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In Reply to: RE: DIY silver speaker cables posted by Dave Garretson on December 15, 2014 at 04:38:25
Pictures would be helpful. Interesting project but your descriptions, although detailed nicely, are not very useful without pictures.
I've been contemplating pure silver speaker cables as well, but my runs are too long for "experimenting?.
But what really caught my attention was your comment about declining cost of silver. Care to comment further on silver pricing?
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Here they are unterminated, revealing just the Teflon tape outer wrap, together with jumpers made from unterminated 12awg dead soft .999 silver inside of clear Teflon heat shrink tubing. Underneath the outside layer of TFT wrap, each of four silver foil conductors is left bare for 2" or so, then separately wrapped for the balance of 2M length. For the run to the amp the two finished cables are separated by 3"-4".
Silver now trades for around $17/oz, as compared to $23/oz for the drawn foils from Rio Grande. To put it mildly, this is a modest premium to pay relative to typical mark-up over COGs by audio cable manufacturers. At 2M length these DIY cables contain 1.5 lbs. of silver.
Thanks for the pic. Why 4 Foils? Why not just one or two. Note, I'm not a cable designer. I would hate to put you thru the trouble, but given how you connect to the Merlins you could quickly do a test on one vs. two vs. four foils. And why don't you just get a hole puncher and just punch a hole thru the ends that connect to the Merlins and forget about a connector. Leather stores have different size punches. They come in sets and are like chisels but punch holes. Probably could do that on both ends.
From what I could gather from OEMs and DIYers who have worked with silver, a heavier gauge becomes important with increasing amplifier power. I wanted something that would work well with the powerful Pass amps and position the system for transition to lower impedance speakers than Merlin, where the amp's Class A output could double to 320wpc.
Now that the work is done, to eliminate strands I would need to peel back the Teflon ends several inches and separate the foils. Maybe later after the cables are fully broken in. For now it sounds so good that I'm in no hurry for change.
The foils are too narrow to punch a 1/4" hole for the binding posts. In lien of spades I will probably machine a collar to make a pressure fit between the foil stack and a short piece of silver round wire. On the amp side the round wire will pass directly through the 5-way binding post. On the speaker side it can be curled into a hook and wrapped around the Cardas clamping post.
For better current transfer, you might consider Goertz pure silver spades vs. pins made from round silver wire.
See link:
Thanks. My only issue with those is the need to introduce solder. I tend to favor a compression fit, as with WBT Ag spades. But expensive...
Soft round silver wire flattens somewhat when compressed by binding posts. A hook shape would get reasonably close to the contact area of a spade.
Perhaps the silver spades can be fastened to the silver foil conductors via a non-magnetic stainless steel screw with locking nut, along with nylon washers on each side to protect the silver from high torque.
Thank you for the response. Given the power of the Pass units I see your point. I'm running a 60 wpc Harmon Kardon Citation II vintage tube amp to a pair of Merlin TSM MMM Black Magic monitors. If I do just two foils it cuts the cost in half - but hopefully not the performance. What do you think? If you've seen some of my posts, I'm trying to find a way around what Bobby recommends, which is the Cardas. That is a sure solution and he has always provided great advise. I'm just seriously hung up on spending a lot of money for wire.
You might start with two strands and before binding together the foil stack, try adding a strand or two from the second speaker for a comparison in mono.
I'm sure Cardas is good, but also consider that Bobby and George go way back.
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