[rhart]

Hi All,

I'm sure most of you are aware of Active Surplus on Queen West. I was looking for some cheap wire for a  second system I'm putting together. I found some good quality solid core copper wire (4 solid core copper wires of what looks like 20 AWG each twisted like Kimber Kables). For 20 cents a foot, it was cheap enough to try it out (I bought 45 feet).

I re-wired my DIY Omega Grande 8 Clones and cut two 8 foot speaker cables. After some break in, they sounded really good. Maybe better than my DH LABS T14. (other equipment: Rega Planet 2000, Trends Audio TA-10, VDH D102 MKIII).

I then moved them to my main system (Rega Planet 2000, VDH D102 MKIII, Bryston B60 SST and PMC DB1). Again, very good results. A bit bass shy, but tight and even sounding. Certainly not harsh or italicized.

Thought I'd share in case someone was looking for cheap experiment this weekend...

PS The Trends Audio TA-10 Tripath Amp is quite impressive. I'm still playing around with it, but well worth the $140 CND. I suspect with a new pot (or jumpered to bypass the existing pot) the soundstage would open further.

[Daygloworange]

Cool tip. Is Active still on Queen Street? I thought I saw a sign a while back that said that they were moving? They've been there forever. Ya, you can find all sorts of neat stuff there, for like, peanuts.

Cheers

[rhart]

Active Surplus moved upstairs in the same building on Queen West (enter by the gorilla). Supreme Electronics, which was down the street on Queen, moved to College and Spadina (also a good source of parts). Cheers.

[mantisory]

for speaker cables, there is also home depot. I tried some of these cables, and all i can say is that they sound great for 25$!!! (although i used 100$ WBT binding posts!)

[rhart]

I suppose this may be pointless since I went back to Active Surplus and bought another 40 feet of the wire; they have very little left. As the cables break in they are sounding amazing. I've made some bi-wired cables as well as some inter-connects.

The inter-connects are okay. Very focused, but a little bright.

The speaker cables, however, are much more resolving than my DH LABS T14 (bi-wired), and approaching my Analysis Plus Oval 9 (bi-wired). At this point, I'm a little uncertain whether this apparent detail is simply brightness or is actually an increase in resolve. I'm leaning towards the later, but time will tell.

Did anyone manage to buy some of this wire and give it a try?