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64.131.185.46
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.
Follow Ups:
I have made two sets of these. I used the materials suggested in Chris' recipe. One set is a rather long (10.5') balanced run. This set cured a capacitance issue in this run between my amp and pre. I had tried all sorts of wires from a bunch of high end manufacturers. No names since they really didn't sound all that good in either single ended or balanced configurations. The next best sounding run was a Blue Jeans balanced cable using the Belden 1800F wire. It was good. The DIY Silvers, however, are excellent, transparent, and seem to get the signal from point A to point B with the least possible degradation.I also built a 1 meter set of single ended with Eichmann Silver bullets. Now these work really well, too. However in this set the older, teflon tube that Chris suggested seems to allow microphonic intrusion of the signal. The older tube is rather stiff. I still use them, but their signal transmission seems less effective than the longer run, which does run inside the wall most of its run. I think the idea of using cotton rope or possible a softer tubing would be the way to cure this minor ill, and I will be remaking these in the near future. On the positive side they still sound better than 99.9% of all the 1 meter cables I have tried. And that's a bunch.
All in all, Chris' recipe is a winner of the first order. Most people could just do this and stop the never ending quest for better wire. Any gains from here on up are rare and minor, IMHO.
But I still can't help myself geeking out over other cables and building variants on Chris' original designs.IME, other cables may sound different than Chris' designs - fatter, warmer, etched, etc. but that's not necessarily better.
Take this knowing I've not tried those uber-cables from Nordost, Silversmith, Audience, or Stealth. YMMV. If someone wants to donate to the cause for group experience, I'm happy to oblige. =;-)
Agree word for word.
I've been using Chris's DIY silver interconnects throughout my system for years.
BTW, I've found the bass to be very good: detailed, tight, powerful and informative - natural and uncolored would also sum it up (at least as far as my speakers extend).
I simply stopped bothering with anything else after installing these interconnects.
System Details
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