Tube DIY Asylum

Posted by unclestu (A) on April 27, 2012 at 16:55:31

In Reply to: RE: Nice set of posts posted by rage on April 25, 2012 at 08:13:06

At one point i time I worked closely with some wire designers. I have already mentioned Jim Patrick of Music Metre and I can talk about his products because he has retired from the business. I was a dealer and watched his evolution of designs, and since I liked his stuff, I made a few suggestions upon which he followed up upon, making small prototype runs and later entering it into full scale runs (incidentally Roger Skoff interviewed Jim and stole his gauge configuration for the XLO Reference interconnects, at least according to Jim....)

Jim bought 6N ingots from Nippon Mining and had it drawn down By MWS in LA. He had to go to another company to have the FEP teflon insulation applied, which I won't bother to explain if you don't understand the reasons why. In the prototyping work he did, he would often send me samples of wires he was experimenting with. I had silver wire, 6N copper wire,in different insulation, gauges, and colors. I would install them in the inputs of a preamp so I could easily switch back and forth. It was an extreme learning situation and my experiences would be shared with Jim as corroboration for efforts on his part. The input wires to the PCB ran only 1.5 inches, but differencs were clearly audible.

In addition to this direct experimentation, I have done many mods whereby I simply replaced all the black insulated wire with any other color. The result was an improvement in clarity: having a pervasive smear being eliminated.

Since any coloration means a contaminant is being added (plastics are a normally a milky white and even clear requires additional chemicals to the mix), different colors actually have different sonic character. I have not researched the chemical nature of the other color dopants, but I believe the artists paint pallet gives a clue: cobalt blue,cadmium red, etc. Again, I must reiterate that I have been told that there are some black colors which do not use carbon. I have not come across any of them in wire insulation yet, however. I am told that the Quiex black vinyl LPs, which are translucent when held up to the light are non carbon based, but I have no other verification, and certainly I do not use them for insulation.

Again YMMV

Stu

Edits: 04/30/12