cable. I would consider anything higher in capacitance than Kimber 8PR / 8VS / 8TC a candidate for a Zobel. Some amps might even work better with a Zobel when using these Kimber's and / or something similar. One should not need a Zobel with a cable that is relatively low in capacitance i.e. Nordost, any of the Monster's, etc...

As to your question, an inductive resistor is one that is typically wire wound and of "good size". Personally, i've used Mills non-inductive 12 watt resistors and Axon caps. The high voltage Axon's have a jacket on the leads, making them nicer to work with in terms of not having to protect the exposed conductors. For those that don't know this, Axon's are Solen's are SCR's ( if ya know what i mean ). Axon's also make use of copper leads on the higher voltage caps whereas none of the Solen's or SCR's do this ( as far as i know ). You might also want to see if you can find some "audio grade" Ohmite resistors as these are supposed to be superior to the Mills. Use something that is capable of at least a couple of watts.

As a side note and what i do to make connecting these easy, i install the Zobel network into banana plugs. This allows me to use spades or bare wire in the "clamp" section of binding posts and just slip the Zobel's in via the banana plugs. Obviously, one would want to assure a good connection between leads from the cap and resistor to the bananas and from the bananas to the binding posts, so don't skimp here. As such, solder the connections from the cap and resistor to the bananas and use some cheap but effective bananas in terms of a snug fit. If you wanted to go overkill, you could use locking bananas, since you don't have to worry about these vibrating out or being knocked out by accident. After all, your amp could count on this connection for survival. Sean
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PS... Keep the leads as short as possible on the cap and resistor. Then again, one must realize that you have to spread out the connections to reach the binding posts. Therefore, keep things reasonable and don't trim them exactly to fit. After all, you may get new speakers sometime in the future and want to use this cable. If the binding posts are spaced a bit further apart, you would have to add length to the leads, making for a much messier connection. As such, leave yourself a small but reasonable amount of flexible lead while keeping them as short as possible.


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  • Zobel's: More necessary than believed - Sean 10:29:29 11/21/03 (0)


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