Review: Venhaus DIY silver interconnects

Cable Asylum

Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

Construction notes:
These are the Chris Venhaus interconnects that are made of 2 fairly fine silver wires wound in a double helix around a vinyl tubing core, and held in place with teflon plumber's tape. I made these per his instructions, with his wire. As I needed 2.5m lengths and am in an rf-noisy New York apartment, I decided to cover them with stainless braided tubing. That in turn required more holding power for the wires than just the plumber's tape, so I ended up with the wires coiled around the tubing, plumber's tape around them, shrink-wrap tubing around that, and the stainless braid on the outside, connected to the RCAs at the amp ends only. I used Cardas RCAs, and filled both the RCAs and the tubing ends with GE Silicone to hold those fragile silver wires in place as the wires flex when moving things around.
Sound:
They connect a Blackie Pagano-modified VTL Deluxe preamp to a pair of Manley 120 Monoblocks, which in turn drive highly modified Spica TC-50s. Previous interconnects were Cardas Quadlink. With the Cardas, I found myself turning the feedback on the amps to the minimum position, as the highs always seemed a little recessed, though that seemed to exacerbate glare in the upper mids. The Venhaus wires have opened up the midrange and highs tremendously, while seeming to reduce the upper midrange glare of these old Spicas. It sounds like several layers of curtains have been removed, and the balance between the mids and highs seems much more of a piece. The noise floor has dropped dramatically - maybe the shielding? Imaging with good analogue source material is the best I've heard with these speakers. I can't comment on bass at all, as I have a pretty sharp high-pass on the Spicas, and a powered ACI sub takes over down low, using the low-impedence outputs from the preamp. An added bonus was the elimination of hum, which had been a problem with a number of other interconnects. I am *very* happy.
WW
P.S.
This is not completely unbiased: I expected reasonably good results, as I am a fan of his power cables. Nonetheless, I was very pleasantly surprised. Thank you, Chris.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Analog Engineering Associates

Topic - Review: Venhaus DIY silver interconnects - Bill Way 16:27:29 12/14/06 (3)

DIY Silvers - oofer 10:43:30 12/15/06 (0)

Ditto you and Paul - grailer 09:43:38 12/15/06 (0)

My experience was exactly the same - Paul Tobin 05:20:38 12/15/06 (0)

You can not post to an archived thread.